FOOTBALL journalist Adam Goodwin (@AGJournalism) shares his verdict on Saturday night's Premier league match-up between Leicester and Tottenham at the King Power Stadium.
Leicester v Tottenham | Saturday 8th December 2018, 19:45 | BT Sport
Despite defeat to Arsenal last weekend, Tottenham will be looking to maintain their lead over their North London neighbours after a win against Southampton on Wednesday.
Leicester currently sit in mid-table but will have been disappointed to not pick up all three points against rock-bottom Fulham during the week.
Leicester
Claude Puel’s side are currently on a stretch of six games unbeaten in the league (W2-D5-L0), but perhaps they’ll be slightly disappointed that they couldn’t turn draws against Burnley and Fulham into wins.
Leicester are yet to beat another side in the top-half of the table but are unbeaten against teams in the bottom-half. The Foxes have lost both home games 2-1 to teams in the top six, and with Tottenham sitting comfortably in fourth, they could be in for a tricky night at the King Power.
However, they’ve only failed to score once at home this season (a game they dominated but drew 0-0 Burnley), and they’d fancy themselves to bag in-front of a home crowd again on Saturday evening.
The Foxes also have the third best record for Both Teams To Score in the Premier League, with the hosts seemingly prolific at both ends.
Tottenham
After a goal-filled North London derby defeat, Spurs bounced back with a 3-1 win over managerless Southampton on Wednesday night. Four of their last five games in the league have seen Over 3.5 Goals and with Leicester’s good BTTS record, as I’ve already mentioned, perhaps we should be expecting goals in this one.
Harry Kane has scored in all four of those high-scoring games and at 4/5, the bookies are expecting him to continue this rich-vein of goalscoring form. He’ll also be looking to keep tabs on North London rival Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who is currently topping the goalscoring charts.
Spurs have a particularly impressive record of scoring in the first-half and, with 15, average a goal a game in the opening 45 minutes. In their last 7:45pm kick-off against Wolves, Spurs opened the scoring within half an hour and then grabbed another just a few minutes later.
With most of their rivals playing before them, Tottenham will be chomping at the bit to get going in this one and I can see a familiar fast start for Mauricio Pochettino’s team.
The betting angles
I’m going to combine two bets with Bet 365’s Bet Builder for this one. I fancy BTTS, purely because it’s landed in 19/30 (63%) of these two teams’ combined games this season.
I also reckon Spurs will bag before half-time, for stats mentioned earlier, and the fact that they’ll be keen not to lose any ground on their rivals who’ll be playing before them.
In Bet 365’s Bet Builder, you can back BTTS – Yes and Over 0 Goals in the first-half for Tottenham at 6/4, which looks a pretty safe bet to me.
Best Bets
Leicester v Tottenham – Both Teams To Score and Tottenham to score Over 0 First-Half Goals (6/4 Bet365)
