Southampton vs Leicester City betting tips: Late-scoring Foxes to battle their way to a result
Kasey McAteer and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall
Southampton and Leicester will clash on Friday with both sides looking to bounce back from their first defeat of the Championship season.
Southampton and Leicester will clash on Friday with both sides looking to bounce back from their first defeat of the Championship season.
Date, KO time and TV coverage
Championship, Friday, September 15, Kick-off 8pm, live on Sky Sports Main Event
Suggested bets
Leicester City +0.25 Asian handicap
Southampton vs Leicester team news
Che Adams, Shea Charles, Joel Aribo and Carlos Alcaraz all stand a chance of deputising after the debacle at Sunderland.
Taylor Harwood-Bellis is likely to make his debut at the heart of the defence with Flynn Dowes sitting in front of him. Top-scorer Adam Armstrong is expected to lead the line.
Kasey McAteer showed his value with a decisive brace against Rotherham and could start again, while Stephy Mavididi, Jamie Vardy and Cesare Casadei are options to freshen things up after defeat to Hull.
Ricardo Pereira and the influential Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall are expected to continue on either side of Callum Doyle, Jannik Vestergaard and Wout Faes.
Southampton vs Leicester preview
Southampton have made a positive start to life under Russell Martin, taking to the style well and picking up 10 points from their first five matches.
Late goals against Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth and Norwich help account for half of that tally and highlight the sort of mentality a team chasing promotions needs.
Equally, the fact they conceded six goals across those three matches, and most recently lost 5-0 away to Sunderland, highlights the pitfalls of implementing a new style.
Leicester have made a similarly strong start. The Foxes won their first four games under Maresca and exerted a good level of control over most of those games.
Despite that, they’ve only scored twice before the 70th minute and have earned nine of their 12 points behind that point in matches.
No team has dominated possession quite like Southampton, who are averaging 70.6% this season, but Leicester are next best having seen 65.5% of the ball.
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Both of these sides have looked particularly vulnerable out of possession for two reasons. Not only do they push numbers forward, but the style dictates taking risks all over the pitch.
The Saint’s error-laden 4-4 draw against Norwich was the best example of that but the underlying numbers show that actually, neither team are giving away high-quality chances.
Southampton’s xG against of 6.1 isn’t that much worse than Leicester’s value of 5.1, but it’s considerable enough for a top team to be surrendering a goal per game.
The 5-0 defeat at Sunderland was somewhat unjust as three of the host's goals were worth a combined 0.06 xG. Southampton were just brutally punished on the day.
Given the circumstances, we expect a response from Martin’s side. They’ll want to keep it as tight as possible while doubling down on keeping possession.
They’ve struggled to create as many high-quality openings as they should, though, and City should be organised enough to frustrate them for large parts of the match.
