After enjoying big spending summers, Leicester City meet Wolverhampton Wanderers at the King Power Stadium in their opening game of the new Premier League season.
Wolves were last season’s surprise package as they squeezed past established teams to finish seventh, whilst Leicester recovered from a mid-season rut to finish ninth and five points behind their Midlands’ rivals.
Team news
Embed from Getty ImagesLeicester have a full squad available with Ayoze Perez, James Justin and Dennis Praet all set to make their debuts.
Wolves could be without Morgan Gibbs-White due to a knock but new signings, Patrick Cutrone and Jesus Vallejo could feature.
Form
Leicester enjoyed an unbeaten pre-season with five wins and one draw from their six friendlies, whilst Kelechi Iheanacho was top scorer with three goals.
Having found themselves in the Europa League qualifiers, Wolves have only had a two friendly match pre-season but enter this games unbeaten in their last five and with just one conceded goal which came away at Crusaders.
Stat Attack
- Leicester are unbeaten in three of their last five meetings with Wolves (W3, L2).
- At home, the Foxes have avoided defeat in three of their last four (W2, D1, L1).
- Leicester have lost their last three Premier League openers with two of those occasions being by 2-1 results against Hull and Manchester United respectively.
- Wolves have drawn two of their last three league openers (W1, D2)
- Leicester’s Jamie Vardy and Wolves’ Raul Jimenez amassed 31 goals between them last season as their clubs’ top scorers.
Prediction
Given Leicester’s pace and ability to play on either the offence or defence, I am expecting Wolves to face a tough test here and particularly after a lengthy midweek trip to Armenia.
Both teams however enjoyed successful pre-season (or partially lack of in Wolves’ case) which suggests that we will definitely see goals, so I am going for a classic thriller if January’s meeting at Molineux is anything to go by with fitness eventually playing its part.
Prediction: Leicester City 3-2 Wolverhampton Wanderers
Result: Leicester City 0-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers