Crystal Palace vs Leicester City Odds
| Crystal Palace Odds | -163 |
| Leicester City Odds | +450 |
| Draw | +300 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -138 / +110 |
Crystal Palace and Leicester City are both looking for their first win of the Premier League season when they meet at Selhurst Park.
Crystal Palace have had a sluggish start to the season. The Eagles dropped two winnable matches against West Ham and Brentford and followed it up by getting outplayed in a 1-1 draw against Chelsea. No team was hotter down stretch last season than Crystal Palace, mainly because of how Oliver Glasner revolutionized their tactical identity. If Crystal Palace are going to top their 10th-place finish, they have to get all three points from matches like this.
Leicester City have had a difficult start to the season only having one point from their first three matches, but they got the best news they possibly could have gotten during the international break. Leicester were on the brink of the largest points deduction in Premier League history for breaching FFP rules, but they won their appeal against the Premier League to avoid any type of deduction. On the field they need to improve and quickly or else they are headed straight back to the Championship.
Let's dive into Crystal Palace vs Leicester City.
Crystal Palace
Oliver Glasner has completely transformed Crystal Palace for the better, even if the start of the season has been a bit poor.
The Eagles are now one of the better teams outside of the Big Six at building out of the back and being able to effectively play through all phases of build up. They do it in a 3-2-5 shape with the main aim at creating a box midfield to overload the opposition in the middle to be able to pull the defense out of position and find space to create chances. Eberechi Eze is at the center of everything Palace do in build up and is an unreal creator. Last season he had a 0.62 xG + xA per 90 minutes, which was one of the best marks for attacking midfielders in the Premier League.
Adam Wharton is also at the helm of everything that Crystal Palace do – he's the one dropping deep in build up to help Palace get through the second and third phases of build up and is honestly the perfect all around midfielder. Once Cheick Doucouré gets back into the lineup on regular basis it's going to allow Wharton to play a more advanced role, which will make Palace even more dangerous playing through the middle.
With all of that being said, Crystal Palace have been really inefficient offensively to begin the season. Their xG per shot through three matches is 0.08, which is the second-lowest in the Premier League behind only Ipswich Town. They are doing a good job of passing through the first two phases of build up, but once they reach the final third, it ends in a lot of low quality chances, as over 50% of their shots have come from outside the box.
Leicester City
Leicester look like a pretty easy team to figure out right now. Steve Cooper is trying to turn the Foxes into a team that can control possession and build through a lot of short passes rather than his Nottingham Forest team that very transition-based. The Foxes were more of a build out of the back type of team in the Championship last season, so my guess is he doesn’t want to make such a drastic tactical switch given the squad he has.
The result of it though is they cannot find a way through to create consistent chances. Fulham and Aston Villa sat in a passive mid-block against them and the Foxes could not find a way to play through the middle, which is what they did all last year in the Championship. They also went with a front two of Jaime Vardy and Jordan Ayew against Aston Villa, which might be the worst attacking front in the Premier League.
Out of possession the Foxes are spitting image of Steve Cooper’s Nottingham Forest. They will sit in a deep 5-3-2 looking to deny space through the middle. In open play situations, they really haven’t been that bad defensively. What has truly done them is set pieces. Through three matches they have conceded 1.87 xG off of them, which is almost half of the total expected goals they have conceded through three matches.
Crystal Palace are going to sit in a 5-3-2 mid-block and not allow Leicester to have a numerical advantage in the middle of the pitch, so I have a really hard time seeing how the Foxes are going to get one expected goal.
Crystal Palace vs Leicester City
Prediction
With the inefficiencies these two clubs have had generating chances in front of net, I think it's going to be a really low-event type of match.
Both teams are going to sit in 5-3-2 defensive shapes, which is going to make it difficult to find overloads really anywhere on the pitch. Leicester do not have the front line that can threaten Palace's defense and with the Eagles' inefficiencies in creating high quality chances, I don't see how this match goes off the rails.
We are also coming out of an international break where players are traveling in from all over the globe, so there will likely be some tired legs early on and not having a lot of training time before the match also makes it difficult.
I have both teams to score – No projected at -139, so I like the value on the current line of +105.
