Sports Blog 22/08/2017: League Cup Preview – Sheffield United vs Leicester, Tuesday 22nd August 2017

Can Leicester out fox Sheffield United in their League Cup 2nd round tie, at 7.45pm on Sky Sports Football?

Craig Shakespeare’s wandering band of performers has had a pretty confident start to the new season, despite racking up one win and one loss. The latter came in their opening game against Arsenal, a 4-3 thriller that Leicester can feel hard done by not to at least have gotten a point out of. Alexandre Lacazette scored almost immediately, only for Shinji Okazaki of to equalise 3 minutes later. The Foxes then twice took the lead, both thanks to Jamie Vardy (who has a Super Mega PGM of 39-46), yet for Arsenal powered back in the final 10 minutes to steal the win.



There were no such issues in Saturday’s visit from Brighton. Leicester grabbed the game by the throat from, quite literally, the very first minute, Okazaki once again scoring an absurdly early goal. Roughly 10 minutes into the second half the Foxes doubled their lead through summer signing Harry Maguire, giving them a solid 2-0 win over the Premier League newbies.

As for Sheffield United, their return to the Championship has been pretty mixed. An opening 1-0 win over Brentford was followed by consecutive losses to Middlesbrough and Cardiff City. Saturday saw the Blades bounce back, however, with a fiery victory over Barnsley. Both sides had a man sent off just before the break, as well as another 3 yellow cards apiece; yet the result ended up being decided before all that, Sheffield winning 1-0 thanks to a 17th minute strike from Billy Sharp.

While Sheffield have struggled to score in their Championship outings, they looked far livelier in their League Cup 1st round fixture against Walsall. The Saddlers had led from the 13th minute and looked set to beat their former League One bedfellows. However, Chris Wilder’s side roared into life in the final 15 minutes, a turnaround that was admittedly kick-started by an own goal from Kory Roberts. Nathan Thomas and Daniel Lafferty quickly made it 3-1 within the next 8 minutes, meaning even a 91st minute penalty for Walsall wasn’t enough.

They face a far tougher, if not impossible, challenge against the former Premier League champions, with Spreadex offering a Leicester/Sheffield United (h) Goal Supremacy spread of 0.5-0.7 alongside a Total Goals spread of 2.6-2.8.