Norwich v Leicester: Get short of goals at Carrow Road

Canaries showing no chirp yet

The fixtures computer clearly dealt Norwich a rotten hand by giving them Liverpool and Manchester City in their first two games.

But while losing 3-0 and 5-0 was hardly a surprise, there weren't exactly many positives to take in defeat. So far, the Canaries look just like the side that went down two years ago.

Daniel Farke and plenty of Norwich fans are keen to tell us otherwise but the doubters need some evidence sooner rather than later.

Did they provide some of it by romping to a 6-0 EFL Cup win over Bournemouth in midweek?

It's easy to say no but a couple of debut goals for new £9m signing Christos Tzolis and a brace for American international Josh Sargent will at least have added a little confidence.

The real test comes on Saturday, though.

Leicester will want to bounce back

Leicester started the season in winning form by beating Manchester City 1-0 in the Community Shield and then nudging past Wolves at the King Power thanks to a fine strike from Jamie Vardy.

But they were well and truly beaten on Monday night when crashing to a 4-1 defeat at West Ham.

There appears to be a ready-made excuse in that Ayoze Perez was sent off with the score only 1-0 to West Ham. However, the Foxes were clearly second best all night against the Hammers and hardly created anything in what proved their heaviest defeat for nine months.

Brendan Rodgers' rather generous assessment? "We made mistakes and got punished. At 65 minutes, we were still in the game against a very good side and we kept fighting but then we conceded again and it became very difficult. Michail (Antonio) puts a shine on it, with two good finishes."

Leicester didn't enjoy their last trip to Carrow Road, losing 1-0 to a Jamal Lewis goal. Norwich also drew 1-1 in the reverse fixture so took four points off the Foxes two seasons ago.

Leicester worth opposing at odds-on

Given their poor performance at West Ham, injuries in defence and iffy recent record against Saturday's opponents, it's hard to recommend Leicester at the odds-on price of 1.9110/11.

The contrasting evidence is that Farke's side have lost their last 12 Premier League games if adding in the 10-match losing streak at the end of the 2019/20 campaign.

Norwich are 4.67/2 to bank all three points while The Draw is 3.814/5.

Sometimes, all the outcomes don't appeal in the match market so I'll look elsewhere.

Unders worth a play

I'm a little surprised to see Both teams to Score and Over 2.5 Goals both clear favourites in their respective markets. BTTS is 1.768/11 while Overs is 1.834/5.

Norwich have yet to score this season while Leicester managed just a single goal against both Wolves and West Ham and were somewhat fortunate to score in the latter.

Under 2.5 landed in both games in 2019/20 and I'll play that again at 2.111/10.

Cards can provide boost in Bet Builder

Norwich have picked up just a single yellow card in their two games (Todd Cantwell v Liverpool) while, aside from the one-off incident which led to Perez's straight red, Leicester have received just two bookings.

There's certainly a feeling that refs are letting things go more this season and getting short of cards looks appealing at odds-against.

The make-ups of the last two head-to-heads at Carrow Road are: 3, 1.

Robert Jones takes charge of this one. He's only been on fourth official duty so far but showed just two yellows in his final game of last season.

Getting short of both goals and cards looks a decent move and Under 2.5 Goals and Under 2.5 Cards on the Bet Builder pays approximately 4.03/1.

Opta Stat

Norwich haven't scored more than once in any of their last 20 Premier League games, since a 2-2 draw with Tottenham in December 2019. In Premier League history, only three clubs have had longer runs without scoring more than once - Sunderland between 2002 and 2005 (25), Huddersfield in 2018 (22) and Hull City in 2009 (21).