Premier League Big Match Focus: How to back a 12/1 Spurs win against Leicester

With the Premier League seeing several games postponed this weekend, there is an opportunity for teams at both ends of the table to make ground on rivals who are not in action.

Tottenham's meeting with Leicester on Saturday impacts the top and bottom of the league, and indeed the two teams involved could end the weekend as far away from one another as possible. Leicester go into the game bottom of the pile, while a win for Spurs - if other results also go their way - could see Antonio Conte's team end the gameweek at the summit.

Leicester will at least be better rested than their opponents, who take to the field off the back of a frustrating midweek trip to Lisbon in the Champions League. Still, Brendan Rodgers' team will need to show significant improvement to get anything from the game.

The story so far

Spurs' Tuesday defeat against Sporting CP was their first of the season in any competition, and they were level going into the final few minutes. It has been a very different story for the Foxes, though.

Leicester have yet to win a single game inside 90 minutes, though they squeaked through on penalties in the EFL Cup. Their return of a single point from six league games would be worrying for anyone, and you have to go back to 1983-84 for the last time they won none of their first seven.

There is some cause for optimism, though, or at the very least a straw or two to clutch at. Leicester finished 15th that season despite not winning until their 11th game and there have been further recoveries from slow stars since.

Most notably, Leicester won just two of their first 18 games in 2014-15 and were bottom at Christmas, but recovered to stay up before remarkably winning the league the following year.

Kane loves Leicester

Harry Kane could be forgiven for scanning the fixture list as soon as it is released and immediately eyeing up Spurs' games against Leicester. The England captain, who spent a few months on loan at the East Midlands club in the 2012-13 season, but has thrived against them ever since.

Kane has scored 17 goals against Leicester in the Premier League and 19 in total - more than any other active top-flight player has against a single club and within touching distance of Alan Shearer's record of 20 against Leeds United. That tally includes a hat-trick in March 2015 and four goals in May 2017 as Spurs won 6-1 at the King Power Stadium.

The 29-year-old already has five goals to his name this term, more than any other Spurs player, but teammate Son Heung-min finds himself at the other end of the scale. The South Korea international has yet to score this term despite registering 17 shots in the league, and no player has attempted more without finding the net.

Tottenham Hotspur v Leicester City prediction

Recent history is on Spurs' side here, as is not-so-recent history. Spurs' current run of six straight home league wins is their best since moving into the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, while Saturday's game offers Conte's team the chance to earn a fourth straight league game against Leicester for the first time ever.

It's a fixture which you can often rely upon for goals, with only Arsenal v Liverpool producing more than the 63 in Leicester v Spurs games over the last eight years. That run includes the aforementioned 6-1 as well as 4-3 and 5-4 wins for Spurs, while the Londoners have won their last three meetings while scoring 10 times.

The number of goals in the fixture is unlikely to be helped by Leicester's worrying recent trend. Since the turn of the year, Rodgers' side have dropped a huge 24 points from winning positions - more than anyone else in the league - and eight already this season. Having already turned a lead into a loss at home to Southampton in August, Leicester's last league outing saw them go in front inside a minute at Brighton only to lose 5-2.

All signs point towards a home victory in this one, and a high-scoring home victory at that. The fixture has only ever finished goalless once, way back in 1948, while 12 of the 16 meetings between the sides since Leicester's 2014 promotion have seen both teams find the net.

If you're after a bet builder for this game, you could do worse than focusing on Kane. A Spurs win with the England star scoring two or more goals is available at 5.56114/25, and may be tempting to those who have seen him thrive in this fixture before.

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