Leicester/Tottenham
Tottenham ML (-170)
Let me start off by saying that everyone will get a better line than me if you tail this play. Locked this in Sunday night but waited until this morning to write this up because I was too tired last night, come to find out the line has moved 30 cents to -140. Sometimes I get better lines, sometimes I get worse ones, Tottenham win this regardless.
Tottenham will face a newly promoted Leicester squad who will have some questions surrounding them when they make their 24/25’ EPL debut. They will have a new manager as well as a new style of play, so we won’t really know what to expect until they take the field this afternoon. One thing we do know is they had a great season in the Championship last year.
Leicester finished with 97 points, scored 89 goals (1.93 per game) and allowed just 41 goals (0.89) per game. They also made respectable advancements in both the FA Cup where they lost in the quarter finals to Chelsea and in the EFL Cup losing to Liverpool in the third round. We all know the competitions are completely different when we try and compare the Championship to the Premier League (the highest competition of football in the world in my opinion), but this won’t be a simple walkover for Tottenham. Leicester possesses some firepower.
If both teams had a couple games under their belt, I would be inclined to back both teams to score due to Tottenham and Leicester’s ability to put the ball in the net as well as Tottenham’s struggles on defense due to their high line style of play. Ultimately decided to just play it safe and ride the better of the two teams in the Spurs.
Do I think this is going to be a cakewalk for Tottenham? No, I do think they will end up conceding due to their nature of play as I touched on above, but I think they’re offense will be too much for Leicester to handle even after playing such good defense last season. It’s like moving from JV to varsity for all my American’s.
Tottenham added Dominic Solanke over the summer, the star striker for Bournemouth for 65 million euros. Solanke finished the 23/24’ season with 19 goals across 38 games, good for fourth in the Premier League. Adding Solanke to a Spurs team that averaged 1.95 goals per game last season (7th in the EPL) will only make this offense harder to stop. I expect Tottenham to go with some combination of Son, Solanke, and Maddison up front with Richarlison available off the bench. Four guys who would start for the majority of teams in the Premier League.
Although Leicester has a great season last year this is a major step up in competition from the Championship, I think their offense will make things difficult for Tottenham but in the end the Spurs talent should be too much for Leicester to handle. Spurs get three points in match week one. GL.
