Talking Tactics | Swansea City v Leicester City
The Championship is back and Swansea City return to action against league leaders Leicester City at the Swansea.com Stadium on Saturday (3pm).
Ahead of the visit from the Foxes, WhoScored.com preview the fixture, taking a look at what to expect from the visitors the key battle and a key stat.
What to expect from Leicester City
Leicester currently set the pace in the Championship with 10 wins from their opening 11 games since their relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season.
Enzo Maresca’s side have only been beaten once in the league so far, with defeat coming at the hands of Hull at the start of September, and since they have racked up six wins on the spin.
The Foxes are also the league’s second highest scorers, behind only Ipswich, with 23 goals so far and have won their last six games by an aggregate score of 16 to two.
Not only have they looked rampant going forward but they’ve also proven solid at the back, conceding the fewest goals of any side in the Championship - shipping just six goals.
In 10 of the 11 league games this season, Maresca has opted for his favoured 4-3-3 formation which has proven fruitful for the Italian with the likes of Kasey McAteer, Jamie Vardy and Stephy Mavididi all performing strongly in that set up.
Key Battle
The WhoScored.com match forecast suggests we are likely to see goals in this fixture as a result of an individual error, although the two sides actually have very different records in this metric.
No team has conceded more shots as a result of an individual error than Leicester (five) in the Championship this season, whilst Swansea rank 18th having allowed just one. Only Cardiff (three) have conceded more goals as a result of an individual error than Leicester (two) and Swansea will hope to make that an area they can capitalise on.
Going forward, Leicester have created more big chances than any other team in the league with a total of 25. The Swans rank 10th for the same metric with 17. The key chance creator for the Foxes is, WhoScored.com’s highest-rated player (7.78) in the Championship this season, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. The midfielder has made a total of seven big chances thus far.
The 25-year-old has been a handful for defences and has contributed to eight of Leicester’s 23 goals, scoring five and assisting three.
However, he will be coming up against a Swansea side that have only conceded three goals in their last five league outings and currently rank sixth in the league for interceptions (10.3 per 90 minutes).
Dewsbury-Hall will likely be up againstCharlie Patino on Saturday. The 20-year-old has also had a strong start to the season with a WhoScored.com rating of 7.05, making him the second-highest rated player under the age of 21 to have played more than eight times in the league this season, and it should be an exciting match up between two creative players.
Key Stat
This fixture is set to be a cracker with these sides currently the two in-form teams in the division.
Leicester currently boast the longest win streak in the Championship with six in a row, closely followed by Swansea on the second-longest win streak in the league with four.
Despite defeat the last time Leicester visited Swansea, the Swans do have a decent record at home to the Foxes winning four of the last six without conceding a goal.