The midweek FA Cup replay fixture was needless for both the teams, Leicester City and Derby County. And the fact that both had made numerous changes to the squad pretty much clarified how they rated the tournament at this stage of the season.
Fortunately for Leicester, Ranieri’s gamble more or less paid off and the Foxes scraped through the Derby challenge with a win to progress to the next round. Things went from bad to worse when Manchester United found an easy game at King Power Stadium with Leicester players hardly up for the task and there has been a growing unrest among the fans concerning Claudio Ranieri’s tactics.
The Foxes now sit just one point above the relegation zone as they next face a rejuvenated Swansea City who are level on points with them and a win for them will take the South Wales club above the Foxes, further away from the relegation zone. Although any chance of that looks highly unlikely given their recent record against Leicester. Swansea have each of their last four games against the Foxes conceding as many as 11 goals.
Defence
Kasper Schmeichel will take his place under the bar after the manager decided to start with the second choice Zieler in the midweek game.
The back four is expected to be completely different from the midweek setup, which had mostly Leicester’s second team. Christian Fuchs will replace Ben Chilwell as the left-back and Danny Simpson is expected to come in the place of Daniel Amartey on the right flank.
Centre-half duo Wes Morgan and Robert Huth will once again take their position at the heart of the defence replacing Yohan Benalouane and Marcin Wasilewski. The first-choice defensive pair has been tremendously poor this term and they need to improve with everything at stake for the club.
Midfield
Leicester had Nampalys Mendy and Andy King starting in the middle of the park, which showed their depth of the squad. Ranieri is expected to start with Onyinye Ndidi and the reliable Danny Drinkwater in this fixture at the central midfield. Ndidi came off the bench to score the winner in the midweek game and will be high on confidence.
Riyad Mahrez and Ahmed Musa are expected to take the flanks. Demarai Gray and Marc Albrighton started in the midweek fixture and they should start on the bench this time.
Attack
Islam Slimani came off the bench in the added extra time against Derby and is expected to lead the attack alongside Jamie Vardy in the weekend
