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Leicester City 2 - West Bromwich Albion 2
Brendan Clegg:Another enjoyable game from Tony Pulis' Albion entertainers! What? I thought we started well again, similar to Palace as we bravely pressed high up the pitch and for the first 20 were the better team, deservedly taking the lead through Rondon. For the 2nd game in a row we played a decent throughball for Rondon and it resulted in a goal. It's only taken us 25 odd games to work out that if we play him balls on the floor or in behind instead of lumping them at him from 60 yards in every direction we might just have a player. After about the first 20 Leicester stepped up a gear, getting after us and one or two of ours had a wobble. It started with Fletcher being robbed of possession when trying to keep the ball (something I have no problem with) and it seemed to give Fletcher, Olsson and to a lesser extent others the real jitters. For the next 20 minutes we stopped trying to keep the ball and resorted to hoofing it and during this period Leicester scored the lucky deflection and could maybe have nicked another goal. With around 5 minutes to go before half time it looked like we had weathered it and Flether began to set the tone for us again by keeping the ball, finding Rondon, Saido and Sess and we looked home and dry up to half time - probably the worst thing you can do against this Leicester team as at the wort possible time we were caught napping. McAuley got caught too high up the pitch, Dawson didn't get tight enough to Albrighton to stop him coming back on his right foot to hit an inswinging cross (as he does), Olsson moved across to cover Vardy in McAuley's absence, Chester got caught between staying tight and marking Mahrez and ended up in no man's land and King arrived untracked to finish very well. It was a lovely goal but avoidable on our part. Second half we started well again - Rondon in particular charging around pressing well with Sess picking up pieces. Gardner then hit an unbelievable free kick inch-perfectly into the top corner which I thought we just about deserved. From then on in we did begin to drop deeper and come under pressure but we still carried a threat on the break - it was another game where McManaman's introduction on 70 minutes would have been ideal to give us real threat on the counter, but we dug in and got a deserved point. Overall our balance wasn't as great with Chester at left back therefore we were never as fluid as we were first half against Palace and as an attacking threat our left hand side was a write-off but we were still miles better than we have been for many games this season. Man Utd without Yacob will be a challenge and it will be interesting to see what Pulis does - I fear Sandro doesn't have the fitness as a like-for-like replacement and is possibly even less mobile than Yacob. I'd be tempted to put the more mobile Evans in there, or maybe even drop Fletcher back as the deeper midfielder and give Pritchard a go, assuming Mozza isn't goign to make it.
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