Leicester City v West Ham United: Premier League – live!

Brendan Rodgers has a quick chat with BT Sport.

For me our assessment’s at the end of the season. You always have to stay positive, and up until now the players have been brilliant but we’ve got to ensure we’re not going to play for half a season. We want to push on, and if we get three points tonight it takes us another step towards where we want to be.

On leaving Praet and Choudhury out of tonight’s squad entirely:

I can only pick 18 players, and we’ve got a squad of 25, which means that some players miss out. You’re always looking at your team, you’re looking at your bench, in order to keep that intensity in your team. We’ve got a strong team tonight, but we’ve got important games also after tonight.

Tonight’s big scoreline (so far) comes from the Copa del Rey, where a Barcelona side including Rakitic, Griezmann, De Jong, Lenglet and the highly-rated whippersnappers Riqui Puig and Ansu Fati is a goal down at Ibiza, having had only one shot in the first half.

Two changes for Leicester, for whom Youri Tielemans and Ben Chilwell come in. West Ham make one change, bringing Arthur Masuaku in and dropping Pablo Fornals to the bench.

Tonight’s game will be played by humans with the following names:

Leicester: Schmeichel, Ricardo Pereira, Evans, Soyuncu, Chilwell, Mendy, Perez, Tielemans, Maddison, Barnes, Vardy. Subs: Justin, Morgan, Gray, Albrighton, Ward, Iheanacho, Ndidi.
West Ham: Randolph, Diop, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Zabaleta, Snodgrass, Rice, Noble, Masuaku, Lanzini, Haller. Subs: Reid, Balbuena, Sanchez, Fornals, Martin, Ajeti, Antonio.
Referee: David Coote.

Poor Leicester. Just a few weeks ago (around 12 December, to be precise) they were in second place, six points ahead of Manchester City and a potentially recoverable eight adrift of Liverpool having played the same number of games, the title challenge very much on. But then, the wheels came off. Over their last six games they have won a mere seven points, just-about-relegation-dodging form, and suddenly they are 19 points behind Liverpool having played a game more, and six behind City having played one (this one, to be specific) less.

A match at home to the 17th-best team in the division might look like an excellent opportunity to resume normal service, but that would ignore the disappointing results against Aston Villa, Burnley and Southampton over the last couple of weeks, the fact that since early-mid December West Ham have precisely as many points as them, and their recent record of two points from their last four home games. As for West Ham, their home defeat to Leicester last month was the death knell for Manuel Pellegrini, who got the boot that very evening. Since then, the Hammers have, er, beaten Bournemouth. Still, it’s early days for David Moyes.

The Scot insists that he has discerned an improvement in his players. “It’s down to the players’ attitudes, and their attitudes have been so good,” he says. “I’ve seen it in their stats.” Which is good, because he sure as hell hasn’t seen it in the team’s results.

Last night there was all sorts of madness going on – ludicrous stoppage-time comebacks, ludicrous stoppage-time winners, teams that had completely forgotten how to win remembering how to win, teams only having two shots of any description in the entire game and scoring with both of them – and with any luck there’ll be more of the same tonight. Fingers crossed, eh?