MBM report of the Baggies’ first game back in the top flightPaul Doyle: Bilic delights in dire
Premier League predictionsEmail alex.hess@theguardian.com | Tweet @A_Hess 1.08pm BST
West Brom: Johnstone, Furlong, Gibbs, O’Shea, Bartley, Ajayi, Sawyers, Livermore, Diangana, Pereira, Robinson. Subs: Button, Hegazi, Harper, Edwards, Grosicki, Robson-Kanu, Austin.
Leicester: Schmeichel, Justin, Castagne, Soyuncu, Ndidi, Mendy, Praet, Tielemans, Barnes, Perez, Vardy. Subs: Ward, Maddison, Albrighton, Iheanacho, Choudhury, Fuchs, Thomas. 12.48pm BST
Leicester flying high in second place! Brendan Rodgers in contention for manager of the year! A top-four finish nailed on! Global pandemics confined to implausible dystopian fiction!Seems a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? In fact, it wasn’t all that long: a little less than half a
Football season, in fact. This year. But since then the mighty Foxes have seen their own steep downturn in form, a brutal raft of injuries, the rapid resurgence of
Manchester United, the more slow-burn resurgence of Spurs and
Arsenal, a 33rd birthday for Jamie Vardy, and a terrifying summer transfer splurge from
Chelsea.
And suddenly Leicester’s new normal looks a lot like the old normal: trying to keep pace with the moneyed elite while having their best players cherry-picked from under their nose: Ben Chilwell’s summer departure the most obvious consequence of their failure to make the top four.