14:16
7 min Bit of possession for Leicester, knocking it about before a long one from Evans is won by Cresswell, climbing all over Iheancho, who’s first to the loose ball and lashes a rise wide of the near post. You can almost see his confidence seeping through the screen, which is great. He had the goalscorer’s knack at City – where’s Iheanacho, oh there, goal – but his all-round game has improved so much over the last year or so.
14:13
6 min Yup, Bowen and Lingard are split, with Fornals pushing on in between them. That might be hard to mark, but it might also be hard to get the ball held up.
14:13
6 min Cresswell humps one in and Soucek is lurking but Fofana gets it away.
14:11
4 min Lingard looks to be playing off the left and Bowen off the right, as split strikers I think. Meantime, Iheanacho picks up a loose ball and drags a form shot straight at Fabianski.
14:10
3 min Lingard and Ndidi wait under a high ball, the latter catching the former with a sharp elbow. There’s a brief pause, but Lingard is fine.
14:09
2 min West Ham win a free-kick down the right between box and touchline; this is dangerous, especially given how good they are set-pieces. But Bowen’s delivery picks out Evans and he heads clear.
14:08
1 min Away you go, as the late, greatRon Pickering was fond of saying.
14:07
The players take a knee and Jesse Lingard shows a black power fist. All black lives matter, people.
14:04
There’s going to be a minute’s silence for Prince Philip.
14:02
Good news for Leicester: Maddison and Perez should be back next week.
14:00
Mark Noble makes his 400th appearance for West Ham today. Here’s his finest moment.
13:57
13:55
13:52
13:50
13:44
Updated
13:42
I enjoyed this from Pablo Fornals on West Ham’s official site: “I’m really good at ludo! This lockdown I used to play with my friends every day and every night! It’s a popular game in Spain, so we used to play a lot. I have a proper board and everything, so even when I am in Spain I used to play with my friends and we are punished when we lose and these things! It’s a game but it makes you ready to compete at everything!”
First of all, has ludo usurped tiddlywinks as the game one uses to prove one will do anything to win, second of all is it even possible to be good at ludo, and third of all, when it comes to the Irons, Ludo means only one thing.
13:39
Updated
13:36
13:08
Team news!
11:29
Preamble
Football is a chaotic game, 22 shtarkers chasing a little ball about a field. So, much as the human psyche seeks to ascribe then package what happens to one definitive aspect, the reality tends to be hazier, all manner of different things – some of them operating without our knowledge, oh the effrontery – combining haphazardly to produce a particular outcome.
As such, the notion that Leicester choked in ceding a Champions League spot last season is tough to interrogate. It is true that they performed poorly in the run-in, but it is also true that they were ravaged by injury, and who can say how much they were affected by simple tiredness and poor form? In a sense, though, it doesn’t matter – the notion is out there and you can be sure they know of it, so the fight now is to ensure that something far from self-evident does not become something self-fulfilling.
This afternoon’s game should give us a decent clue – West Ham are also fighting for the Champions League, qualification for which could revolutionise their club and the careers of their players. They’ll have to achieve that without Declan Rice and Michail Anrtonio, but one of the most impressive of the many impressive aspects of their season is how well they’ve responded to adversity. This should be extremely intense.
Kick-off: 2.05pm BST
Updated
