Liverpool vs Leicester Prediction

A gruelling challenge awaits Ruud van Nistelrooy and Leicester City on Boxing Day as they go to Anfield in the Premier League. Look ahead with our Liverpool vs Leicester prediction and preview.

Liverpool vs Leicester Stats: The Key Insights

• Liverpool are massive favourites for this one, winning in 85.2% of the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 simulations.
• Leicester haven’t won any of their last 19 Premier League games against the team that began the day top of the table.
• Liverpool have won each of their last seven Boxing Day matches since losing to Manchester City in 2013.

Liverpool have already provided supporters with a welcome gift in the form of being top at Christmas, though they’ll also expect the Reds to put on a show in their final home match of 2024.

The club have enjoyed a stunning start to life under Arne Slot and their brutal 6-3 win at Tottenham on Sunday ensured they’d be top of the tree at Christmas – they sit on a four-point cushion and also have a game in hand on the chasing pack.

Victory at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium extended their Premier League unbeaten run to 12 games, and it would be a huge shock were that not to continue on Boxing Day.

As well as winning each of their last nine home Premier League games against promoted opposition, Liverpool are unbeaten in their last 34 league matches at Anfield in the month of December (W24 D10) since a 1-3 loss to Aston Villa in 2012.

Similarly, Leicester – perhaps understandably – have a wretched record against teams who’ve started the day top of the Premier League. They’ve lost 17 of their last 19 such games (D2), last beating the leaders in January 1998 when they managed a 1-0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford.

The form of Mohamed Salah only makes Leicester’s task look that bit more tricky, and he’s been especially fruitful at home over the past year or so, scoring (27) or assisting (11) in 27 of his last 32 Premier League starts at Anfield.

Further to that, he’s been involved in four goals across his two Premier League appearances against promoted sides this campaign (a goal and an assist vs Ipswich, and a brace vs Southampton).

Salah’s obviously not the only threat, though. Assuming he features, Diogo Jota will be looking to maintain his strong record against Leicester; he’s scored six times against them in the Premier League, a figure he’s not bettered in meetings with any other team.

Leicester’s trip to Merseyside falls among the traditional Boxing Day helping of Premier League action, and it’d be remiss of us not to look at the omens pertaining to 26 December.

Salah tends to deliver the goods at this time of year (in fairness, when doesn’t he?), with six goals across his five Premier League appearances on Boxing Day (2 goals, 4 assists).

Having said that, he did fail to score or assist in his Boxing Day appearance against Leicester in 2019, with the Egyptian having only netted once in his last nine league meetings with the Foxes, failing to net in the most recent four.

On a broader level, Liverpool are on a good run of positive Boxing Day results, having won each of their last seven Premier League games on 26 December since a 2-1 loss at Man City in 2013.

On the flip side, Leicester have won just one of their last 10 league matches on Boxing Day (D2 L7) with that sole victory coming against Man City in 2018 (winless in five such matches since then). Leicester’s last away league victory on Boxing Day came against Hull in the Championship in 2006-07 (winless in six since).

Of course, Leicester’s current form is probably more pertinent than how they’ve performed on a single date over the past 20 years or so… Unfortunately for them, then, Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Wolves saw the Foxes become the third-likeliest team to be relegated in the eyes of the Opta supercomputer. They down go down in 62% of the latest season projections.

Jonathan Manuel / Data Analyst

They’ve won just one of their last 16 away Premier League matches (D5 L10), losing each of their last three in a row while conceding 3+ goals in each. Of course, that run does stretch back to their previous campaign in the top flight, though it generally highlights how unlikely a victory would be for them on Thursday.

If there’s one glimmer of hope, perhaps it comes from Jamie Vardy? Only Andrew Cole (11) and Harry Kane (9) have scored more goals against Liverpool than Vardy (8 – level with Thierry Henry) in Premier League history.

Liverpool vs Leicester Head-to-Head

We aren’t trying to deliberately ram home the point about this being a gruelling challenge for Leicester, but they’ve lost nine of their past 12 Premier League meetings with the Reds (W2, D1)

Leicester did record three successive away Premier League wins over Liverpool between August 1997 – May 2000, but since then they are winless in 12 against them at Anfield (L10 D2), losing each of the last four.

The two clubs have also met on five prior occasions on Boxing Day – Liverpool won three of them (D1, L1), including the most recent encounter in 2019 (4-0).

Liverpool vs Leicester Prediction

You probably get the idea by now, but Liverpool are overwhelming favourites for this one. The Premier League leaders won a whopping 85.2% of the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 simulations.

That makes the Reds easily the likeliest to record a win in the Premier League this weekend – or at least according to the prediction model.

Leicester came out on top in just 5.4% of the simulations, and they left with a point in 9.4%.

Suffice to say, anything but a home win will be a huge shock.

Opta Power Rankings

The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.

Ahead of kick-off on Boxing Day, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.

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