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Bluffers’ Guide to the Premier League weekend: the stats look dilly-dreadful for Ranieri

Leicester City’s likeable manager is not invulnerable, and badly needs a win against Manchester City to restore his reputation. By Martin Bly

With last year’s miraculous Premier League title still fresh on his CV, it is widely assumed that Claudio Ranieri has a job for life at Leicester City. But bluffers - and Ranieri himself - like to stay ahead of the game, and will have picked up the blips of danger on the radar.

Earlier this week the genial veteran himself admitted that he was not invulnerable, and Wednesday evening’s events will only have hardened that opinion. He needs to ring his training-ground alarm bell: dilly-ding, as he puts it, dilly-dong.

The crashing 5-0 defeat to Porto, as EuroBluffers will be aware, was the worst-ever defeat by an English club in Champions’ League/European Cup history, and poor Ben Hamer was the first English goalkeeper to concede five on his Champions League debut.

The pattern so far this season, bluffers will have noted, has been for Leicester to lose in the Premier League at the weekend before winning in the Champions League in midweek. After the debacle perpetrated by what was partly his Third XI at the Estadio do Dragao, Ranieri will hope that the pattern will be reversed on Saturday.

The problem is that the visitors this weekend are Manchester City, who have not lost a Premier League match at Leicester City in Premier League history, and whose last top-flight defeat at the home of this opposition came at the old Filbert Street in 1987.

Leicester have not won in the League for six weeks, and Jamie Vardy, who has scored against 20 of the 23 teams he has faced in the Premier League, has never netted in four matches against Manchester City.

And Vardy is not Ranieri’s only problem. The general complaint is that his first-choice team have rarely looked as if they fancy the job in the Premier League this season, only performing with sustained passion in European ties. This is compounded by long-standing issues with his back-up players, exemplified by the feebleness on show against Porto.

On the plus side, Leicester-favouring bluffers know that Premier League survival, combined with the money earned from the already successful European campaign, can be used to strengthen the top-heavy squad for next season. But survival is not a given, and even victory against Manchester City would not lift Ranieri’s side straight out of trouble.

Courage, though: the manager’s record against this opposition is remarkable - he has won seven of his eight PL matches against Manchester City, with the only draw coming at the King Power Stadium last season. And Ranieri will surely remain twinkly and upbeat no matter what the result.

While we are concerned with relegation-related matters, Swansea City entertain Sunderland on Saturday afternoon, with alarm bells ringing loud at the Welsh club and vultures circling the recently arrived but unsettled American manager Bob Bradley.

The same birds of prey were recently hovering over the manager in the opposing dug-out, but David Moyes’ message seems to have been getting through to his charges and Sunderland are looking comparatively revitalised.

The recent form of the two sides comprises a bluff-worthy stat on its own - the bottom club has won its game in each of the last four rounds (“matchweeks”, if you must) in the Premier League. Three times this has been Sunderland, and once it was Swansea. For the pattern to continue, the Swans must win again - thus rediverting the vultures back to the North-East.

Enough avian metaphors. Table toppers Chelsea entertain buoyant West Brom in the early game on Sunday. Tony Pulis’s side have already taken 20 points from their 14 matches so far this season - their best start to a campaign since 2012-13. But WBA have not won a league match away to Chelsea since September 1978 - before any player likely to be on the pitch this weekend was born.