Leicester City v Manchester United: Premier League – live!

12 min: United come again and Maguire blocks Lingard’s attempt to crown a tricky run with a shot on goal. They look full of confidence.

This time he doesn’t miss. Ricardo concedes possession to Pogba with an absolutely terrible attempt to play from the back, but there’s still a lot to do. The weighting of Pogba’s pass over the top for Rashford is absolutely sublime and now, clean through and with time to give Schmeichel the eyes, he makes no mistake. He drills into the corner emphatically and it had been coming.

7 min: Maguire gives away a silly free-kick in a good right-sided position, needlessly clattering into Rashford, who was going nowhere. Chilwell heads clear but United keep the pressure on and Lindelof, driving the ball back across, wins a corner. That’s drilled in low and Schmeichel has to save sharply at his near post from Rashford. It’s a brisk start from United.

4 min: Big chance for Rashford! Shaw sizes up an absolutely delicious cross to the far post and Rashford, running off Maguire and completely alone, somehow directs his header over. That should be 1-0 to United, no question.

3 min: Bailly, recalled to the side today, hoiks an *awful* attempt at a backpass out of play for a corner. Ndidi heads the delivery well wide; De Gea was stranded so, had it been on target, there’d have been big trouble.

1 min: Sanchez, playing on the left of the attack, has an early go at Ricardo but there’s nothing doing.

United, kicking right to left and clothed traditionally, kick us off.

The teams are emerging at the King Power. We’ll kick off in a few minutes. On paper, these two XIs should give us a very decent game …

That start for Alexis Sanchez is his first in the league under Solskjaer. It means Romelu Lukaku drops to the bench. Can Solskjaer recapture Sanchez’s old zip? My suspicion is nobody can: he is 30, has played at a ferocious tempo for years, often year-round too, and simply can’t keep it going at that pace anymore. It is no slight on him.

Harry Maguire is talking on Sky and is asked about United’s summer interest in him. He flat-bats it adroitly and answers a different question. Decent finish by him at Anfield, by the way, wasn’t it? Kyle Walker, for one, approved.

Fancy a rollicking pre-match read? Here is Daniel Taylor’s weekly column, this time about Leeds:

“Can United go fourth if they win today?” asks Matthew Bullock.

Afraid not, Matthew – they’d be two points shy of incumbents Chelsea but would leapfrog fifth-placed Arsenal, at least until their game with Man City later.

I’m a big fan of Harvey Barnes, and it was great to see him score at Wolves a couple of weeks ago. His form on loan at West Brom meant it was something of a no-brainer to bring him back for the rest of the season but it does go to show that expensive, chancy signings from elsewhere aren’t always as good an answer as developing your own.

Leicester City: Schmeichel, Ricardo, Evans, Maguire, Chilwell, Ndidi, Mendy, Gray, Maddison, Barnes, Vardy. Subs: Ward, Fuchs, Morgan, Choudhury, Ghezzal, Okazaki, Iheanacho.

Manchester United: De Gea, Young, Lindelof, Bailly, Shaw, Matic, Herrera, Pogba, Lingard, Rashford, Sanchez. Subs: Romero, Dalot, Jones, Fred, Mata, Martial, Lukaku.

Alexis Sanchez starts for United! Leicester, meanwhile, field an attack full of young English talent.

Manchester United’s charge for the top four continues, then, and the fact that it sounds a remotely exciting prospect to their supporters says plenty about the situation Ole Gunnar Solskjaer inherited and the work he has done since. He oversaw his first minor wobble in midweek, really, with that draw against Burnley – but even then United came from two down at the death so there is enough happening to suggest the spirit of the old days is osmosising (is “osmosising” a word? from dugout through to pitch.

How easy will Leicester make it for them today? It’s exceptionally hard to tell because Leicester appear to fold limply one week and then pull out all the stops the next. Claude Puel remains under intense scrutiny but this is the kind of fixture they’ve tended to pull out a result in – see Manchester City (h) on Boxing Day and Liverpool (a) a mere four days ago. Their inconsistency is typical of the Premier League’s wider mid-table morass although Leicester do, at their best, have more about them than most of the division’s ballast. Will they show it today?

Let’s find out together! Kick-off is at 2.05pm UK time. Do get your emails and tweets across, too.