Having garnered high praise for their spirit and endeavour all season, bottom-of-the-table Burnley will need points, not plaudits, on Saturday as they face a Leicester side that have shocked the Premier League by leapfrogging their fellow strugglers to sit level with Hull on 28 points.

Given the nature of their performances and their relatively kind end to the season, many pundits gave Burnley a puncher’s chance of escaping the drop when they beat Manchester City 1-0 in March, but a run of one draw and three defeats without scoring since has quashed much of that optimism.

Leicester, on the other hand, have rallied around under-fire manager Nigel Pearson and there is now a genuine pulse in their previously flat-lining season. The Foxes have won their previous three fixtures and taken ten points from their last six, meaning they are currently in better form than the likes of Manchester City, Southampton and Tottenham going into the final stretch of the campaign.

Such an impressive run will count for nothing, however, if they can’t get a positive result against Burnley this weekend, as a win for the Clarets will still see them overtake Leicester in the table – and should QPR also beat West Ham, they could end up right back where they started in 20th place.

Unfortunately for Pearson’s men, even their three-game winning streak has not convinced the bookies of their Premier League credentials and they go into the game as underdogs at 19/10, with the home side seen as 8/5 shots for victory and the draw priced as the least likely outcome at 12/5.

That being said, Leicester’s recent form is simply too good to ignore here and odds-against prices on them securing a vital three points are perhaps too big to turn down, especially when you consider Burnley will be without the suspended Ashley Barnes and star striker Danny Ings hasn’t scored for eight games.

The visitors, meanwhile, have a host of players currently in a rich vein of form, with Jamie Vardy registering two goals and a pair of assists in his last four games, Esteban Cambiasso returning a goal and two assists in that time and even out-of-favour striker Leonardo Ulloa scoring on his last start for the club.

As such, there are no shortage of candidates for first goalscorer who offer better odds than 6/1 favourite Ings, with Ulloa priced at 7/1 to find the net first, Vardy bizarrely chalked up as 9/1 despite his recent heroics and Cambiasso perhaps better picked as an anytime goalscorer at odds of 7/1.

While Burnley have certainly struggled for goals during Ings’ recent barren spell, they will find some comfort from the fact that Leicester have conceded seven times in their last four games, making “both teams to score – yes” look likely at 10/11 and a 1-1 draw also a decent shout at odds of 6/1.