Championship weekend betting preview: Get with late Foxes flourish

Smug isn't a word you'd normally use to describe Nigel Pearson but the Leicester boss seemed rather pleased with himself after his team came from behind to beat Ipswich at Portman Road on Easter Monday.

Indeed, we'd even go as far to say he had the look of a man who knows his team are coming to the boil at just the right time and, with that thought in mind, we can't resist siding with the Foxes at 13/8 for their trip to Millwall on Saturday.

Kenny Jackett's men aren't in bad shape on the back of three successive clean sheets that have yielded seven points but their win at Portsmouth on Tuesday has eased their relegation concerns massively and we just feel as though they might struggle to match the intensity of a team that has been under-performing for much of the campaign.

The Lions are now 13 points above the bottom two with four games to play and a draw at third-from-bottom Coventry on Tuesday will almost certainly guarantee their Championship status for another year, regardless of what happens here. As it stands, the cushion is eight points.

So this game is all about ninth-place Leicester from where we're standing and you'd have to search long and hard to find a punter who doesn't think they're capable of making up the three points needed to overhaul Middlesbrough, Brighton and Cardiff, all of whom seem somewhat reluctant to grab the bull by the horns.

Those three teams have picked up just two wins between them in 19 attempts since March 10 - and one of those was Cardiff's win against Middlesbrough last Saturday - so Leicester will feel as though they have their destiny in their own hands having triumphed four times themselves in the same timeframe.

Millwall did us a favour with their 2-0 victory over Hull last weekend, the case for which was built around the fact they were bound to improve on a dismal home record of one point from the previous eight matches.

Now that the spell has been broken and the Lions have eased their worst fears, those figures do nothing but accentuate the price available on the visitors and if the Foxes dominate as much as we anticipate, then we'd back a strikeforce containing David Nugent and Jermaine Beckford to bring home the bacon.

Recommended bet:

2pts Leicester to beat Millwall at 13/8 (Paddy Power)

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