Leicester City 2 Manchester City 1 – 26 December 2018
Report by Tish Krokosz
Come on, admit it – you too sent a letter to Santa before Christmas, asking for another quality forward to assist and complement Vardy or to play his role when he was injured. The recent performances in attack have been woeful and the thought of Chelsea away and Manchester City at home did not seem like a particularly nice Christmas present when we were looking at the fixture list at the beginning of the season. This Boxing Day encounter was more likely to see King Wenceslas gathering winter fuel than King Power seeing a happy winter Puel.
Yet as they say: “It’s a funny old game”.
Once again, the fans were treated to a festive beer before the match and this put them in good voice despite the opposition having knocked us out of the Carabao Cup the week before. As in that match, last year’s League winners started strongly and dictated the pace and direction of play and it only took thirteen minutes for them to unravel our defence. Most of the attacks (throughout the game) came from the wings, but on this occasion, they threaded the ball smartly and directly through the middle and Agüero’s final pass to Bernardo Silva was perfectly timed, allowing him to beat the offside trap and place the ball to Schmeichel’s left. So easy.
Leicester’s response was surprising. Rather than playing it safely, the home crowd saw a display of wanting to go forward and attack the opposition and five minutes later, Maddison played a first time pass to Vardy along the inside-left channel. He took the ball to the left of the penalty area, and looking up, saw Albrighton loitering with intent at the far right. The Mancunian crowd should have helped Delph by shouting “He’s behind you”, but Albrighton headed the cross from Vardy, which was inch perfect, across the goal and into the net.
Naturally, this encouraged the crowd even more to urge the team to keep on playing this style of attacking football and they obliged. In fact, both teams obliged and there was a lot of end to end play throughout the rest of the first half. Unfortunately, Schmeichel was still in Christmas mood and insisted on gifting the ball to the opposition from goal kicks. We could have been punished on more than one occasion from such generosity, but a combination of good defensive work and uncharacteristic misses from Agüero and De Bruyne allowed the score to remain equal.
In fact, as the half progressed, it seemed more likely that Leicester would add to the score-line with attempts from Maddison, Vardy and Choudhury. Young Hamza had been brought in for his more defensive attributes and had been very hard-working throughout the half. It would have been fitting for him to be on the score-sheet when he received a cross from the left that was almost identical to Albrighton’s goal. This time the angle was a little too tight and his attempt to stroke it in saw the ball bounce agonizingly wide of the far post.
The second half started much like the first with Manchester City having more of the possession. There were half-hearted attempts by both teams at scoring: Maddison had a shot which went wide and De Bruyne shot straight at Schmeichel.
Nigel Pearson always seemed to make a substitution on sixty minutes, whether one was required or not. Claude Puel decided to follow this tradition by bringing on Gray for Choudhury soon after this point in the game. The latter received a standing ovation which must have done his confidence a world of good. Many of the fans did not see the point of this change and, initially, were equally baffled by the later swap of Simpson for Maddison. However, these were probably the game changing moments because it released Pereira to a more forward position preying on the defensive weaknesses that Manchester City were displaying at left-back.
Ricardo Pereira had so far had a good match. It was probably his best defensive game of the season (at home). Until now, fans were unsure whether he was the right person to buy to take over that role from Danny Simpson. Ricardo’s strength, though, is his ability to go forward and penetrate a defence with his runs with the ball.
With ten minutes of normal time remaining, Maguire stroked a free kick from the Leicester half towards the edge of the opposition penalty area where he saw Pereira making a run behind their defence. Laporte was equal to the challenge and guided the ball away from goal but conceded a corner in the process. Albrighton took the corner, in the absence of Maddison, and it was a tired looking effort and was headed away by Sané. The ball dropped to Pereira, who was to the right of goal on the edge of the area. He took one touch to control it and rifled it into the far left corner of the net. The crowd was ecstatic. Manchester City looked dumbfounded. Filbert Fox was flying and everything looked rosy in the Leicester camp.
Yet the drama was not over. We would have to defend this lead for at least ten minutes. Manchester City had the capability to show why they won the Premiership so convincingly last season and they made every effort to level the score. Sterling, who had been well marshalled by our defence for most of the match made one of his darting, entrancing runs across the edge of Leicester’s penalty area and saw Sané was unmarked. The pass to him was perfect and, on any other occasion, his shot would have emulated Pereira’s and screamed into the net. This time he blasted over and the Leicester crowd cheered and jeered the shot.
With normal time almost ended, Pereira was toppled by Delph, who had won the ball but had followed through and caught the Leicester player’s calf. Mike Dean had not spotted the incident and was called over by the assistant referee. A brief exchange of words led to a red card being shown to Delph who protested because he claimed he had won the ball. Vardy had been sent off earlier in the season for a similar incident so perhaps it was a case of “What goes around, comes around”.
Going down to ten men meant that it was unlikely that Manchester City could recover and when the final whistle was blown a few minutes later it meant that the champions had lost two consecutive matches over the Christmas period against what was considered to be lower opposition. For their fans it would be a Silent Night.
Meanwhile, Leicester fans could look at the table and see that their team had earned maximum points from the two games against formidable top-six opposition. Lying seventh in the table half-way through the season would surely be acceptable. Described as the best of the rest should bring comfort and joy to all in the Leicester camp. Yet, as I heard as I was leaving the ground: “Can we do the same against a lowly, defensive team like Cardiff?” We shall soon find out.
Leicester: Schmeichel, Pereira, Morgan, Maguire, Chilwell, Ndidi, Mendy, Choudhury (Gray 63), Albrighton, Maddison (Simpson 78), Vardy (Okazaki 88). Subs not used: Ward, Iborra, Evans, Ghezzal
Manchester City: Ederson, Danilo, Laporte, Stones, Delph, Gundogan, Sterling, De Bruyne (D. Silva 70), B Silva (Mahrez 83), Sané, Agüero. Subs not used: Muric, Walker, Otamendi, Zinchenko, Foden
Referee: M. Dean Attendance: 32,090
The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation