CITY 1 WOLVES 4
When I agreed to do this report some three weeks ago I firmly believed that it would be in the nature of an obituary as I could see no prospect of our collecting enough points to avoid the drop. As it turned out, this game had much less riding on it than I had feared.
However it was still not without interest. Would we manage to win more games away from home than at the Walkers and would we finish up getting more points from away games than home games; finally would Wolves achieve their ambition to make the play-offs? Regrettably the answer to each of these questions would turn out to be 'yes.'
It all started so well with Johansson galloping down the left flank, crossing perfectly to Hume who shot first-time on the run to the keeper's bottom left corner. This signaled a bright period of open play with both sides threatening. Wolves incredibly failed to score after a goal-mouth melee, not once but twice. We should have guessed that this was their standard tactic. Just as Sheff Wed have a standard ploy which involves smashing the ball in from long distance at an acute angle Wolves specialise in ugly goals and today was their day.
The turning-point of this match came in the 24th minute when a Tiatto free-kick was flicked on by Hume for McAuley to prod over the bar from 3 yards out. We are not good enough to spurn simple chances and wise heads were convinced that we would pay for such profligacy. Even so, to pay so quickly was particularly hard to take! Wolves broke immediately and melee number three resulted in a straight-forward tap-in for Olofinjana….
Eight minutes later came ugly goal number two when it was Kightly's turn to be the melee man, after Logan made a decent save but the ball ran loose. There was some justice here as Kightly had been outstanding, constantly running past our light-weight central midfielders and straight at our centre-backs who found him a major handful, decent players at this level that Kisnorbo and McAuley are. Kisnorbo indeed was deservedly booked for hauling Kightly back as he turned beautifully in a dangerous position. Kightly is exactly the sort of midfielder we need to mount a challenge next season.
We were lucky to still be in the game at half-time given the chances that Wolves had forced (as opposed to created), particularly when an effort from outside the box tested the strength of our crossbar. Our luck did not last for long. In the 53rd minute Keogh beat the offside trap and trundled towards the City goal. His poor cross was intercepted by McAuley, chasing back, and almost comically steered gently past the stranded Logan. No doubt if he had tried to score an own goal he would have ballooned it over the bar.
Within ten further minutes Kisnorbo was sent off for a second bookable offence. By this time the crowd, a very creditable 30,200 realised the game was over and didn't need to be constantly reminded of it by the jubilant Wolves followers. The only question was how many more Wolves would score, one effort coming back off the inside of Logan's left post. The keeper also made two excellent saves in one-on -one situations so we could easily have shipped six goals or more.
A word now about referee Mike Dean. He is a regular premiership referee in spite of my having never seen him have a good game. He has no rapport with the players, Hitlerian body language and is a stereotypical 'knows all the rules but nothing about the game' official. His officious refereeing and pathetic attempt to establish authority by dishing out cards to anyone who questioned him left a bad taste in the mouth. No wonder premiership referees are ignored when it comes to appointments for the really big international games. Today Dean booked nine different players and sent one off yet there was hardly a bad tackle in the game.
The match finished on an appropriately downbeat note when Dean gifted Wolves a penalty, no doubt a vindictive attempt to punish City players for daring to challenge his authority. By this time nobody cared and we cared even less when Keogh trundled the penalty into the centre of the goal, Logan having obligingly dived to his left.
At the end of the match we had been told that the players would do a lap of appreciation but the folly of announcing this in advance was soon evident as several players were clearly unwilling to risk the wrath of a very disillusioned crowd most of whom had long since fled to the exits. As I left Birch was trying desperately to get the players to oblige and may still be doing so for all I know.
‘Picture courtesy of Raymonds/lcfc.com’ “Birch – Showing How to Last 90 Minutes during his Annual run”
One thing is for sure; we need almost a completely new team to be competitive next season. The majority of the players on view today have no future at our club and some of those that do may be squad players rather than regulars. There is some hope in the Academy prospects, as young Mattock has shown, but they are for the medium to long term and Mandaric by his own admission is not a patient man.
Spare a thought for Nigel Worthington whose chances of taking over permanently were not helped by today's performance.
Leicester: Logan, Stearman (Kenton 46), McAuley*, Kisnorbo**, Johansson, Newton*, Hughes, Wesolowski, Tiatto* (Porter 80), Hume*, Fryatt (Cadamarteri 81)
Wolves: Murray, McNamara* (Little 57), Breen, Craddock*, Potter* (Gleeson 88), Kightly, Olofinjana, Collins, McIndoe, Bothroyd (Ward 62), Keogh
* = name written down by Mr Dean’s over active pencil
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