Leicester City (R) 0 Liverpool 1: Oops we did it again
Oh no, we’ve been relegated!
"These games don't come around too often. Given the situation we are in now, we might never get these games again.”
Conor David Coady, April 19, 2025.
Leicester City’s Premier League journey is officially over.
Relegation, effectively confirmed approximately nine months ago and then pencilled in as soon as Wolves beat Manchester United earlier in the day, was rubber stamped as Coady’s troops fell to the Champions-elect on Sunday afternoon.
This was, by Leicester standards, a relatively competent display. Coady’s rallying cry, inspiring his troops to remember that they’re so rubbish that this might be the last time they ever play against A Big Club, met with some success.
They didn’t concede inside a minute, they successfully ventured into the opponent’s box, they hit the post, they had a goal disallowed. They didn’t even concede at all for over an hour.
Were this a real match with real consequences, there might have been the odd positive to take from it. Stephy Mavididi’s driving runs, Luke Thomas - just about - holding Mohamed Salah at bay.
But, good to the last, we’re here to remind you that these kinds of performances are frauds. It was yet another display that looks alright on the face of it, but like a horrendous beating the second you take a closer look.
In the final reckoning, Liverpool ended up with 28 shots to Leicester's five. The home team did hit the post, but failed to have a single shot on target. It is 26 games since the last Premier League clean sheet, and Leicester have only managed to prevent the opposition scoring at this level once since the World Cup in Qatar.
Today, in what had the appearance of a reasonable performance, the xG read Leicester 0.26, Liverpool 3.12.
It might be harsh to pore over words in a situation like this, but there has been a lot of talk from Van Nistelrooy about "fighting". After today's game, he described the effort as "incredible" and reiterated that the players have kept working until the bitter end, despite the fact they've known relegation was coming for so long.
It bears repeating that Leicester have not scored a home goal since December 8th. They have scored two goals in the last nine games, and five this calendar year. They have gained one point from the last 10 games, and four points from the last 18. They are on the longest losing streak without scoring at home in top flight history.
What, we may wonder, would it have looked like were his side not fighting like beavers for survival? Would they have been turning around and howitzering own goals from 45 yards? Would they have simply stopped turning up?
If there is one lesson everyone at Leicester City needs to learn, it’s the ability to self scout.
This goes for the manager, the director of football, and the owner. All of whom were spotted by the Sky cameras chuckling away as relegation was confirmed.
It goes for the people behind the scenes, who broke the online shop for a month, and the social admins, who treat the supporters like idiots in telling us things like “our place in the Championship has been confirmed”, instead of “oops we have been relegated”.
It also goes for the fans themselves. Both the fans who contributed to the protest plane and those who, implausibly, applauded the players off at the end.
These kind of half-baked protests and mindless support are never going to change anything. There is no accountability at Leicester, and part of the reason is the fact that those in charge are never under any pressure.
The much-heralded protest banner, dragging the words "King Power clueless. Sack the board" across the April sky, made its appearance so early on that it didn't even make it onto the Sky coverage.
Not, perhaps, the best way to draw attention to the cause. Yet not surprising either, given this was about the fifth different variant of what it was planning to say. What limited protests there have been over the past few years have been inconsistent and the messaging and execution is dismal.
Like those who decide to spend their hard earned moolah on sending a plane over the stadium, people who pour time and money into watching this team are entitled to do and say whatever they want. But even among the loyalists the messaging is confused.
We always back the lads. Except we don’t, because the atmosphere during the games themselves is appalling. So backing the lads, in this instance, led to the remarkable spectacle of a team that has just been relegated after their ninth consecutive home defeat without scoring, being politely clapped off the pitch.
It is surely true that a large part of the crowd reaction was to do with the performance in this particular game, rather than the repercussions from it. Yet we need to be able to distinguish between complaining about particular results and the overall situation - one that is, we must repeat, quite literally so bad that it is unprecedented at this level.
In many ways, even the match itself simply reinforced how much of this season was self-inflicted rather than inevitable.
Had Leicester prepared better for this season, had they signed players in the right positions in the summer, rather than poured money into new contracts and new signings who have barely seen the field, had they used the limited quality they do have better, things might have panned out differently.
Mavididi, for example, demonstrated for the second game in a row how idiotic it has been to leave him out of the side so often. He was far and away Leicester's most dangerous player, and his driving runs set up chances for Wilfred Ndidi early on, from which the Nigerian hit the post, and Facundo Buonanotte in the dying stages, who scuffed a terrible effort wide.
The team has looked vaguely like a real football team at times since Van Nistelrooy reintroduced Mavididi, and particularly later on in games when he has bothered to pair him with other functioning footballers, as opposed to relics like Bobby DeCordova Reid and, sadly, Jamie Vardy, who combined for approximately five touches in an hour of football on this occasion.
If and when we come to pen the eulogy for this season, the baffling use of an already threadbare squad will stick out like a sore thumb. Both Steve Cooper and Van Nistelrooy have inexplicably hamstrung themselves by leaving out their most threatening players.
Abdul Fatawu, lest we forget, was regularly left out in the early stages of the campaign, while Mavididi and Buonanotte have been sat watching on for long stretches since the Dutchman arrived.
Vardy, meanwhile, plays relentlessly despite the fact he didn't have the legs for a 38 game season two years ago. Even Jordan Ayew, a pitiful option out wide, is probably a better option up front than Vardy at this point.
At the very least it is mind-boggling that there has been zero rotation of the striker. Vardy has already played over 600 minutes more this campaign than he did in any of the last three seasons, despite the rather obvious fact that he is older now than he has ever been.
Then there are the players absent here who only arrived or signed new deals this season. Oliver Skipp saw only a few minutes of action, Caleb Okoli was back on the bench. Jannik Vestergaard and Woyo Coulibaly - remember him? - didn't even make the squad. Nor, of course, did Odsonne Edouard, perhaps the worst signing in history.
Vestergaard, the arch survivor, is apparently waiting for the manager to get the chop. As is Harry Winks, who was hanging out in the Big Smoke with an aperol spritz a couple of hours before kick-off.
Pause to think of how many resources have been poured into acquiring and then keeping all those players at the club. How that might have been used more effectively.
Remember it, if and when the next set of financial shenanigans engulfs the club. Remember that Leicester have spent the last few years gambling with the future and have walked off with two dismal relegation campaigns, and not a single senior member of staff outside the manager has been held accountable.
Even against Liverpool, we were treated to a reminder that so many goals we have conceded are our own fault. The winning goal itself was yet another self-inflicted wound.
As the season has dragged on, even the best players in the squad have been pulled down to the basement bin. Mads Hermansen, who was the shining light earlier in the season, is now as culpable as everybody else.
On this occasion, he treated us to 10 seconds of insanity to cost Leicester the game. First, he bludgeoned his own defender, Thomas, in the head, to leave him prone in the six yard box. He then slapped Trent Alexander-Arnold’s follow-up shot into the net behind him.
For all Van Nistelrooy’s talk about how hard the team has worked, or how incredibly they have played in every game against the top sides, this is the reality. Mistakes, over and over and from top to bottom, that have led us here.
There are five games left. Games without meaning or consequence, but which at least present the opportunity to ditch everyone who doesn’t have a future at the club and begin planning for next season.
That should include getting rid of Van Nistelrooy, who had one job and failed it spectacularly. He has presided over one of the worst runs of form you’ll ever see from a professional team, he has to face the consequences.
He should be the first, but certainly not the last to do so, as the latest summer of change is upon us.
