Preston North End 0 Leicester City 3: The Champions
The party that started on Friday night continued up the M6 to Deepdale, where Preston played the role of sacrificial lambs, carved up and left as offerings along the Enzo Way.
At full time next Saturday, Leicester City will become the most successful club in second tier history, adding an eighth title to the trophy cabinet on their way back to the big time.
That title is going to be our fifth trophy in the last decade: two Championship titles, a Community Shield, the FA Cup and, of course, the Premier League. Go back a bit further and you can throw in the League One title as well.
Preston were the perfect opponents for this sort of occasion. A team with nothing to play for, with a half-interested crowd, willing to essentially lay down and allow Leicester centre stage for the night.
Well before kick off, it was clear that this was going to be a walkover. 5,000 members of the Blue Army filling out pubs the length and breadth of Preston, booking out every Travelodge north of Crewe to be there. The entire game was played to the soundtrack of the away end running through the greatest hits.
Enzo Maresca, a few days removed from bearing the brunt of furious condemnation from all corners, spent most of the night happily waving to the crowd singing his name. By the end, we were treated to the remarkable sight of Jon Rudkin grinning like a Cheshire cat in the stands, preparing to wave the Mission Accomplished banner aboard HMS Piss The League.
Photo: Helen Thompson
The game itself felt incidental to the celebrations, particularly once Leicester got ahead and it was clear Preston had no prospect of getting back into it. At times, it threatened to develop into a complete massacre, instead we had to settle for just the three goals.
The ironic thing is that this turns out to be the perfect setting for Enzoball. Most of the problems all season have been with perceptions rather than the raw results, how frustrating it can be to watch patient possession, how nerve-wracking it can be when the defenders are doing Cruyff turns in their own box.
When you don’t care that much about the result, it’s brilliant. It doesn’t matter when Conor Coady hacks a pass square across his own penalty area and out for a throw, or when he knees a backpass directly to the opposition striker bearing down on goal, or when Jakub Stolarcyzk whacks a pass straight to the opposition and creates a counter attack.
The whole experience of watching the game where the vibes that seep down from the stands are relaxed, versus those when everyone is terrified and angry, is completely different. It must translate to the players, like how every team started winning away every week during COVID, or when the fans came back and suddenly Arsenal had to sell Bernd Leno immediately because the crowd panicked every time he got the ball.
If we as fans can reach a state of zen, allowing those things outside of our control to wash over us, retaining total self-control, maybe it will help the team next season. Because here Leicester were able to knock it about, probing for an opening, as long as they wanted, the dulcet screams of ‘gerrit forward’ drowned out by thousands of people joyously singing about Anthony Knockaert and Nigel Pearson.
Photo: Harry Gregory
The pattern was thus set, Leicester with a load of possession, calmly knocking it about and waiting for an opening. Then they would leap into action and carve up Preston like the Christmas turkey. 15 minutes of nothing and then boom, here’s Yunus Akgun slicing out their innards, playing Jamie Vardy in for a one on one.
Here’s 10 more minutes of various officials popping beach balls chucked on from the stands, then suddenly half the bird has been lopped off and Kasey McAteer is wide open at the back post.
Neither of those moments ended up in goals, but it didn’t take much longer. Once again, Leicester went from walking pace to full sprint in a matter of seconds as soon as they sensed a weakness. A brilliant cross-field pass from Wilfred Ndidi found Abdul Fatawu who found Yunus making the underlapping run. This is the classic off the training ground move, they must practice it for hours.
Photo: Harry Gregory
The end wasn’t quite as beautiful as they drew it up, Yunus running slightly too fast for his own good and stumbling around like a drunk before squeezing it to Vardy, who then booted the ground and somehow got enough power for the ball to loop into the bottom corner. Nevertheless, it resulted in the classic sight of Vardy standing cheerfully in front of a furious mass of opposition fans.
The second goal, when it came, was similarly like that drawing of a horse where the back and legs are beautifully crafted, then the head is scrawled on in crayon. Wout Faes got the ball 40 yards from goal, waltzed into the box around half the Preston defence then hit the post, the greatest almost goal of the season since Jannik Vestergaard ran the length of the pitch and dinked the ‘keeper against Bournemouth.
This time, the rebound fell perfectly for Vardy, who promptly tripped over while lashing it into the roof of the net, with Faes already wheeling away to celebrate. The GOAT could and should have had a hat trick a couple of minutes later, only for Freddie Woodman to stop him. Perhaps he knew that the worst perfect hat-trick ever scored was on the cards and fancied trying to miscue a header or something instead.
If the first two goals came from Leicester’s past, then it was fitting that the final goal came from the future. We got another glimpse of the classic Fatawu acceleration, where he skips past the defender and leaves him for dead from a virtually standing start. McAteer, who was clearly desperate to score, nodded home the cross.
Photo: Helen Thompson
Afterwards, we were treated to a procession of memorable moments: a full on party on the pitch. The bond between the team and the away end has felt closer than the home crowd all season, so perhaps it was fitting that the title was sealed on the road.
An impressive number of Leicester City staff appeared out of nowhere to join the celebrations, along with Top and the entire playing squad, who ended up doing multiple full-length slides in front of the stands. Saturday, you expect, will have a similar party atmosphere. The chance to get 100 points, to lift the trophy, and potentially say goodbye to a legend or two.
A couple of years ago, Leicester botched the way that Kasper Schmeichel left. Andy King left during the pandemic, deprived of the send-off he deserved. At the very least, Marc Albrighton is going to say his goodbyes this summer, while Vardy’s situation is up in the air as well.
We need to know before Saturday what’s happening with those two players. Both Kelechi Iheanacho and Wilfred Ndidi are out of contract as well, and the former is certainly off. While they might not be on the same level as Vardy and Albrighton, they have been a big part of an incredible run of success and have played more than 200 games for the club.
If decisions have been made, then now is the time to communicate them. Let’s make Saturday as great an occasion as it can possibly be, and let these players have their moment, a way to say goodbye on a high.
Because that is the last part of the landing that Leicester need to stick now. Every other objective has been achieved. After nearly nine months and 45 gruelling games, Leicester City are back as Champions.
Photo: Helen Thompson
