Fulham 5 Leicester City 3: Set your maps to Plymouth
Another utter embarrassment, leaving just one crucial question for our survival hopes: just how bad can our relegation rivals be for the rest of this season?
It’s hard to know where to begin with Leicester City right now, so it’s easier to start with the end – the end of this abysmal season, increasingly destined to conclude in relegation; the end of a pitiful team that’s set to disintegrate the second our fate is revealed on May 28.
Being a fan right now feels a little bit like being in a Saw movie – the torture victim, obviously, who everyone knows is going to die but is obliged to endure piecemeal, episodic suffering first.
On Monday came the latest wound: this miserable mauling at a team with absolutely nothing to play for, without their captain, best midfielder and best striker, and on a run of eight defeats from their last 10 matches.
A team that just scored five goals past us with laughable ease. It goes without saying these days that it could have been more.
There might have been a smidgen of hope that Dean Smith could make something of this side. In reality, our worst facets of Rodgersball are still laid bare, there’s no sign of them being rectified – and they’re sending us to the Championship.
Defend that
Even still, this was a particularly triumphant way to mark the 20th consecutive match without a clean sheet: two goals for a 34-year-old Willian made to look like 21-year-old Neymar, and another pair for Tom Cairney, helping himself to his only goals this season.
Tactically it’s hard to even care at this point, given that we’ve tried various systems and a rotating cast of personnel in recent weeks. In the simplest terms, we’ve got sod all in midfield and couldn’t be easier to play against if we were crawling around on all fours for 90 minutes.
Dennis Praet started his first match since February and got dragged at half-time. Only one of our January arrivals was considered good enough to start, while Nampalys Mendy – arguably, one of the very few players to emerge from this season with any credit at all – was left out completely in an unspecified “squad decision”.
Not that it really mattered. The opening goal was a hapless repeat of all the other occasions we’ve conceded first this season (answer: loads) – only this time it was Daniel Iversen, an absolute colossus in the draw against Everton last week – reacting to Willian’s deep free-kick with the speed of a Subbuteo keeper controlled by your grandad.
Any faith in this team is completely blind. There’s no doubt we can score goals, but there’s also none whatsoever that we’ll concede at least twice in any game. Many more, realistically. The second goal here was a case in point: our game was up as soon as Boubakary Soumare pulled out his special move of getting caught in possession upfield; with him and Youri Tielemans both forward, Harry Wilson enjoyed the freedom of Craven Cottage to slide in Carlos Vinicius to finish. We’ve seen it all before.
It was textbook 2022-23 Leicester – on one hand, two decent chances created at the right end, but 2-0 down nonetheless. And it would get much worse.
Contract killers
And here ends any kind of match report: we were 5-1 down after 70 minutes, missed a penalty for the second game running and then fought back with a pair of consolation goals that made the scoreline look moderately more respectable than it really was.
At half-time, the audible cries of “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” were perfectly valid. The faithful Foxes who’ve been watching this dirge on the road all season deserve medals by this point, sick to the back teeth as we all are of watching this collection of talent show themselves up on a weekly basis.
Maybe, just maybe, Brendan Rodgers saw a version of this mess coming all along. That’s not to cut him any slack for his integral role in it, but when the old boss kicked off pre-season an utterly miserable figure and immediately talked of ‘different expectations’, something was amiss. Where we saw FA Cup winners and Champions League chasers who’d probably keep us in mid-table, Rodgers was immediately on the backtrack.
Sure enough, we’re now at the point where seeing half (more?) of this squad leave is something to look forward to. This club is in dire need of a fresh start whatever happens from here – going down just makes it more of a nuclear edition. Set off an explosion (maybe not literally, despite the temptation) and see who’s left standing.
Help the hopeless
And so here we are again, asking ourselves where we go from here with three games remaining.
The answer isn’t even deep down: not even the most blue-tinted of Leicester fan could possibly expect that we’re going to get out of this now, such is the challenging set of circumstances we’re relying on.
As it stands, it looks like there’s now only one way we can get out alive – and it relies on other clubs. Leeds need to be as bad as us for the rest of the season, while Nottingham Forest must somehow be even worse. Everton have just flogged Brighton 5-1, with the kind of result that looks absolutely nowhere within us.
With our next games against Liverpool and Newcastle absolute write-offs that will test even our relatively healthy goal difference, the only hope is that West Ham players are focused more on pina coladas than personal pride on the final day. Chuck down the towels and channel the spirit of Everton 2015-16, lads.
And that’s it – we’re down not to focusing on what we can do, but what others can do for us.
The Leicester City fairytale is hanging by a thread. We’ve had enough plot twists, romances and fantasy triumphs against the odds to make a full volume so far – but sadly for us, there’s still space for the dark, twisted ending they don’t let the kids read at night.
