Leeds United 1 Leicester City 1: There’s life in the old GOAT yet
Jamie Vardy’s first goal for six months ensured Leicester came back from a goal down for the second time in four days to salvage a point at Elland Road and remain outside of the drop zone, for now.
For a long time, this was the latest in a long line of Classic Leicester displays. There was some nice football, a few chances, the general air of a team that looked far too good for the relegation fodder they were up against.
Then Youri Tielemans’ sensational opener was disallowed by the Video Assistant Referee, and a familiar, sinking feeling began to creep through the bloodstream. Leeds scored from their first foray into the Leicester half, a goal inevitably created by the man who was having his medical at Seagrave in January.
The hosts, the first team in Premier League history to concede at least five goals in consecutive home games, were coasting towards a clean sheet. The wait for a sign of life from the bench went on.
The last full measure of devotion
If there is to be a defining, memorable moment from this season, perhaps it came as the clock struck 80 minutes and Kelechi Iheanacho strode over the halfway line at Elland Road.
The Nigerian rode Liam Cooper’s desperate, lunging challenge, and felt his groin pop. Many players would have collapsed to the floor, earning a free kick and, perhaps, Cooper his second yellow. Leicester would have had a set piece, 40 yards from the opposition goal, and would have lost the game 1-0.
But Iheanacho didn’t go down. He stumbled forward, clutching his leg, riding the pain to release James Maddison before succumbing and collapsing to the ground as the action swarmed past him.
That act of heroism might just have saved the season. Talk of Maddison’s brilliance has been a feature of every media narrative about the Foxes this year, but since the World Cup it has more often been Iheanacho at the centre of everything good Leicester have done. So it was again here. A few minutes earlier he had tested Illan Meslier from outside the box, then been foiled by the Leeds ‘keeper from close range. His cross had produced the best chance of the first half that Maddison poked just wide.
This time his sacrifice got the result it deserved. Maddison fed Vardy, who stuck it in the bottom corner. It might be the last we see of Iheanacho this season. If things go wrong over the next month, his final act in a Leicester shirt might be to hobble off in the aftermath of the goal he did so much to create, giving a massive big one to the travelling support. Which is quite the way to bow out.
Heart attack city
Before the equaliser, the game had followed a standard, predictable pattern. In the final ten minutes it descended into chaos and subjected us to the sort of football fan experience that’s impossible to describe to anyone who hasn’t felt it themselves.
High stakes football is the purest form of the sport. It’s completely intoxicating and hooks you in, whether the game you’re watching is a World Cup knockout game or a non-league playoff semi. The closing stages at Elland Road resembled one of those matches. Long stretches of the game were riddled with mistakes and niggly fouls as the players struggled to manage the tension. Then Vardy’s goal blew the top off and the emotion of the occasion completely took over.
Leicester could have won it almost immediately. Maddison played in Patson Daka behind the Leeds defence, for the Zambian to square to Vardy who buried it into an open net.
Your correspondent was already halfway down the street at this point before he turned, aghast, to see the offside flag glistening in the Yorkshire air. Vardy’s vociferous protests gave us another glimmer of hope, until it was snuffed out by the replay.
Whatever they might have wanted, neither manager had any control over those last few minutes. Leeds were absurdly open, the crowd on their backs, and Leicester seemed like the only winners. Had we been able to sustain one or two more attacks, the walls might have caved in. Instead, there was a sudden succession of set pieces around the Leicester box, which served to almost strike a crippling blow to the prospect of survival and shortened many of our lifespans by years at a time.
Daka is an effective impact sub, his incredible acceleration combined with a more physical presence than any of our other forward players often causes problems. The flip side of his role as a renegade winger, however, is a habit of giving away horrendous free kicks on the edge of his own box. That struck again here, giving Leeds the chance to keep pumping the ball into the area.
First Marc Roca’s bullet header hit Daniel Iversen in the face. The ball spent an eternity dropping, agonisingly, towards the Leicester line before Victor Kristiansen hacked it away from underneath the crossbar. Seconds later, Brenden Aaronson sprang in behind the defence, only to see his shot saved by Iversen. From the resulting corner, Patrick Bamford inexplicably scuffed wide from a yard out with the goal at his mercy.
Even that wasn’t the end of it. The game seemed certain to end with someone winning. Ghosts of last-minute defeats past flashed before our eyes. At one stage, both Tielemans and Boubakary Soumare surged forwards to join an attack, leaving approximately no protection for the centre backs. Then Wout Faes went on a mad dribble forward into the Leeds half and lost the ball, only to be saved by Timothy Castagne behind him.
There was still time for Leicester to have another couple of half chances, shots blocked in the Leeds box, and a corner cleared in the final seconds. Then it was all over, a result that benefitted those around us more than either team involved, but one that avoided disaster and made us feel alive again.
Once more unto the breach
In the end, we’re happy to take a draw. To have picked up a win and a draw from behind in the last few days, having not done so all season before that, is a good start. Building back confidence relies on results like this, like how a drab 0-0 draw at home to Crystal Palace kick-started the run of clean sheet wins before the World Cup.
Despite that, the margin for error is increasingly small. Dean Smith has been a breath of fresh air, in the sense that he’s picked the team on its merits and galvanised the players. While he’s still constrained by the same squad imbalances that plagued the Rodgers era, it’s a hell of a lot better when the manager isn’t trying to play games with his selections as well. The problem is there are so few games left and that post-international break run of no points from Palace, Aston Villa, and Bournemouth looms large.
With such little room for manoeuvre, the Iheanacho injury is bad news. Leicester’s attacking options are now reduced to Maddison, two strikers, and two wingers. So much now rests on the shoulders of the number ten and, perhaps, the number nine as well.
Vardy has been a ghost for much of the season, offering little more than a bit of pointing even in his impact substitute appearances. His performance on Tuesday night was different. His pace has largely gone, he kept being caught offside because he can’t rely on it to beat defenders to the ball any longer. But he was involved, making runs, forcing defenders into awkward spots, and he scored a classic Vardy goal. Running onto the ball. One touch. Bang.
If there is anything left in the tank, if he can still tap into the last vestiges of his power, if this wasn’t just a mad twenty minutes of mayhem, now is the time to show it. Because we’re going to have to keep scoring. The run of games without a clean sheet stands at 18. Caglar Soyuncu has improved the defence, so too has Iversen, who has saved Leicester with big saves in consecutive matches. But the proof is in the pudding and just looking better isn’t enough.
A related problem are the set pieces. An inability to keep clean sheets and a weakness from corners are major flaws in a relegation fight with such fine margins. The seemingly endless time spent procuring a visa for the set piece coach is one of our worst investments in a season littered with them. Leeds could easily have scored twice from corners in the last few minutes.
Just as important is the fact that we never look like scoring from any ourselves. Leicester had a series of corners and three free kicks within 20 yards of the Leeds goal and failed to generate any sort of chance. We’ve heard Rwanda is nice this time of year.
That weakness is going to be put to the test in a big way on Monday night. So too is our fragile confidence. Everton are not a good side, but they are a Sean Dyche side, who will put the ball in the box at every opportunity. The King Power will be rocking, but it will be excruciatingly tense as well. After more than eight months of kicking the can down the road, it’s finally time to put up or shut up for good.
Do we have what it takes?
