FLYING FOXES
Leicester look the real deal as they thrash Newcastle
IT is no longer appropriate to describe Leicester City as an outside bet for the top four. Brendan Rodgers’ team are good enough, hungry enough and ruthless enough to shake up the Premier League for the second time in four seasons.
Leicester will not win it this season. They may never do so again. But this is a Leicester team with the necessary quality and drive to seriously threaten the ambitions of those established clubs hoping to cross the line behind Liverpool and Manchester City next May.
Does Rodgers have enough depth in his squad to keep this up over the next eight months? That is certainly a pertinent question. A long-term injury to someone like centre forward Jamie Vardy, for example, would alter the landscape a little.
But if that doesn’t come — and it didn’t in 2015-16 — then Leicester have a decent chance of going the distance.
Here, helped by a Newcastle red card for isaac Hayden just before half- time, Leicester tore their feeble, troubled opponents apart. They were a goal up at the break and four up just after the hour. By the end, a goal in the last minute by Wilfred Ndidi ensured it was five. With that one, a drubbing became a massacre against opponents that simply did not have the appetite to salvage the game or their own self-respect.
This was a devastating burst from Leicester in the second period and the ripples will be felt all the way through the established order of the English game.
Newcastle will point to the red card as a turning point. Hayden in all likelihood did not mean to hurt Dennis Praet when he thundered in to take the ball and then the man in the 43rd minute. But it was reckless and as such the midfielder had to go.
And it is hard to escape the feeling that Leicester would have won comfortably anyway. Newcastle are simply not good enough or man enough and there is a tempo and a relentlessness about Leicester’s play that is classic Rodgers. We saw it during that wonderful, kamikaze season at Liverpool in 2014 and there are shades of it at Leicester now. Rodgers takes his team to Liverpool on saturday and that will be a test — and not just for the visiting team.
At full-time here the King Power was bouncing. it is a fantastic place to watch football and in the away corner the Newcastle supporters chose to join in as the music blared. How bitter sweet it must have been for the Geordies. They will remember a time when st James’ Park used to shake like this, stirred by good football and that unbeatable feeling of sporting optimism that comes with it.
This didn’t feel like a 5-0 game for much of the first half. Newcastle were competitive early and still in the contest at the time of Hayden’s sending off. But it was the ravenous way that Leicester played when they sensed Newcastle’s vulnerability that was so impressive. it was foot on the throat stuff and that is always the hallmark of a good side. At full-time, Rodgers looked vaguely sympathetic as he shook the hand of Newcastle manager steve Bruce but he certainly would not have felt it.
Leicester are a side that reflect their manager. Lively, adventurous and brimming with belief. Newcastle could have scored early had Yoshinori Muto turned in Hayden’s cross- shot but when they went behind in the 16th minute it felt as though the tide had already turned in favour of the home team.
it was a superb goal, too. Picking the ball up in his own half, Leicester right back Ricardo Pereira played it up to Ayoze Perez before taking the return and breaking in to the Newcastle half. Opposing players tried to close him and stay with him but could not. in his wake, for example, Christian Atsu looked like he was running in moon boots.
As he approached the final third, the home crowd implored Ricardo to shoot. When he did, from 25 yards, the ball went like a bullet across the turf, low to Martin
Dubravka’s right and into the only part of the goal the Newcastle goalkeeper did not have covered.
It was a picture of a goal and over the remainder of the half, Leicester’s superior movement of the ball began to wear Newcastle down. Then, just before half-time, came the decisive moment as Hayden left the party.
On the sidelines, hands deep in pockets, Bruce looked a little like a man who feared that worse may be about to come and pretty soon it did. Twenty minutes of Leicester dominance at the start of the second period ended the contest.
Dubravka should have saved from Vardy when the Leicester forward drove a shot under him from an angle in the 54th minute and then Newcastle defender Fabian Schar surrendered possession and watched as Praet’s low cross was deflected in by Paul Dummett at the near post.
Leicester’s fourth goal in the 64th minute was beautiful. The cross from substitute Marc Albrighton was reminiscent of much of what he did in the title-winning season and now, just as back then, Vardy was not going to miss with his head from five yards.
Newcastle had offered nothing as an attacking force since the sending off and that was understandable. Nevertheless, they do look light on sporting courage and Bruce was not afraid to spell that out at the end. Whether it was wise to criticise his players so publicly, maybe Bruce will only find that out in the coming weeks.
But the fact that Leicester didn’t score their fifth until the closing moments was a surprise. The difference in desire between the teams was palpable. Ndidi eventually turned on a Ben Chilwell cross to score neatly across Dubravka with his right foot and at full-time five felt about right. Liverpool will face an authentic challenge at Anfield on Saturday.