I’LL FORGIVE YOU JAMIE
Matt: No Vard feelings
MATT DOHERTY says there are no hard feelings with Jamie Vardy for his reckless red-card lunge.
The Wolves ace revealed the England striker had apologised for the wild 66th-minute challenge which saw him shown a straight red.
What a day for Doherty. He missed a glorious chance to put Wolves ahead, scored a spectacular own goal, was nobbled by Vardy – and then booed as he limped away from the action.
But the Dubliner is just glad he saw Vardy’s challenge coming or it could have been much more serious.
Doherty said: “I’m fine, I’ve just got some stud marks.
“My leg wasn’t planted.
If it had been, it would have been worse, but a splitsecond before the challenge I could see it coming, so I kind of rolled with it.”
Vardy wasn’t in the mood to talk but did say he had seen a replay and his challenge didn’t look good.
Doherty added: “To be fair, he knocked on the dressing room door and asked if everything was alright.
“I said it was fine, so there’s no hard feelings. He said his apologies, so I’m fine with that.” How different things might have been had Doherty not missed a close-range shot early on. Wolves hit the woodwork three times and were genuinely a bit unlucky. But once Leicester scored through Doherty’s own goal and a second from James Maddison, the visitors never looked like getting back in it. Doherty said: “Yeah, I missed a good chance, scored an own goal and was obviously involved in the tackle which Vardy was sent off for – so I just had a bad day at the office!
“We started off really well and on another day we could have had two or three goals early on. I guess that’s just the Premier League – if you don’t score, you get punished. And that’s exactly what happened.”
That’s it in a nutshell. The heady days of last season when the runaway second-tier champions rolled teams over are gone and Wolves need to wake up to that quickly.
Foxes defender Jonny Evans said: “Wolves will be disappointed. They are a good team with a lot of Portuguese internationals. I think they will do well.”
Evans was concentrating more on playing alongside England World Cup star Harry Maguire for the first time.
Ex-Old Trafford star Evans reckons he can see exactly why Manchester United were ready to fork out £65m for Maguire.
He said: “Yes, I can see 100 per cent why. He’s got the lot – physically he’s got it and he’s good with the ball.” ¬ÊLeicester’s Nigerian World Cup star Wilfred Ndidi has signed a new six-year deal. The 21-year-old midfielder was signed for £15m deal from Genk 18 months ago.