Second half horror show as U23s suffer first defeat

LEICESTER City Under-23s fell to their first defeat of the season after a lacklustre second half at Everton, writes Jordan Blackwell.

Goalless at half-time, City conceded three goals in 20 minutes in the second period to lose on Merseyside, with Steve Beaglehole’s youngsters unable to follow up their impressive win over Manchester United the week before.

Assessing the performance, Beaglehole said: “I sung their praises last week, after a terrific performance, saying it’s probably one of the best performances I’ve seen from the team in four years.

“But the players have just dropped below that standard. That’s the bar and that’s what we expect from them.

“It happens, but when you lose games, you don’t want to lose them in that magnitude.

“I didn’t see that coming at halftime, I thought it was a very tight game, one goal possibly might win it.

“But if you take your foot off the gas in this game, there’s always somebody ready to punish you.

“It’s the development side of it, they’ve got to look at their individual clips and see where they’ve gone wrong.

“We said before the game, the Man United game is finished with, this game is now finished with.

“They’ve been great in pre-season, there’s some good players in there, we know that, and they’ve not shown the real quality tonight. But that’s one blip in a number of games, including last season, where we’ve gone on and played exceptionally well.”

CITY: Stolarczyk, Daley-Campbell, Johnson, Hughes, Clark, Hulme (Marcal-Madivadua 77’), Shade (Flynn 67’), Leshabela, Ndukwu (Pennant 67’), Wright, Reghba.