Brendan’s Foxes stun Arsenal
Striker maintains purple patch to put Rodgers’ men on the coat-tails of leaders
WE HAVE been here before. It is only November. This cannot last, can it? This is Leicester, after all. They are bound to fade. That is a given in the Premier League era. Clubs such as Leicester, they are simply not invited into the mix for the Champions League party.
We learned the folly of such talk in 2016. Since then we have all watched as this impressive football club dealt with the cherry picking of their champion players by bigger clubs, the bumpy fall- out from unexpected success and then negotiated a terrible tragedy.
All the while they have quietly grown and matured, adding young players, bringing through trainees, signing impressively.
Leicester City are second in the Premier League. More to the point, they are good value for their position. And there is every indication that this is a thoroughly sustainable campaign.
Time was when Arsenal would come here with swagger and composure, ready to collect the points. Nowadays they pack the defence and hope to hit them on the counter.
For when you have James Maddison and the extraordinary Jamie Vardy, who has eight goals in his last six games and 21 since Brendan Rodgers took over in
February, you do well to come here with caution. With Ricardo Pereira also putting in a star turn at rightback, both defensively and offensively and with Youri Tielemans and Wilfried Ndidi so reliable, there are stars all over the pitch for Leicester.
And then there is the intelligent leadership of Rodgers, coaxing the best we have seen out of Vardy since that 2016 season along with attacking options all over the pitch.
Leicester are simply an excellent team, well constructed, finely balanced and beautifully coached; none of t he above applies to Arsenal. They were not terrible. In parts they were good. But they are a shadow of the club they once were.
Arsenal have fallen behind the likes of Leicester and will do well to make up the gap this season. They plod along under Unai Emery, never quite so bad as to merit his dismissal but never really good enough to suggest an exciting future. Times change quickly in football, reputations come and go.
So it was not actually a surprise to see Leicester dominating possession in the first half and Arsenal resorting to a back five for long periods of the half, both to contain the creative threat of Leicester and shore up their own flaky defence.
Hector Bellerin and Rob Holding were making their first Premier League starts of the season and by and large the system worked — for an hour.
Leicester had plenty of the ball in midfield, where Ndidi toiled and Maddison swaggered to good effect. Yet they only rarely broke through that Arsenal line.
Ayoze Perez managed to get behind Holding to cross, requiring Calum Chambers to clear early in the game.
Bernd Leno’s lapse in concentration on 21 minutes, allowing the ball to run past him, was foolish in the extreme with Vardy lurking and pressing but they survived that.
Indeed, in their occasional forays into the last third of the pitch Arsenal looked dangerous. Mesut Ozil, retained in the starting line-up for a Premier League match for the first time this season, flickered every now and then.
And a well-worked move in t he 1 0 t h minute allowed Bellerin to cross for PierreEmerick Aubemeyang, whose touched saw the ball break for Alex Lacazette, who shot wide under a heavy challenge from Jonny Evans.
Arsenal protested hopefully but VAR remained unused.
As t he f i rst half progressed, possession began to count. Bellerin gave the ball away after 26 minutes and Perez shot just over.
Harvey Barnes shot into Leno on 27 minutes. Sead Kolasinac crunched into Perez inside the area on 29 minutes but was deemed to have played the ball and committed no foul.
The closest Leicester came to scoring early on was a Perez cross on 33 minutes which beat Leno and was sitting up tantalisingly for Vardy until Chambers got the faintest of touches to turn it away from him.
A clever corner routine from Maddison saw Tielemans shoot over on 38 minutes and then
Maddison made the roof the net ripple with a curling free-kick on 42 minutes.
There was bri e f moment o f excitement and anticipation, which quickly died as the illusion became clear. Come the restart, Leicester immediately looked more incisive. On 50 minutes Ben Chilwell and Pereira combined well down the right to allow the Portuguese to cut t he back f or Ndidi with Leno stranded.
In fairness to Ndidi, the penalty box was crowded and so it was not quite the tap-in it appeared. However, he lent back and lifted the ball onto the bar when he should have drilled it through the forest of players.
That said, Arsenal were beginning to flourish too, initially t hrough well- executed counter attacks. Bellerin shot just over on 53 minutes having strode purposefully through the Leicester midfield. They thought they had opened the scoring when Ozil’s quick step and pass released Kolasinac on 55 minutes and his cross was delightfully turned in by Aubameyang.
The centre-forward, though, was offside, spotted by the assistant referee and confirmed by VAR. But Arsenal were probing now, not merely playing on the counter, as the game opened up. David Luiz floated in a delightful ball in the 62nd minute which fell nicely for Aubameyang. As he opened up his body to shoot, Pereira intervened majestically to clear.
Yet just as Arsenal threatened to impose themselves, they revealed their familiar defensive frailties. Even with the extra man in the Gunners back line they could not prevent Leicester playing around them on 68 minutes, P ere ira feeding Barnes, whose flick played in Tielemans.
He drilled the ball across goal where Vardy was waiting in space to strike first time right-footed for his 11th goal of the season.
Arsenal folded pretty soon after that, again at sixes and sevens as Leicester passed around them. In the 75th minute, Pereira touched the ball across the box to Vardy who touched it back to Maddison, who shot straight through Bellerin’s legs and past stranded keeper Leno from the edge of the area.