Cummings hits last-gasp winner as Millwall add to Leicester woe
The worst part about this result, the latest sorry embarrassment in a sorry season for Leicester City, is that it really was not that much of a shock.
Millwall may be two divisions below the Premier League champions, but the two sides could not have had more contrasting fortunes this year. Where Leicester have sunk, losing five league games in a row in the most miserable of title defences, Millwall have grown.
Neil Harris’s side have already downed Watford and Bournemouth in this season’s FA Cup, and with an unbeaten record stretching back to mid-December, it was no surprise that they were many people’s tip to produce the latest in a series of Cup upsets.
In the most dramatic of circumstances, a last-gasp Shaun Cummings goal provided just that as Millwall, reduced to 10 men for virtually the entire second half, dumped yet more humiliation and embarrassment on a side that looks so devoid of confidence and creativity that it is hard to see when they will win another game, let alone stay in the Premier League.
Their stunning title will never be forgotten, but it is days like this that create a very real risk that last year’s campaign will forever have an asterisk attached to it. Leicester City, the most spectacular of champions, but then the most spectacular of collapses.
Not that Millwall will care. Try telling the hundreds of delirious fans who spilled onto the pitch at the final whistle that this was not about them.
Because, for all Leicester’s dismay, this was Millwall’s day. They fought and scrapped and ran and were, in the end, fully deserving of their victory.
It is a shame that the invasion of the pitch turned ugly at the end, with scores of police, some on horses, having to stand between the home supporters on the pitch and the Leicester fans in the stands, but history will remember this as a joyous occasion for Millwall, irrespective of the gloating buffoons who briefly threatened to tarnish their side’s afternoon.
They will remember this afternoon for years in south London, while Claudio Ranieri, Leicester’s beleaguered manager, will do his best to forget it.
Afterwards, he admitted Millwall deserved their victory, and bemoaned his side’s lack of fight.
“It’s strange, because [last season] we won through this [fight],” he said.
“Playing with more heart than our opponents. We could also lose but we fought every match. I want to see this, I want us to fight until the end. I want to speak with them [his players] and say we have to fight every match. Who wants to fight? Tell me. Because I need soldiers. I need gladiators. Millwall showed they were gladiators.”
It felt like a long time ago by the end, but Leicester had actually started the game reasonably well, with Ahmed Musa going close before Shinji Okazaki’s header was well saved by Millwall goalkeeper Jordan Archer.
Ranieri had stuck to his word after vowing to swing the axe on the firstteam regulars who have performed so miserably recently, making 10 changes from the defeat at Swansea.
Despite Leicester’s early dominance, Millwall grew in confidence and finished the first half stronger, with Calum Butcher forcing a save from Leicester’s Ron-Robert Zieler.
The sight of half their team piling into a goalmouth scuffle on the brink of half-time was further proof, if needed, that the League One outfit were up for the fight.
There remains a fine line between battling and losing your discipline, however, and it was a line that Jake Cooper, Millwall’s centre-back, crossed moments after the break. Having already been booked for his part in the earlier melee, he foolishly dived in on Musa and was given his marching orders by referee Craig Pawson barely five minutes into the second half. “Going down to ten men is tough, but my players did not freeze,” said Harris, who said he had not seen the worst of the scenes after the whistle.
“I have got a fantastic dressing room, and great spirit. I said to them, results like that don’t just happen against Leicester City, against Watford, against Bournemouth, with 10 men. We have got quality in the dressing room and we have got spirit and an understanding.” With the clock ticking and Leicester looking increasingly aimless, the Premier League side forged a clear chance at last, but Okazaki’s close-range effort was somehow, miraculously, kept out by a sprawling Archer.
Then, as Leicester perhaps looked the more likely to nick a winner, Cummings danced into the box to prod it past Zieler and spark bedlam.
“I have got to be honest, I think I lost my cool a little bit when that goal went in,” Harris said afterwards. And who can blame him?