NEW MANAGER, RENEWED HOPE
Leicester gets big win over Liverpool
Leicester began life without manager Claudio Ranieri by easing its English Premier League relegation fears after a stirring 3-1 home victory over Liverpool on Monday. In its first game since Ranieri was sacked last Thursday by the club’s Thai owners, Jamie Vardy scored twice for last season’s struggling champion.
Danny Drinkwater also netted with a superb long-range strike. It helped propel Leicester out of the relegation places and up to 15th, two points above the drop zone with 12 games remaining.
Vardy scored 24 league goals last season, but the England Interna- tional’s strikes in either half were just his sixth and seventh of this campaign.
“We’ve come in for a lot of unfair stick with things that have been in the press, but you’ve seen that the lads wanted to react,” Vardy said.
“We needed to show that we’ve got that fight, and win or lose as long as the performance was right, we could hold our heads up high.”
Liverpool could not match Leicester’s energy, intensity and commitment. It remains in fifth place.
Ranieri was dismissed nine months after masterminding one of the biggest sporting shocks of all time by leading the 5,000-1 out- sider to league glory. But Leicester has failed to replicate that form. Before facing Liverpool, it had won just five league games. Five consecutive league defeats sent it spiralling down the standings.
There was a strong show of support for the former manager at the game, with fans donning Ranieri masks and holding placards inside and outside King Power stadium.
With Ranieri’s assistant, Craig Shakespeare, in interim charge, Leicester earned a win.
Whether Leicester moves quickly to appoint a permanent successor to Ranieri or lets Shakespeare make his case to step up remains to be seen. Nigel Pearson, sacked by Leicester in June 2015 after saving the club from relegation, a move which led to Ranieri’s appointment, is among the names linked with the job. Guus Hiddink, Roy Hodgson, Roberto Mancini, and Martin O’Neill are also in the frame.