Jamie Vardy salvages draw for dogged Leicester to leave Leeds frustrated
As the final whistle blew Jamie Vardy could not stop smiling but Patrick Bamford looked consumed by mental anguish.
Leicester’s former England striker had stepped off the substitutes’ bench to score a potentially season-changing equaliser before Leeds’s centre-forward missed a late, albeit potentially offside, sitter and decidedly mixed emotions swirled in the cool West Yorkshire air.
Some home fans called for the head of Victor Orta, Leeds’s director of football, but frustration was mixed with pride at the end of an evening in which Javi Gracia’s side had taken the lead through Luis Sinisterra as they arrested a dramatic recent slump.
Leeds are now two points and two places above the bottom three and their hopes of avoiding relegation seem touch and go but they could at least reflect on a resilient performance which prevented Leicester from making their technical superiority count.
“After competing as we did it is hard to get only one point,” Gracia said. “The players and all the people who love this club are suffering; it’s difficult to manage at this moment.”
One point and one place beneath Leeds, Dean Smith’s men are in even deeper trouble and face a potential watershed home date with Everton on
Monday night. Yet despite an enduring inability to keep clean sheets they should draw hope from the manner in which they forced Leeds ever deeper during a nervy second half.
Gracia’s players still arrested a losing run which had seen them concede 13 goals in three games. The interim manager resisted a considerable clamour to drop Illan Meslier, following a string of recent errors on the 23year-old Frenchman’s part and was rewarded with a fine performance from a goalkeeper whose once seemingly superhuman confidence had latterly appeared shot to pieces.
Meslier certainly could not have been expected to save the rising 20-yard Youri Tielemans shot which whizzed past him in the sixth minute. He and Leeds looked crestfallen but they were rescued by a VAR review which detected an offside against Boubakary Soumaré during the fallout from the improperly cleared James Maddison corner prefacing Tielemans’ disallowed rocket.
Maddison’s deliveries are often integral to Leicester successes and the same goes for Leeds’s Jack Harrison. Sure enough from Weston McKennie’s clever reverse pass Harrison sent a wonderful cross curving towards the onrushing Sinisterra.
Thanks partly to Bamford’s smart decoy manoeuvre Sinisterra lost Timothy Castagne as he outleapt all comers to direct a header beyond
Daniel Iversen’s reach. As Elland Road celebrated Gracia stood still with his arms folded and his impression impenetrable.
With Harvey Barnes subjecting Luke Ayling to an exacting workout and Sinisterra limping off after a tangle with Caglar Soyuncu, tempting fate certainly seemed unwise.
Happily for Gracia, Ayling, Liam Cooper, McKennie and company had remembered how to tackle and, protecting Meslier admirably, answered most questions Maddison and friends asked them. Both Rodrigo, deployed in the No 10 role, and Bamford proved impressive when it came to defending from the front.
Although Smith’s side shaded possession, Leeds’s new-found capacity for making things scrappy dictated they could not do too much with it.
Or at least not until Vardy assumed centre stage and began raging against the dying of the light. Shortly after Vardy’s introduction Kelechi Iheanacho forced Meslier into a brilliant double save, involving the goalkeeper repelling his initial shot before keeping out the substitute Patson Daka’s follow-up from the rebound. No matter that a linesman flagged the second effort offside, many spectators at Elland Road were on their feet and applauding. “All players have ups and downs,” Gracia said. “But Illan’s a great keeper.”
Meslier saved smartly again from
Iheanacho before the striker, Maddison and Vardy combined superbly to silence the stadium. Stealing in from the inside left channel, Vardy lost Robin Koch before placing a right-foot shot across the helpless Meslier. It was his second goal of the season and first in six months.
Suddenly Leeds were on the ropes and looked mighty relieved when Vardy had a second “goal” disallowed for offside before Iversen quite brilliantly repelled Marc Roca’s header from a corner and then an unmarked Bamford sidefooted wide with the keeper wrongfooted. Gracia’s insistence a VAR review would have ruled any goal out for offside was kind and quite possibly accurate but probably proved scant consolation.
“I’m a tad disappointed,” Smith said. “We could have lost it at the end but it’s nice to have Jamie Vardy scoring again.”