Leicester v Villarreal: Dominant win overshadowed by Fofana injury

In the 2nd period, Leicester City started as they left off. Just a few minutes after the restart, Patson Daka and Dewsbury-Hall combined to set up Ayoze Pérez for an easy tap-in. Such a goal will have been great for his confidence and capped off a much-improved performance to silence his many critics. Hopefully, this revived display is the start of an Iheanacho-esque resurgence for the Spaniard.

Sadly, the game was effectively ended as a contest when Fer Nino decided to scissor-tackle Wesley Fofana, causing Leicester’s centre-back to be stretchered off. If you were thinking of watching the replay, don’t, as it’s not very nice to see and gets worse every time you watch.

Throughout the game, the referee Matt Donohue didn’t help matters, showing his inexperience. He lost control of the game, failing to curb the increasingly heavy fouls with cards, which helped lead to the flashpoint incident.

Yes, Fer Nino should take full responsibility for his actions but firmer refereeing could have prevented such situations. Furthermore, how Donohue didn’t send off Nino for his wild scissor-motion tackle is just another mystery life throws up.

After this calamity, Brendan Rodgers wisely decided to withdraw most of the first-team players, and we saw many substitutes that disrupted the flow of the game. As expected, Leicester’s performance dropped off and in the half-hour following, Villarreal managed to pull two goals back.

Firstly to rub salt into the wounds, Fer Nino got on the scoresheet after a quickly taken free-kick. Predictably, this was met by a chorus of boos and choice words by the Leicester faithful.

Then a Danny Ward error gifted Villarreal a second goal, although by this time no one really cared about the result. That is, except the Villarreal players who were begging the referee for more time after he blew his whistle.

Whilst there was applause for the Leicester players, the Villarreal ones were roundly heckled. In truth, they had done as much as they could to deserve it, with continuous playacting (even after Fofana’s injury), and that’s not even getting onto their insensitive use of images on their Twitter page.