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Leicester 2-2 Brighton: Three Foxes Talking Points

Another home game for the Foxes gave them an opportunity to build on the excellent victory over West Ham on Tuesday evening. Facing a high-flying Brighton side, on a blustery and rainy Sunday afternoon, this would, on paper at least, seem like a much more difficult encounter for Leicester. And so it proved with the Seagulls two up with only a few minutes to play. Remarkably, though, City turned the game around scoring twice to win an unlikely point. All the details here.

By Robert Garner

Leicester City's unlikely point
Leicester City's unlikely point / Michael Regan/GettyImages
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A point rescued 

With ten minutes to go, few Foxes’ fans could have expected picking up a point. Brighton dominated for large parts of the game and Leicester created very little, until that remarkable finish. The Seagulls should really have gone in at half time more than one up, the goal coming from a sweetly struck curling shot from full-back Tariq Lamptey. City created very little. In the second half, the Foxes offered a bit more going forward but it looked to be in vain when Yankuba Minteh scored a terrific solo goal after 79 minutes.

Remarkably, though, with Brighton’s fans already celebrating victory, the Foxes scored twice in the last few minutes to rescue an unlikely point. Both goals came from rare Brighton errors gifting the ball to Leicester players in good positions. In the first, after 86 minutes, Bobby De Cordova Reid found Vardy in space and he found the net with an astute finish. In the second, well into injury time, Stephy Mavididi found Vardy to the left of the goal and he squared for De Cordova Reid to snatch his first for the club with a tap in. A breathless finish and an undeserved, albeit vital, point.

 The Ruud effect

Ruud only had a couple of days to work with the players at Seagrave before the game against the Hammers. For the Brighton encounter, we might get a greater sense of what van Nistelrooy has in store from his Leicester charges.

There was a definite lack of intensity to City’s game compared to the midweek win over West Ham. The performance was more Maresca than Cooper and the emphasis on the possession game by both sides wasn’t an easy watch. Van Nistelrooy’s team selection - with Conor Coady and Jannik Vesterggard at the back and Boubakary Soumare and Wilfred Ndidi as holding midfielders - was maintained and all four had decent games. Coady’s leadership skills were much in evidence. It is to be hoped that Ndidi's injury sustained today is not too serious. Extra bodies in midfield in the January transfer window will be a priority with a Manchester United youngster being linked.

Perhaps the biggest talking point is that in both of the Dutchman’s games in charge, Leicester put in the kind of 90-minute performance rarely seen under Steve Cooper. Part of the reason for this is that van Nistelrooy’s substitutions were adventurous and timely – Patson Daka (someone who the Leicester boss rates), De Cordova Reid and  Mavididi all brought on in the closing stages - and they worked.

 Aspirations

There was a time, not so long ago, that clubs like Brighton, as well as Fulham and Brentford, aspired to be like Leicester, competing with the English football elite towards the top of the table. How times have changed? Now, it is City who look to these clubs as a guide to where they want to be. Staying in the Premier League is vital this season if the Foxes want to restore their position. It is, though, worth remembering that Brighton, Fulham and Brentford have never won one of English football’s major trophies. As City fans well know, in the last decade alone, Leicester have won the Premier League title as well as the FA Cup. Brighton supporters can only dream of that level of success.

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