Leicester City (Away) 11.02.2023

Colours : –

Worn with white socks

Turning out with Forster in goal and Tanganga in for the suspended Romero, Antonio Conte took to the bench, but was more reserved than normal.  Unsurprisingly after having his gall bladder removed.  There was weak sun as Leicester kicked off.  Winning the ball high up the pitch, Spurs had a shot when Harry Kane set up Rodrigo Bentancur, but it was fizzed over the top and after the referee had decided to book Bentancur for his first foul after four minutes, Maddison touched it for Barnes, who curled a shot wide.  It was another six minutes before Spurs threatened again when a swift move involved Son getting fouled, but play went on.  It ended with Perisic flashing a ball across goal, with nobody on the end of it, but in the 12th minute Kane was fouled on the edge of the box by a tackle from behind by Faes, who got booked and Ivan curled a shot that Danny Ward touched away for a corner.  The ball was hit in to the near post and the flick on had to be narrowly thighed over his bar by Kristiansen.  This corner went to the far post, but this time Kristiansen’s clearance went square and could only provide an assist for Bentancur to side-foot the ball home from inside the six-yard box on 13 minutes.  The VAR room chaired by Mike Dean took an age to make a decision that the goal should stand 16 minutes after the kick off.

Out of the blue, a corner was cleared off the line at the far post by Rodrigo Bentancur, but Nampalys Mendy rifled a shot from inside the right hand corner of the box that rocketed past Fraser Forster before he could move.  The equaliser was a bit of a shock, but worse was to some two minutes later when Spurs was caught out when a Faes tackle sent Iheanacho away and he played the ball into the penalty area for James Maddison to score to turn the game on it’s head.  It was a poor defensive effort by Tottenham, with them almost being caught out when Maddison was free again and his shot was beaten aside by Forster.

Spurs nearly levelled without having much to do with it, as Castagne and Ward seemed to be on different wavelengths, with the ball between them, the Belgian fell onto it, kicking it past the keeper with the ball trickling towards the goal, but fortunately for the home team it went narrowly wide.  The escape was made to pay just into first half injury time, as Iheanacho took advantage of a ball to him from Soutar and he took on Eric Dier before curling the ball beyond Forster’s reach into the keeper’s bottom right hand corner.  It looked as though Forster went down in stages as a keeper of his height should have reached it, even though it was bent around Dier.  It was a disappointing way to end the first half after having taken the lead, so there was plenty of work for Antonio Conte to do on his return from his operation.  You can only hope that his anger didn’t bust any of his stitches.

Once more Tottenham started the second half at a better tempo, with Bentancur hitting a shot at goal, but it came after Kristiansen had a shot blocked and Tete’s effort was blocked enough to take the sting off it before it got to Forster.  Sonny had the run on the Leicester defence when the ball was given away, but he took it on too far and when he passed to Harry Kane, the England striker was offside.  Dier cleaned out Maddison and was rightly booked, then a series of fouls broke up play until Bentancur went into a tackle with Mendy and came off worse, needing a stretcher to take him off the pitch after having oxygen.  He managed to walk back to the bench, but straight away as play restarted, Hojbjerg was clattered as the game got heated.

Iheanacho went close when he got between two Spurs defenders to flash a header at goal, but a couple of minutes later he set up Barnes to place his right foot shot past Forster from the left side of the area.  Another long VAR review went Tottenham’s way again, as he was ruled offside to still give Spurs a slight sniff of getting anything out of the game, but Leicester were looking the livelier of the two sides.  The wide open spaces the Spurs side were leaving allowed Leicester a fourth goal when Vardy played the ball through to Barnes, moving between Dier and Hojbjerg and his curling shot into the bottom corner to put the result beyond doubt in the 81st minute.

With five minutes left, Richarlison was brought down on the corner of the box by Soutar, who had already been booked, but there was no chance of the referee pulling out the yellow card again.  Spurs failed to make anything of the free-kick, which was a bit of a mess.  Not a lot else happened and the final whistle went to signal that we had dropped points when others around us were also doing so, missing out on the chance to briefly go fourth.

It was all very disheartening.  Having taken the lead, the team then put up little resistance and the most disappointing aspect was the lack of fight-back to having gone behind.  It could so easily have been a mauling similar to what we did to them at the THS.  If we play like this at Milan on Tuesday, we will get massacred.  With Bentancur looking to have picked up a knee injury, he might not be able to play, so that means the squad will be stretched again.  Let’s hope this goes down as a lesson learned.

The Heathrow Spur

• Both teams took the knee before kick-off.
• Pedro Porro made his debut for Tottenham, while Harry Soutar made his debut appearance for Leicester City.