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Post by Football News on Mar 4, 2017 17:37:04 GMT
Leicester 3 - 1 HullRiyad Mahrez revives the old magic as renewed Leicester sink Hull City Home team scorersChristian Fuchs 27 Riyad Mahrez 59 Tom Huddlestone 90 o.g. Away team scorersSam Clucas 14 Call off the search. After two victories in the space of a week, Craig Shakespeare can head off to Dubai with the Leicester City players on Sunday fully expecting to be given the news that he will remain as manager for the remainder of the season. Claudio Ranieri’s former assistant has done everything that has been asked of him and more since taking over and it would be a strange decision to look elsewhere now that Leicester have remembered how to win football matches. Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the chairman, and his son Aiyawatt were in the directors’ box on a day when Leicester played with spirt and belief to recover from going a goal behind and record back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time this season. The other landmark belonged to Riyad Mahrez, who scored his first league goal from open play since last April – the same day he was named PFA player of the year. Mahrez, like so many of his team-mates, has been unrecognisable from last season, but the Algerian left the field to standing ovation here after conjuring a brilliant goal out of nothing to complete the turnaround. When Tom Huddlestone headed into his own net in the 90th minute, Leicester could finally relax and cherish the sight of a league table that makes much better reading than it did a week ago. In the bottom three prior to Monday’s win against Liverpool, Leicester are now five points clear of the relegation zone and the game finished with the home supporters singing Shakespeare’s name. Hull, who had taken the lead through Sam Clucas against the run of play, are now four points adrift of safety and have a huge game at home against Swansea next Saturday. Marco Silva’s side came close to a late equaliser just prior to Huddlestone’s own goal, with Oumar Niasse drawing a fine save from Kasper Schmeichel, yet Hull could have no complaints about the final result. Although Leicester carried on where they left off against Liverpool, playing on the front foot, creating chances and exploiting Jamie Vardy’s pace in behind, it was Hull who took the lead with a classic counterattack. Robert Huth should have put Leicester ahead seconds earlier, the central defender miskicking his first effort and seeing his second, from little more than eight yards out, blocked by Harry Maguire. Leicester still had possession but Wilfred Ndidi played a blind pass deep inside his own half that Clucas cut out and in the blink of an eye the visitors were tearing up the other end of the pitch. Clucas fed Niasse on the left, who slipped in Kamil Grosicki on the overlap. Schmeichel got a hand to Grosicki’s low cross but succeeded only in nudging the ball into the path of Clucas, who had continued his run and turned home from inside the six-yard box. The question was how Leicester would react. For 10 minutes or so they lost their way a little as the game drifted, yet the equaliser arrived shortly before the half-hour mark following a lovely move down the Leicester left involving Vardy and Christian Fuchs. The pair swapped passes a couple of times before Vardy darted into the area and cut the ball back for Fuchs, who beat Eldin Jakupovic with a low right-footed shot from 10 yards that seemed to go through the Hull goalkeeper. Hull responded well to that setback and could easily have scored again moments after the restart. Maguire flicked Grosicki’s corner onto the outside of the post and the defender should possibly have done better with a close-range header that Schmeichel saved. The game was now wide open and it was moment of class from Mahrez that put Leicester back in front. Twisting and turning one way and then the other on the edge of the Hull area, Mahrez showed some lovely footwork to leave Andrew Robertson totally disorientated. Having created a yard of space, Mahrez drilled a 20-yard shot that flashed inside Jakupovic’s near post. Any hopes Hull had of salvaging something from the game were then extinguished when Huddlestone’s headed into his own net. Guardian
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