Leicester City 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur
Leonardo Ulloa 48
Harry Kane 1
Christian Eriksen 71It is rarely a positive sign when the home crowd lapses into dark humour, even less so when some are still finding their seats. It took the Spurs striker Harry Kane, who had a loan spell with Leicester City during the 2012-13 season, less than a minute of this game to demonstrate how much he has developed since then, the in-form 21-year-old producing an assured close-range finish to put the visitors ahead after 59 seconds.
“You’re nothing special, we lose every week” came a resigned chant from the stands to Kane’s 13th goal in his last 18 games but the response on the pitch was more spirited. Having seen a first-half header come back off the inside of the post, Leonardo Ulloa deservedly equalised from close range for the Foxes early in the second half. But after City’s Riyad Mahrez had hit the angle of post and bar with a free-kick, Spurs’ Christian Eriksen won the game with a 71st-minute free-kick which the Leicester goalkeeper Ben Hamer, anticipating a cross, could not prevent squeezing inside his near post.
Both managers had made changes to their starting line-ups. Mauricio Pochettino brought in Danny Rose for Ben Davies at left-back for Tottenham and Benjamin Stambouli took Ryan Mason’s holding role alongside Nabil Bentaleb. Nigel Pearson opted to give the veteran midfielder Esteban Cambiasso a break, bringing in Andy King alongside Danny Drinkwater in central midfield and partnering Leonardo Ulloa with David Nugent up front.
The game had barely begun when Spurs went ahead. Erik Lamela, having seen Kane forced to check his initial run, picked out Nacer Chadli in space on the left. Chadli’s pull-back looked rather scuffed but Kane, demonstrating his upper-body strength as well as awareness and touch, got in front of Wes Morgan, controlled the ball, and with Morgan on the ground had the time to fire back across the City goalkeeper, Ben Hamer, from no more than six yards.
Given Spurs were unbeaten in their previous nine Boxing Day matches, the omens for the Premier League’s bottom team were hardly promising but the response was impressively determined. Ulloa’s volley brought a spectacular save from Hugo Lloris but thereafter the first half was almost all Leicester. Jeffrey Schlupp and Mahrez forced Lloris to make good saves but the goalkeeper could only watch as Ulloa’s header from Mahrez’s cross came back off the inside of his left-hand post.
At the other end Bentaleb, put clear, should have at least have made Hamer make a save but the Algeria international’s heavy touch gave Paul Konchesky the chance to clear.
The goal City’s pressure deserved came less than three minutes into the second half. Mahrez’s persistence on the right helped him squeeze past Bentaleb and Ulloa wrestled himself in front of Jan Vertonghen to turn the ball past Lloris at the near post.
Minutes later Mahrez struck a free-kick from 25 yards sweetly over the Spurs’ wall, only to see the ball bounce back off the angle of post and bar. Schlupp’s stinging drive from an angle was palmed away by the Frenchman,and in the circumstances the manner in which the visitors re-took the lead was doubly harsh. Whether Eriksen was trying to squeeze his free-kick from a distant angle inside Hamer’s right-hand post only he knows, but when his two-man wall split the goalkeeper, anticipating a cross, failed to scramble back across his goal in time to keep the ball out.
Again Leicester refused to buckle, going to three at the back and renewing their pressure. Morgan looked certain to rescue a point when stretching for another low cross from Mahrez but somehow failed to make a sufficiently clean contact. The ball trickled towards the goal but Lloris had time to drop on it before it crossed the line.
Man of the match: Hugo Lloris (Tottenham)
Leicester City (4-4-2): Hamer; Simpson, Morgan, Wasilewski, Konchesky (Knockaert, 82); Schlupp, Drinkwater, King (James, 46), Mahrez; Nugent (Vardy, 75), Ulloa.
Subs not used: De Laet, Hammond, Cambiasso, Smith.
Booked: Vardy.
Tottenham Hotspur (4-2-3-1): Lloris; Walker, Fazio, Vertonghen, Rose; Stambouli (Mason, 46), Bentaleb; Lamela, Eriksen, Chadli (Soldado, 63); Kane (Paulinho, 84).
Subs not used: Chiriches, Vorm, Townsend, Davies.
Booked: Walker, Vertonghen.
Att: 31,870
Referee: N Swarbrick.
Source: Guardian
