Leicester 3 - 0 BurnleySlimani opens his account with a double as Leicester ease past Burnley
Home team scorersIslam Slimani 45 +0:32
Islam Slimani 48
Ben Mee 78 o.g.
Islam Slimani scored two goals on his Premier League debut as Leicester completed a restorative week both at home and abroad. The Algerian striker converted two headers either side of half-time to help the champions to victory over a dogged but blunt Burnley.
A Ben Mee own goal concluded proceedings, to make it two 3-0 victories in a week for Leicester following their Champions League win at Club Brugge on Wednesday. It also gives them some confidence after the first four league games of the season had produced four points.
Claudio Ranieri, whose saying “Dilly ding, dilly dong” has now been turned into a song to the tune of Yellow Submarine by Leicester fans, said he was very pleased with the result, and the decisive manner in which it was achieved. “It was important to win again after the Champions League victory and against a good team, a very well organised team,”he said. “To score at the end of the first and beginning of second half made it much better for us and after that we controlled the game. It was a good performance for Slimani, but good for everybody.”
The club’s record signing, for £29m from Sporting Lisbon, Slimani received the loudest cheer from a raucous crowd when the teams were read out. The Algerian, tall, rangy and powerful, took their cue and looked to get off on the front foot, creating the first chance of the match for Marc Albrighton in the second minute, but the winger’s cutback was blocked.
For much of the opening stages, however, there was not much between the sides. Leicester were struggling to pull off the quick, direct combinations necessary to break down the well-drilled visitors. The Burnley manager, Sean Dyche, said: “If you were a fan of football you’d have thought ‘There’s not a lot between these teams.’”
Then came the spell either side of half-time that Dyche described as four minutes of madness.
The game had looked like it might trickle out to half-time only for Albrighton to draw a needless foul from Burnley right-back, Matthew Lowton, in the first minute of added time. Albrighton dummied the free-kick and allowed Christian Fuchs to drive the ball across superbly and find Slimani, who had ghosted beyond his man and headed home from six yards.
At the restart, the game was still in the balance and Leicester needed more from Slimani, as well as Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez. The talented trio duly obliged within three minutes. Mahrez won possession in the middle of the park and bore down on goal. He found enough room to escape the attentions of Stephen Ward and put in a cross. The ball deflected behind Vardy, but the England striker is never one to decline an invitation to improvise and he flicked the ball beyond him with his heel to the back post where Slimani was waiting once again. He produced a firm header and the lead was doubled.
From this point, Leicester were happy to sit back and Dyche tried to shake things up, going 4-4-2 with the addition of Sam Vokes and the Iceland winger Johann Berg Gudmundsson. Sadly for Dyche, his switch did not result in Burnley having any more of the ball. Instead, and without really having to try, Leicester wrapped up the match. Once again Mahrez was up against Ward and able to cut the ball low across the six-yard box, but while no blue shirt was anywhere near making a connection, Mee still felt the need to intercept and turned the ball into his own net in so doing.
Dyche was full of praise for Mee and partner in central defence, Michael Keane, determined to keep the confidence of his young English duo up. “He was excellent, really high quality, and Keane dug in alongside him,” he said.
“There’s no particular blame attached to him for that goal, but from a defensive point of view we know you can’t make the errors that we did in this match.
“You get punished for a lot at this level and the hardest challenge for me is to try to win enough games to stay up while also developing the players.
“It’s that assuredness that you need to thrive in the Premier League. It’s not just about tactics and technical ability, it’s about mentality, that belief you can walk in a stadium and play with authority. It’s breaking out into that, an inner belief. It’s not far away, but the margins are tight about how a mentality grows over time.”
Ranieri knows all about growing a mentality and he will feel his Foxes are back in the hunt.
Guardian
