Sunderland 2-1 LeicesterHome team scorersRobert Huth 64 o.g.
Jermain Defoe 77
Away team scorersShinji Okazaki 80
Forget the Champions League, the Championship should be preying on Claudio Ranieri’s mind as Jamie Vardy’s goal drought endures and his Leicester City side contemplate the stark reality of a relegation battle.
Sunderland did more than merely lift themselves off the bottom and up to 18th courtesy of a third win in four games, David Moyes’s players fully deserved to beat the current Champions who are now only two points ahead of them.
The Wearsiders started strongly, forcing Wes Morgan to make two superb blocks to deny first Victor Anichebe and then Jermain Defoe what appeared near certain goals. Rarely touching the ball, Leicester were being battered by wave upon wave of home attacks. Even when they finally managed a break of their own, Lamine Koné intervened with a fine interception which quite possibly came between Vardy and the end of his 15 game goalless streak.
That manoeuvre featured a slick combination, all too rare these days, between Vardy and Riyad Mahrez but initially at least Sunderland enjoyed infinitely greater success in getting behind their opponents’ defence.
Perhaps significantly, Vardy’s first real chance came from a set piece and involved the England striker heading Marc Albrighton’s free kick wide. After that came the inviting Christian Fuchs cross he again headed the wrong side of an upright and then a broadly similar scenario, this time featuring an Albrighton cross and Jordan Pickford stranded off his line.
Almost imperceptibly, Ranieri’s team were rallying. Yet if the midfield contest was suddenly much more equal, it still took an excellently-timed tackle from Robert Huth to deny Duncan Watmore as the winger hurtled towards Ron-Robert Zieler’s goal.
Despite their gradual improvement, Leicester looked nothing like champions and everything like a side which had begun the day two points above the relegation zone and only five better off than bottom-placed Sunderland.
The moment – one of several equally slapdash cameos – when Daniel Amartey passed straight to an initially startled, then immensely grateful, Patrick van Aanholt, allowing Moyes’s left back to charge forward, seemed emblematic of their decline.
Moyes remains cautiously optimistic that Sunderland are in the first throes of an overall recovery and his cause was assisted by the introduction of midfielders Jan Kirchhoff and Seb Larsson, both newly fit after lengthy injury induced layoffs, for the second half.
It also helped that Koné, who regressed so alarmingly after signing a lucrative new contract, was having a decent game in central defence, reminding everyone why Everton were so keen to spend £18m on him during the summer.
Papy Djilobodji, Kone’s oft criticised partner, also did his bit, contributing an important, if arguably inadvertent, block to divert Islam Slimani’s shot in the fall out from yet another Albrighton cross. No matter that it is quite possible Djilobodji did not know too much about it, that intervention probably proved pivotal.
Within minutes Larsson had whipped in a corner and Kirchhoff had connected with a glance which ricocheted off Huth en route past a wrong-footed Zieler. The celebrations had barely abated when Leicester looked lucky not to concede a penalty following Danny Simpson’s felling of van Aanholt in the area.
If Moyes felt outraged, Ranieri appeared increasingly uneasy and, using all three substitutes, took the once unheard-of step of withdrawing Mahrez.
It proved to no avail as Defoe delighted in upstaging Vardy by scoring his fourth goal in five games and eighth of the season. Simpson and friends had no answer to Anichebe’s powerful left wing advance and he was allowed to cross for Watmore to shoot. Huth blocked that effort but it fell to Defoe whose shot left Zieler helpless.
There was still time for two of Ranieri’s substitutes to combine to goal-scoring effect. Demarai Gray displayed a glorious change of pace down the left before Shinji Okazaki extended a boot and whipped his cross into the bottom corner.
Moyes’s afternoon was clouded by the nasty looking knee injury Watmore sustained when falling awkwardly while challenging Fuchs for possession which saw him stretchered off with a leg in a brace.
At least his team-mates clung on to secure a potentially priceless victory made possible by Pickford’s brilliant injury time save from Morgan.
Guardian
