Leicester manager’s title tilt at Anfield helped reset Liverpool, while last season’s Boxing Day game was key to Reds’ success, adding spice to Sunday’s clash between leaders and champions‘It was unbelievable. It was pure football power destruction.” It is an oddity of the calendar that Leicester’s trip to Anfield on Sunday night will break a spell of 11 months since these two Premier League teams last met. No ordinary 11 months, either. Take a look at the highlights from the King Power Stadium, Boxing Day 2019, and it starts to look like something else, a last dance before the end times. Related: When Leicester ended Liverpool’s unbeaten run – then were relegated It took Rodgers four years to go from...
A repeat of their remarkable 2015-16 Premier League triumph would not be at 5,000-1 but Leicester have credentials and a chance to enhance them significantly at Liverpool next SundayLeicester’s title triumph of 2015‑16, the one that had bookmakers begging punters with 5,000-1 betting slips to cash out early, is still being used as proof that anything can happen in the Premier League.If a ragbag of players who were nearly relegated the previous season can win the league, guided by a charming but perennially underachieving manager whose appointment had been greeted with scepticism by chief Leicester cheerleader Gary Lineker, then it simply cannot be true that the English top flight is skewed massively towards the money clubs in the Champions League...
Ancelotti has Everton aiming high, Manchester United need more than Cavani and flying full-backs impressedHéctor Bellerín has had his doubters over the past year. There have been suggestions a touch of his old pace has gone after long-term injury, and when PSG bid for him last month there was an argument it could be a good time for Arsenal to cash in. But Bellerín set up both goals against Sheffield United, the first after a typically barnstorming burst to the line, and is looking a touch nearer to his old self. “After such a long time at the club he doubted what ambitions he had here, how he could evolve here,” Mikel Arteta said after Arsenal’s narrow win. “But he...
Another handball horror show, Calvert-Lewin is benefiting from Ancelotti effect and sentiment alone will not save LampardOle Gunnar Solskjær said Manchester United had “three or four weeks to catch up to a few teams”, and how it showed. United could not get out to prevent crosses or track Brighton’s runners. Their lack of match sharpness is a consequence of their lack of a pre-season. It was interesting to hear Gareth Southgate say the players in his England squad in early September who had played in European competition until mid‑August were the fittest because they had, effectively, played all the way through. Solskjær has a different view and feels comfortable in advancing it as mitigation, essentially because it is not his...
Former England striker had the maximum effect from minimum of input in his side’s big win at Manchester CityBrendan Rodgers has been waiting a long time for a first win against a Pep Guardiola team, and the irony here was it looked for all the world as if winning was the last thing on his or Leicester City’s mind.In the end, with James Maddison’s goal and Youri Tielemans’ penalty completing a stunning victory, Rodgers had the sort of statement result Leicester last managed here in their title-winning season of 2015-16, yet no one would have imagined such a thing possible after turning up at the Etihad Stadium with an attitude so defensive it would have made José Mourinho blush. Related:...