Leicester City guaranteed their place in next year’s Premier League season with a well-deserved 3-0 win over Watford. Goals from Wilfred Ndidi, Riyad Mahrez, and Marc Albrighton put the Foxes on track to record only their second top ten finish in the English topflight in 17 seasons.
Leicester started strongly and never really looked like losing, hitting the woodwork twice on their way to a three nil win. Danny Drinkwater’s cross, after he was left unmarked, led to a corner which Leicester took short and then after Capoue failed to clear the ball, Ndidi smashed it home from twelve yards out to put Leicester one up.
The second came when Adrian Mariappa made a defensive error which was duly punished by Mahrez and then the third was a lovely counter-attacking move from Leicester finished in off the post by Albrighton, leaving him with one goal and an assist from the match.
Since the sacking of Ranieri in February Leicester have soared up the table proving that they were justified in their decision. It may have been unpopular but football is a results based business and the foxes were in genuine danger of being relegated, something which their finances could not allow.
The appointment of Craig Shakespeare has worked wonders for the Foxes, becoming only the second team in Premier League history alongside Tottenham in 2004/05 to lose five consecutive PL games and then win the next five consecutively.
Shakespeare achieved this feat, and Leicesters Thai-based consortium will be delighted with the response of the team. A season that has far from lived up to last seasons title-winning heroics, though Premier League safety will suffice and justification for the sacking of Claudio Ranieri.
As for Watford, they have now not scored in their last three games and could still possibly go down, they would have to lose all their remaining games with Swansea needing to win all of theirs, Hull having to win twice and score a lot of goals in the process, and then Palace would need two further points.
So realistically they’re quite likely to stay up, but as 13th was not good enough for Quique Sanchez Flores, will it be enough for Mazzarii this year?
Written by Olly Norman.
