Leicester City 3, Liverpool 1: Ranieri-less Foxes summon spirit of 2016 as Klopp slams Reds
Leicester caretaker manager Craig Shakespeare insisted the strength of criticism his players received following the sacking of Claudio Ranieri provoked the retaliation witnessed in victory against Liverpool.
Goal-shy Foxes forward Jamie Vardy rediscovered his Premier League scoring touch after seven barren matches by netting twice, either side of a Danny Drinkwater stunner, while Philippe Coutinho scored what proved a consolation for Liverpool.
Victory eased Leicester’s immediate relegation worries, moving the struggling champions out of the bottom three to 15th, although they remain just two points clear of the drop zone. Liverpool stay fifth and 14 points adrift of leaders Chelsea.
Conjecture has been rife about whether dressing room disharmony ultimately caused the downfall of Leicester’s title-winning tactician Ranieri, although Shakespeare reiterated the reaction was purely a response to outside judgements.
“They’ve had to take a lot of criticism over the last few days,” he said. “I could see in their eyes when they came in tonight that they were up for the fight and had fire in the belly.
“Sometimes you can get carried away with the warm-up, but there was an intensity about them following the criticism. We stressed before kick-off that we wanted the unity, togetherness and energy levels of last season.”
Liverpool’s miserable start to the calendar year continued and they have now won just one of seven league games. Reds boss Jurgen Klopp was in no mood to conceal his frustrations.
“It looked like we never spoke about the strength of Leicester,” said Klopp. “That’s the problem, that’s a real problem. That [performance] was not enough. That is not even close to being enough. From the first second that was not good enough.”
Leicester opened the scoring shortly before the half hour mark when England forward Vardy hared onto Marc Albrighton’s defence-piercing through ball and fired low beyond Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet.
The hosts doubled their advantage in stunning style seven minutes before half time when Drinkwater thumped a ferocious volley from outside the penalty area past a helpless Mignolet after Liverpool had failed to clear their defensive lines.
Leicester all but sealed victory on the hour mark when full-back Christian Fuchs delivered an inswinging cross for Vardy to rise in between Lucas and Emre Can and head into the bottom corner.
Liverpool replied on 68 minutes as a flowing move ended with Coutinho slotting past rooted Leicester stopper Kasper Schmeichel but they were unable to set Leicester’s nerves jangling any further.