Rumors began about two hours before Leicester City’s trip to London Stadium to host West Ham on Sunday.
It started on a fan forum, migrated quickly to Twitter and before long, even the fox fans who were smart enough to stay away from the cesspit for social media heard the whispers.
In a strange twist of fate, the rumors first published on an internet bulletin board turned out to be true, with Ayoze Perez, James Maddison and Hamza Choudhury all left out of Leicester’s group to break the coronavirus rules.
To turn things around from frustrating to downright embarrassing, the story broke just before Brendan Rodger’s side went down 3-0 against one of their closest top four rivals. Now this will not be a piece that adds to the stack. There will be many of them to enjoy throughout the week elsewhere, if you are so inclined.
Instead, this will focus on something we know about the whole story of: Leicester’s terrible performance and defeat against Hammers. Without wanting to take too much away from David Moyes’ side – whose clinical aftermath continues to amaze – the fox’s defensive display was arrogant and naive, two adjectives rarely used to describe Rodger’s accusations this season.
For West Ham’s opener, Jesse Lingard, one of the in-form players in Europe, had to haunt the box indisputably. For his second, Wesley Fofana stopped admiring the architecture of London Stadium for a few seconds instead of tracking down Jarrod Bowen. Kasper Schmeichel also suffered a rare concussion, got stuck in no man’s land and allowed Lingard to take a second against his former club. Yes, Lingard played for Leicester.
Lingard tormented Leicester all afternoon Pool / Getty Images
Hammer’s third goal also contained a comedy of errors. First Kelechi Iheanacho’s first touchdown trampoline returned after a two-month hiatus, giving West Ham the perfect opportunity to break forward. Fofana was again wrong later in the movement and was slow to remove the potential risk that Bowen would be left unmarked in the foxes’ box.
Although a fine stay from the irrevocable Iheanacho made the score line look much more attractive in the second half, it did not extinguish the demons in a scar opening 47 minutes.
Looking at how the horror experience developed, it was impossible not to think back to Leicester’s equally horrific 4-1 defeat to Bournemouth last season. This result fired the starting gun for the fox season which imploded in a spectacular way and Rodgers will be desperate to avoid a repeat this time.
“It’s hard to get back from that point at half time. It’s our fault and we have to do better.” @ RicBPereira spoke to LCFC TV after #WhuLei … pic.twitter.com/KucQ8sWK9l
– Leicester City (@LCFC) April 11, 2021
But the signs do not look good. His brilliance in the West Ham defeat stretched Jamie Vardy’s pointless run to seven games and reports suggest that Maddison et al.
If we say all this, if Leicester manage to beat Southampton and advance to their first FA Cup final in the modern era, all this can be forgotten. To lose, and the label “bottling of the end of the season” will be hard to shake.
