Manchester United confidently rolled into Leicester yesterday with their expensively-assembled squad and for an hour, their confidence looked justified as they lead 3-1. The rest, however, as they say, is history...
Newly-promoted Leicester City have had a tough run of fixtures in their return to the Premier League, playing Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton amongst others. They managed to secure credible draws against both Everton and Arsenal and only succumbed to late goals from Chelsea in a two goal defeat at Stamford Bridge.
The signs were certainly there that Leicester were not going to be a pushover for anyone.
Manchester United, on the other hand, were deemed to have had a favourable opening set of fixtures. However, with only one win from a run of matches against Swansea, Sunderland and QPR, the pressure was on Louis van Gaal's men to turn their form around.
They invested heavily, bringing in superstars such as Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao, and the outlay seemed somewhat justified when they hammered QPR 4-0 last week at Old Trafford.
http://youtu.be/pOV8fGCx-nI
Yesterday, the good form continued for an hour at the King Power stadium, as ex-Premier League champions stormed into a 3-1 lead with goals from Van Persie, a worldy from Di Maria (video above) and a cleverly-improvised goal from another new signing, Ander Herrera.
The writing looked to be on the wall for Leicester and it seemed that United would run riot. Nobody in their right mind could have predicted what happened next. Leicester were awarded a somewhat dubious penalty to hit back and make the score 3-2, but the United collapse and Leicester resurgence from that point onwards was the stuff of footballing folklore.
The Van Gaal-acticos were put to the sword by a devastating comeback from Leicester, who exposed United's defence time and time again and remarkably ended up winning the match 5-3. The chief tormentor for Leicester was their striker Jamie Vardy who ran the United defence ragged.
He won the penalty which started the big comeback, but he also finished delightfully to put his side 4-3 (see below) up following some great work from former United player Ritchie De Laet.
http://youtu.be/qe8Vv-9NTx0
A dream finish for the midlands club, but the stuff of nightmares for United fans everywhere. They may have an attack which is on a parallel with the best in the world, but if you have nobody able to defend, it renders it meaningless.
One thing is for sure though, the Manchester United matches look like they will have a lot of goals at both ends as the comeback kings of Leicester proved.
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