A year can be a long time in football. Twelve months after the 5,000-1 shots were crowned Premier League champions here, goals from Wilfred Ndidi, Riyad Mahrez and Marc Albrighton secured a victory for Leicester that moved them into the top half of the table for the first time since September.
It meant Craig Shakespeare has now recorded five successive home victories since replacing Claudio Ranieri in February – the first Leicester manager to achieve that feat in the top flight since Gordon Milne in 1984.
That statistic, coupled with the fact they are now on course to finish higher than Chelsea could manage in their title defence last year, should go a long way to ensuring the former assistant is handed the post on a permanent basis.
“The whole club can be very pleased that we have been able to secure Premier League survival,” said Shakespeare. “Now we have three games left and I want to try and finish on a high.”
In a week when Leicester’s players said goodbye to the trophy they won last year at an impromptu ceremony in the training ground canteen, it remains to be seen how many of the players who contributed to such a memorable achievement will be here with him come August.
Demarai Gray’s plea for more opportunities when the 20-year-old has been restricted to nine league starts this season appeared to have fallen on deaf ears as Shakespeare named his tried and trusted starting XI once again for this dead rubber.
Mahrez became the first Algerian to make 100 appearances in the Premier League, although last season’s PFA player of the year is also believed to be having itchy feet now the fairytale story of the past two seasons is finally at an end.
Reports have suggested that Barcelona have been keeping tabs on his progress, but aside from the odd flicker Mahrez has rarely risen to the exalted heights of the 2015-16 title-winning campaign.
On the strength of those performances, his agents negotiated a new contract last summer containing an agreement that will allow him to leave the club if a suitable offer – understood to be around £40m – is received.
That price tag could prove to put off the majority of suitors but Mahrez appeared intent on showing why he may be worth the risk with a performance that was oozing with skill and was capped by his 10th goal of the season in all competitions.
Watford, who have now lost five successive away matches without scoring since their win at Arsenal in January, left their captain, Troy Deeney, on the bench in favour of Stefano Okaka.
Walter Mazzarri has promised to take an intensive course in English at the end of the season despite having spent the best part of two years in the country before his arrival at Vicarage Road. The chances of him becoming the first Watford manager to survive the summer since Gianfranco Zola in 2013 seem low, even if his side did come close to finding a way back into the game after Étienne Capoue had gifted Ndidi the opening goal in the first half.
“The result didn’t really reflect how the game went,” said Mazzarri, via an interpreter. “We committed two individual mistakes for the goals but our performance for much of the game was the same as Leicester.”
Mahrez left the field to a standing ovation when he was replaced by Gray, but the best moment was reserved for the second minute of stoppage time.
Jamie Vardy, who has shown his quality in the past few weeks as Leicester have pulled away from the bottom three, broke down the left and timed his pass to perfection for Albrighton to fire home via the post.
“It was a year ago so it was good to put it behind us,” said Shakespeare. “We have to move on from that now. I don’t think you can take anything for granted in football. I have an assistant manager’s contract after the end of the season so I have to make sure I do everything accordingly and professionally.”
He and his superiors will just hope they can persuade Mahrez, Vardy and some of Leicester’s other heroes that the grass is not always greener on the other side.
… Leicester celebrated becoming the unlikeliest champions in the Premier League years, possibly in football history. After Spurs’ slip at Chelsea the previous Monday conceded the title while the Leicester players watched at Jamie Vardy’s house, the striker starred in an on‑pitch party scoring twice in a 3-1 win against Everton. The hangover lasted a long time and Claudio Ranieri ultimately lost his job, but the memories will last a lot longer.
