When you are managing a team seven points deep in the relegation zone with 10 games remaining, and you have just watched your side fail to beat another side in trouble, despite playing at home and against 10 men for the final 20 minutes, the last thing you want is to look up to see a highly successful predecessor sitting alongside the owner. Martin O’Neill’s presence at the King Power was, according to a Leicester City spokesman, the merest coincidence but, having already been sacked and reinstated once this season, Nigel Pearson desperately needed a much better performance than his players produced here.
For long periods, certainly before the dismissal of Tom Huddlestone with 18 minutes remaining, they were outplayed by the Tigers, and had the Hull striker Nikica Jelavic not missed an absolute sitter in the first half, and Foxes goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer not made an outstanding late save from Abel Hernández two minutes from time, all hope of survival would surely have been extinguished.
“We’ve got 10 games left, six at home, and probably need to win five,” was said Pearson. “Our home form has to be drastically improved, and that’s it. We needed to be a bit more committed to our attacking play. If the players had a bit of an off-day, they had a bit off an off-day, and that’s that.”
It was a reaction that will be shared by many of the supporters. While the results have often been disappointing this season, the performances have rarely been less than committed and determined, but neither of those qualities were particularly apparent here.
Pearson kept faith with the three centre-back formation he believes is the best way of giving his side the defensive solidity they have so often lacked this season, but this time in a genuine 3-5-2 formation, the experienced trio of Robert Huth, Matthew Upson and much-criticised captain Wes Morgan operating with Ritchie De Laet and Jeffrey Schlupp pushing up on either side. He also added pace, in the shape of Jamie Vardy, to work with Andrej Kramaric up front.
Pearson’s opposite number, Steve Bruce, also opted for an attacking 3-5-2, suggesting openness and width was intended to be the order of the day, an impression borne out in an opening few minutes, in which play swung from penalty area to penalty area with bewildering speed.
In terms of chances created, however, the presence on the pitch of six tall, old-fashioned centre-halves ensured crosses were very much delivered in hope rather than expectation. Schwarzer should have had to, though. Huddlestone’s through ball was beautifully timed, and turned perfectly across goal by Ahmed Elmohamady so that the unmarked Jelavic, no more than six yards from goal, had only to make a clean connection to turn it past Schwarzer. Somehow the Croat failed to do so, a candidate for miss of this and many another season.
Hull did begin to exert a measure of control, though, Huddlestone in particular looking something like the player he did last season. Andrej Kramaric’s badly sliced shot after 36 minutes was the home team’s first serious effort on goal. Leicester had to improve, and after half-time, briefly did, Esteban Cambiasso playing his way into the Hull penalty area only to see his low shot blocked by a sliding Michael Dawson. The pattern of the game soon re-established itself, however, and again Jelavic should have done better than flash a header over from a Gastón Ramírez corner instead of under Schwarzer’s bar on the hour.
Dame N’Doye shot when Jelavic was in a better position, but the dismissal of Hudddlestone for a second yellow card with 20 minutes remaining changed the game. Now it was Hull’s turn to hang on, and Leonardo Ulloa, on for Kramaric, inadvertently blocked a Schlupp shot that looked to be goalbound. At the other end, Hernández, seizing on Dame N’Doye’s quickly taken free-kick two minutes before the end, should have won the game, but Schwarzer made a fine diving save to his right.
“The match will be last on Match of the Day, and rightly so, but we had the best of the chances,” said Bruce, going on to bemoan the number of yellow cards and the sending-off in a game he insisted didn’t really have a single nasty challenge. “Jelavic has won us so many games, so that chance is one of those unfortunate ones he’s beating himself up about.”
