And with that, I’m gone. Here’s the match report again. Bye!
Brendan Rodgers is kind of happy, but also a bit unhappy:
I thought we dominated the game. First half a little bit passive. We had enough of the ball but it was too slow, we weren’t running in behind, breaking enough lines in the game. Then I felt that went into our defending. We didn’t press the game in transition well enough, and that allowed them a couple of moments to break out. The goal, we’ve got to defend stronger and be better in that moment. But we were still calm. Second half we were very good, they had some great blocks and the keeper made some great saves. You have to give credit to Aston Villa, they made it very difficult, their defending, they made great blocks in the box. It’s set up perfectly. In a couple of weeks’ time, we’ll look forward to the second leg.
I was debating before the game whether to start him [Choudhury] or not and probably my fault that I didn’t. I went for a bit more football, but during the first half we could see that we weren’t playing with our identity, which is aggressive and pressing. So I thought he came into the game and gave us that impetus. Second half we were much better, not just our pressing but our running off the ball was better. Over the two ties it was always going to be tough. To get to a final you’re going to have to suffer. We did a little bit tonight, but we showed a great reaction in the game. Still all to play for.
Dean Smith has a word. He’s not entirely chuffed, particularly at Ezi Konsa “getting a bit brain-dazzled” before Leicester’s equaliser:
It wasn’t the performance I wanted to be honest. I thought Leicester were the better side. We defended brilliantly at times, scored a good goal on the counter-attack, but we have to be honest, they’ve created some chances as well. I just felt we were very loose on the ball tonight. We’ve got to be better on the ball against a team like Leicester. I’m certainly content with the draw, it’s just the performance. There were patches where we showed real good composure on the ball and moved it quickly, but we’ve given away a farcical goal and that probably blots the copybook. I think Ezri [Konsa] has probably got a bit brain-dazzled at getting a yellow card. Disappointing goal and probably sums up our performance on the night in the end. I thought our defenders were excellent, got a lot of good tackles in and blocks.
Here’s Paul Doyle’s match report from the King Power Stadium:
Brendan Rodgers warned that his evolving side would not get anywhere without learning how to suffer. Aston Villa put them to the test here, as they defied the form book and a spate of injuries to inflict serious hardship on their hosts. For a long time it even looked like Frédéric Guilbert’s goal would give Villa a lead to take into the second leg in three weeks. But Kelechi Iheanacho came off the bench to plunder the goal that leaves this semi-final intriguingly poised.
Much more here:
Orjan Nyland is quite pleased:
We fought hard, we did what we had to do, they had their chances but we did well. We’ll take this result back to Villa Park and hopefully do a good performance there to take us to the final.
Tyrone Mings is also quite pleased, and also the official man of the match:
They scored four against us at Villa Park so to come here and put in a good defensive performance was important for our confidence and for the team. We have to start laying the foundations of being good defensively, then we’ll always have goals in us. A good day in the office I think.
Leicester end with 70% of possession, a 21-3 lead on shots, a 6-1 advantage in shots on target, an 11-0 supremacy on corner count, and a draw. Even that was only courtesy of a few seconds of idiocy from Aston Villa, who defended excellently with occasional moments of madness. The visitors will be happy with the result, if not the seconds of idiocy.
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Final score: Leicester City 1-1 Aston Villa
90+5 mins: And that’s it! The two teams head to Villa Park on level terms (away goals not being a thing in the Carabao Cup) for the second leg on the 28th.
90+4 mins: Save! From the throw Soyuncu manages a header on target, which Nyland catches.
90+4 mins: Maddison looks a bit dazed as he gets to his feet, having been pushed by one defender into another. Leicester prepare a long throw.
90+3 mins: Maddison goes down just outside the Villa penalty area. The referee ignores him, as do his own teammates, who pass it around his prone form for a while before Albrighton finally has a shot, which is cleared.
90+1 mins: There’ll be about three minutes of stoppage time. Can either side find a winner? Can Villa win their first corner? Will anyone else be booked for timewasting? These are our key questions.
89 mins: The game is petering out a bit. “Going down!” chant the home fans, now making their own fun.
87 mins: A good spell for Villa, but they can’t turn it into a shot. They have had only three of those, to Leicester’s 20.
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86 mins: The evening’s final substitution involves Marvelous Nakamba leaving and Henri Lansbury arriving.
83 mins: Maddison dances around the left side of the area before eventually passing infield to the onrushing Albrighton, who dives, realises his dive is completely imbecilic, gets up and still manages to get a shot away. Mings once again is on hand to block.
82 mins: Villa have another free-kick, and 20 seconds later Leicester have another chance. This time they break from their own half, Vardy is played in and his low shot flies close enough to the near post for a section of the home fans to cheer as it ripples the side netting.
81 mins: Handbags! Soyuncu gets in a lather over nothing very much, and tries to encourage Hause to do likewise. Hause doesn’t.
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80 mins: Vardy tees up Maddison, who skews his 20-yarder into the crowd.
79 mins: Leicester’s final change sees Tielemans go off, and Marc Albrighton come on.
76 mins: That really was the most ludicrous goal to concede. Konsa was booked for delaying a free-kick, and then when he finally got around to it he takes a rubbish one, playing a teammate straight into trouble, Luiz isn’t aware of Choudhury’s approach from behind him, and from there everything falls apart in a hurry.
GOAL! Leicester 1-1 Aston Villa (Iheanacho, 74 mins)
Konsa eventually takes his much-delayed free-kick, passing it short to Luiz. Choudhury instantly closes him down and steals the ball, Vardy passes it on to Iheanacho, and he cuts infield, past Hause and Mings, and slams past Nyland!
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74 mins: Villa are bringing Indiana Vassilev on for El Ghazi, and the referee is booking Konsa for timewasting.
73 mins: Another save! Ricardo’s pass into the area finds Maddison running through, and from a ludicrously unpromising angle he blasts a shot goalwards, which Nyland repels.
71 mins: Grealish gets the ball in midfield, and Evans goes to close him down. For about 30 seconds, as Grealish protects the ball, it is obvious that this will end with Grealish throwing himself to the floor, and so indeed it does. The referee very generously awards the free kick.
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69 mins: And in further substitutional news, Kelechi Iheanacho is coming on for Ayoze Perez.
67 mins: Villa bring on Conor Hourihane, taking off Trezeguet.
66 mins: Leicester get into double figures for corners. This time Tielemans takes it, Nyland claims the ball and Evans heads Nyland. Free-kick.
63 mins: Save! Maddison plays a one-two with Ricardo and blasts a shot towards the near post from out on the right, but Nyland stops it!
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61 mins: Maddison’s right-wing free-kick is collected by Perez beyond the far post and passed back to Choudhury, who tries to gently pass the ball into the net from 18 yards and through a thicket of legs. It doesn’t make it.
59 mins: Another Leicester corner. Another Hause clearing header.
58 mins: It says something about how infrequently Villa have attacked this half that having participated in their last attack El Ghazi now has a nosebleed.
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57 mins: An excellent cross from Maddison, but Mings is in the right place again. Leicester have their seventh corner of the evening (Villa remain in search of their first), which is cleared.
55 mins: Villa cross the halfway line, for the first time in a long time. The move ends with Trezeguet passing to Douglas Luiz when he was probably better placed to have a shot himself, and Luiz shoots into a defender’s legs.
52 mins: Tielemans blasts a shot over. El Ghazi is up front on his own for Villa, and even he is often within 15 yards of his own penalty area.
49 mins: Another Leicester corner, which is taken short, eventually crossed and headed behind for another Leicester corner, which is cleared to Trezeguet, who takes on a few Leicester players and then, when it becomes obvious he can’t keep the ball, does a completely ludicrous centre-circle swallow-dive. The referee ignores him.
47 mins: Leicester win a corner. It seems to flick off Chilwell, into one Villa defender, off another and then out of play. But maybe it didn’t, because the referee says it’s a goal kick.
46 mins: Maddison passes to Perez and then tries to burst past him to provide an option, but he accidentally clips his team-mates ankle and they both fall over.
46 mins: Peeeeeep! Leicester get the second half started.
A half-time substitution for Leicester: Hamza Choudhury is on, Dennis Praet is off.
Even Leicester’s best chance was created by Villa. So far it’s been an impeccable away-performance-by-injury-ravaged-side, while Leicester haven’t been quite good enough at the vital moments. Still, it’s only quarter-time. More football imminent.
Half time: Leicester City 0-1 Aston Villa
45+2 mins: The corner comes to nought, and the half is over! Leicester have hogged possession, Villa have hogged decent goalscoring chances - and taken one of them!
45+1 mins: Maddison’s left-footed curler from the edge of the area looks destined for the top corner, until Mings gets his head to it. Corner.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time, of which there’ll be a minute or so.
42 mins: Villa hit the bar! It’s a fabulous delivery from Grealish on the left, Schmeichel comes for it but is beaten to the ball by Konsa, who should have headed it into an empty net but can’t quite keep it low enough!
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41 mins: Ricardo fouls El Ghazi on Villa’s left, and to make matters worse appears to be bleeding from his left cheek. The player seems furious, though whether it’s about the award of that free-kick, whatever it is that caused the bleeding or having to leave the field while it’s dealt with is unknown. “Aston Villa’s choice of starting goalkeeper flies in the face of the dictum that no man is a Nyland,” puns Peter Oh.
39 mins: Vardy gets the second booking of the night, for arriving to close down Konsa after the ball has gone, and thus allowing himself to get kicked by the defender in his follow-through.
37 mins: Ricardo gets away on the right, but not for the first time this evening Mings is perfectly placed at the near post to deal with the pull-back.
36 mins: El Ghazi gets the night’s first booking, for wiping out Tielemans with a supremely ill-advised tackle from behind.
32 mins: That really is a spectacularly undeserved goal. Since it went in Leicester have settled straight back in to their previous rhythm, of completely dominating without quite nailing their delivery into the penalty area.
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GOAL! Leicester 0-1 Aston Villa (Guilbert, 28 mins)
And at the end of their period of dominance, Leicester concede! El Ghazi curls in an excellent cross from the left, and Guilbert gets ahead of Chilwell to poke it in at the far post!
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28 mins: Ricardo Pereira plays a one-two with Vardy, but Hause stops him running onto the return ball. The last 10 minutes have been entirely one-sided.
26 mins: Space on the left of the penalty area for Chilwell, after the ball is worked well from right to left, but Mings gets to the near post to cut out the pull-back.
24 mins: Another Maddison free-kick from the left. I think he must have been shooting towards the far post, which was extremely ambitious, and the ball flies straight into touch.
22 mins: And another save! This is just too easy for Leicester, who play one pass from the back four to Perez, who turns and feeds Vardy, who runs into the area before having another low shot saved by Nyland!
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19 mins: Save! The goal kick goes straight to a blue shirt. Still, it’s headed back to Nakamba so it’s all good, at least until he turns, lets it bounce and then nods it through to Vardy, whose low shot is saved by Nyland!
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18 mins: Maddison takes another free-kick from the left, and this time Evans wins the header, but flicks it over the bar!
16 mins: It’s all a bit muddled at the minute, full of people accidentally tackling teammates and hoisting balls straight to opponents. Maddison has a shot, that bounces off a defender to Nyland.
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13 mins: A shot! Pereira cuts inside but his pass further infield is straight to Douglas Luiz, whose clearance is rubbish and returned with interest, leading to Perez having a shot that takes a slight deflection and zips not much beyond the far post.
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10 mins: Villa’s first significant attack features a cross from the left that’s too high, clearing the penalty area, and a cross from the right that’s too low, allowed Schmeichel to collect.
8 mins: All of Leicester’s attacking, such as there has been, has been down their left. It has largely consisted over overhitting/running the ball into touch for goal kicks.
5 mins: Leicester have the ball on the halfway line, and over a minute or so are forced all the way back to Schmeichel by Villa’s constant harrying.
3 mins: Maddison’s free-kick from the left is won in the air by Hause, and Nyland collects. More notable was the splash of surface water that Maddison kicked up off the pitch. The King Power’s drainage systems are going to get a proper workout tonight.
1 min: Peeeeeeep!
They’re out, and they’re ready. Villa will be kicking off, any moment now.
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“It does seem a tad harsh to interpret Dean Smith’s words - ‘we’re going to play like Man City last night’ - as a bus parking exercise,” writes Richard Morris as the players gather in the tunnel. “They were 3-0 up away in 38 minutes...” It was more the bits about “wanting to be cautious” and “going back to Villa Park”, coupled with the absence of striker, which suggested he would consider a goalless draw to be absolutely grand.
And here’s Brendan Rodgers, who has spoken to a broadcaster who is much taller than him:
We’ve got two very tough games to get to the final, starting tonight. But the boys have been amazing all season in terms of the quality of their football and how they’ve played, and when they have suffered a setback they’ve got up and gone again. Our objective from the beginning of the season was, could we reach the final of this competition? And we’ve got the opportunity to do that.
[On Villa’s formation] You’re just looking at what they may do. It’s unfortunate for Dean, he’s obviously had an injury to the only striker he’s had, but they’ve got players who have played there before who can go into that system they probably want to play, a 5-4-1, and they’ve got the talent to be a really good team and we’ll have to be our best to get a result. It’s the first semi-final of a cup competition for 20 years and as you can imagine everyone’s excited and looking forward to the game. It’s up to us to put in a performance and get the crowd going, and in the main we’ve done that at home. Hopefully we can get a good performance and a victory to take into the second leg.
Dean Smith has a chat. It sounds like a bus-parking exercise is in store:
We haven’t got any centre-forwards at the moment. Kod came off the training field ill yesterday. We’ve got our forward-thinking players on the pitch and hopefully they can be as good as Manchester City were last night. We’ve got no choice [but to play a false nine], as I say we haven’t got any centre-forwards. That’s where we are in the forward ranks at the moment. It’s a balance of wanting to try and win the game and also to be cautious. We’re aware it’s a two-legged affair and we want to go back to Villa Park with our own fans behind us.
So the headline news is that Jamie Vardy is back after a three-game absence for fatherhood and calf injury. Meanwhile it is raining, and the forecast suggests that it isn’t going to stop any time soon.
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The teams!
The team sheets have been handed in, and these were the names upon them:
Leicester: Schmeichel, Soyuncu, Evans, Fuchs, Ricardo Pereira, Tielemans, Praet, Maddison, Chilwell, Vardy, Perez. Subs: Justin, Albrighton, Ward, Iheanacho, Barnes, Benkovic, Choudhury.
Aston Villa: Nyland, Konsa, Mings, Hause, Guilbert, Douglas Luiz, Nakamba, Taylor, El Ghazi, Trezeguet, Grealish. Subs: Chester, Lansbury, Hourihane, Jota, Elmohamady, Kalinic, Vassilev.
Referee: Chris Kavanagh.
This is how we line up for the first leg of our #CarabaoCup semi-final! 🙌
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) January 8, 2020
Presented by @eToro.#AVFC pic.twitter.com/BeyAzSsEJ7
Let's reveal our #LeiAvl team news - sponsored by @eToro! 🦊
— Leicester City (@LCFC) January 8, 2020
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Hello world!
There was a time, not all that long ago, when Leicester and Aston Villa were two, um, colossi of the League Cup. Villa won it twice in three years between 1994 and 1996, whereupon the Foxes took over and reached three finals in four seasons from 1997 to 2000, winning the first and last. In 2000 they played each other in the semi-finals, Leicester prevailing 1-0 on aggregate thanks to an ultra-defensive approach to a stalemated first leg at Villa Park (“It would be nice if they tried to cross the halfway line in the second leg,” sniffed John Gregory, the Villa manager) and a single goal at Filbert Street from their captain, Matt Elliott, who then scored twice in a 2-1 win over Tranmere in the final.
After a couple of decades in the League Cup wilderness both clubs are back, back, BACK! And they would dearly love to cap these rebirths by making a joyful trip to Wembley , where they will inevitably lose to Manchester City . “I’m aware the club hasn’t been to a final for 20 years so let’s get there then,” says Brendan Rodgers. “Let’s not be worried too much about the past. Let’s create this new history. It’s always nice when you have something tangible to show for your progress by reaching the League Cup final.”
So, here we are. There is history to be made, an opportunity to grasp. Who will be doing the making/grasping? Well, we’re about to find out (strictly speaking we’ll find out in precisely 20 days’ time when the second leg is played, but hey ho)!
