First came the boos, then came the roar. Jon Moss, the referee and the man at the centre of the drama, disappeared down the tunnel after being escorted from the pitch and the mood was indignant. What followed seconds later made it seem like a switch had been flicked as applause broke out around all four sides of the ground, accompanied by a defiant rendition of “We shall not be moved” as Leicester City fans rose to salute the players who had salvaged an improbable point.
Kasper Schmeichel was one of the last to leave the pitch, the Leicester keeper unable to contain his emotions as he punched the air time and again, his face a mixture of anger and jubilation as he made his way around the stands, turning up the volume every time he clenched his fists.
Anyone tuning in at that moment and seeing the 2-2 scoreline in the top of their screen could have been forgiven for wondering what on earth was going on. Celebrating a draw was not what the league leaders had in mind beforehand, and the fairytale story was ready for its next chapter when Jamie Vardy put Leicester ahead in the first half, yet ultimately this was a day when the script was thrown out the window.
A breathless and pulsating game swung one way and then the other, and when West Ham struck twice in the space of 120 seconds to take the lead with four minutes remaining, it was tempting to wonder whether this was going to be remembered as the afternoon when Leicester’s title pursuit finally started to unravel.
By that stage Vardy had long departed following his second yellow card, Moss had signalled his intention to never return to Leicester any time soon by awarding West Ham United a penalty after penalising Wes Morgan for holding Winston Reid in the area, and Aaron Cresswell had scored a screamer. Rightly or wrongly, Claudio Ranieri’s players were incensed and when Robert Huth was denied a spot-kick at the other end, after Angelo Ogbonna committed a similar crime to Morgan, the simmering sense of injustice brewing inside the King Power Stadium boiled over.
Ranieri, however, remained calm, as he has done throughout this extraordinary season, and there were no wild celebrations from the Italian a few minutes later, when Moss strayed into dangerous territory by awarding a penalty which Andy Carroll – who was adjudged to have fouled Jeffrey Schlupp – felt was a case of a referee “trying to even it up”. Leonardo Ulloa, every bit as composed and controlled as his manager, dispatched his kick beyond Adrián, West Ham’s goalkeeper, and the narrative had changed yet again.
A few seconds later the final whistle sounded and Ranieri, betraying no sense of the emotions swirling around inside his mind, turned on his heel, shook hands with Slaven Bilic, the West Ham manager, and headed down the tunnel. Bilic looked a wreck, the tie around his neck was loose, his sleeves were rolled up and there was an expression of disbelief on his face, as if he had just staggered in from a night out.
Whether this result will end up being the undoing of Leicester remains to be seen but there was no doubting the fact that inside the home dressing room it was viewed as a point gained rather than two dropped. It has, however, come at a significant cost. Vardy, the scorer of 22 Premier League goals this season, will be suspended for the home game against Swansea City next Sunday and that almost certainly means that Leicester will have to change their style of play.
Ulloa has weighed in with some important goals this season, including an 89th-minute winner against Norwich City in February, but he is not blessed with Vardy’s searing pace, which means Leicester will no longer carry the same threat on the counter-attack or be able to press so aggressively from the front without the ball. Ranieri, in other words, is going to have to come up with another game-plan and perhaps also hope that Riyad Mahrez, who has been a little out of sorts in recent weeks, rediscovers the level of performance that made so many of his peers scribble his name on their PFA player of the year forms.
What we do know for sure is that Leicester have an abundance of spirit to go with their sprinkling of star quality – something that shone through in those final, frantic moments when Ulloa, with one measured swing of the right boot, transformed the atmosphere and gave this fascinating title race another twist.
