Right, I’m off. Alan Smith’s all over Spurs v Manchester United here (kick-off there has been delayed until 4.30 because the United coach got stuck in traffic). It’s been a blast. Bye!
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David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, wants Vardy in the England team. Roy’s got to buckle here.
Jamie Vardy will make a good strike partner for @HKane this summer at the Euros #COYS #THFC
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) April 10, 2016
Can Roy Hodgson continue to leave Vardy on the bench? Not if Gary Lineker’s got anything to do with it:
If Roy has the courage to play Vardy with Kane in the summer, I think they'd cause havoc in the opposition's defences.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) April 10, 2016
Leicester’s Danny Drinkwater and Jamie Vardy have spoken to Sky. Drinkwater said this:
We’ve got a few games left. It’s a step, but a very big one. If this puts more pressure on Spurs then perfect, but it’s a big game for them, battling for the league or not. We’ve done our job, it’s up to them now.
And Vardy said this:
Our fans have been brilliant. The Sunderland fans are clapping us, which is obviously brilliant. It was a great game. It was tough, we knew it was going to be, and we’ve managed to grab the goals and the three points. We wanted to come and get three points and that’s what we’ve done. We know it’s a step closer to possibly winning the league. We’ll enjoy this for the rest of the day and then get back on the training ground.
It is brilliant, but like I’ve said the main thing is the team. We’ve got to keep working as a team, improving, take it into next week and hopefully get another three points.
As for Sunderland, this match will be remembered for two moments: Rodwell’s miss in front of an open goal, and Borini smacking his own face with a 12-yarder. Hilarious, but also tragic.
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Leicester are scrapping their way to the title. Like Chelsea last season, they’ve shown us they can win pretty, and they’re showing us they can win ugly as well. Any slip-up from Spurs today and it’s surely all over bar a bit of shouting.
That Premier League points gap in full:
Three wins from these five games and Leicester will be champions, no matter what anyone else does.
West Ham (h)
Swansea (h)
Manchester United (a)
Everton (h)
Chelsea (a)
Final score: Sunderland 0-2 Leicester
It’s all over! Leicester have their 10-point lead! Now, Tottenham, what can you do about it?
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GOAL! Sunderland 0-2 Leicester (Vardy, 90+5 mins)
90+5 mins: Gray plays the ball to Vardy on the halfway line, and he pushes the ball past Van Aanholt and is on his way. The Sunderland defender tries to block his path, but Vardy bulldozes through him. Mannone comes out to intercept, but Vardy gets there first. And he’s left, in the end, with an empty net, and there’s no mistake!
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90+3 mins: Great chance for Leicester! Vardy controls a looping, bouncing ball, waits for Amartey, who’s roaring down the middle, and plays his team-mate in! He sidefoots his shot straight at Mannone. Leicester might not have coped with their lead brilliantly, but they should still have extended it a couple of times.
90+2 mins: Leicester have a corner, and won’t hurry to take it. The move that led to that Vardy chance was really very nice, by the way.
90+1 mins: There are five minutes of stoppage time standing between Leicester and a fifth successive 1-0 win.
90 mins: Save! Drinkwater gets the ball on the right, runs to the byline and pulls back; Vardy sends the ball goalwardss; Mannone flops on the ball and holds it!
89 mins: Kone intercepts a pass towards Vardy and obviously wants to pass back to Mannone, but Vardy blocks the ball’s path. So he runs a bit and looks up again. Vardy’s still there. So he runs a bit further and looks up. Vardy’s still there. So he runs a bit further, finds he’s run out of pitch, and Leicester have a throw-in.
87 mins: Leicester have not dealt with the lead very well. They’re playing like a Third Division side who find themselves 1-0 up at Old Trafford with 84 minutes to play, repeatedly hoofing the ball straight to a Sunderland defender when they might pass it to the feet of a midfielder.
86 mins: Ulloa is sent free down the left, passes inside to Kanté, who is closed down quickly and impressively and forced to pass back to Ulloa. The cross, when it comes, is deflected into Mannone’s arms.
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84 mins: Boos ring around the ground as Albrighton heads very slowly from the field, Daniel Amartey coming on.
83 mins: And now a chance for Leicester, as Kanté plays in Ulloa, who takes too long to shoot and then dinks the ball gently into Mannone’s chest.
HUGE chance for #SAFC. The ball ricochets to Jack Rodwell in the box, but he blazes over
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) April 10, 2016
SS1 - #SuperSunday pic.twitter.com/tZwFJXxvOX
82 mins: Incredible miss! Unbelievable miss! Ludicrous, tell-your-grandkids-about-this-miss miss! Van Aanholt’s shot from just outside the area ping-pongs off a couple of defenders before landing at the feet of Jack Rodwell, six yards out and in all sorts of space. The goal yawns. The fans draw breath. The ball flies over the bar.
81 mins: Gray has now come on, and Mahrez has gone off.
80 mins: Defoe has got a bad case of nobody-but-me-can-score-itis, now lashing wildly wide and high from 20-odd yards.
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78 mins: Defoe tries an optimistic swivelling shot from the edge of the area that flies straight into a defender, but it rebounds kindly to a team-mate, is centred from the left, and when it reaches Van Aanholt at the far post he looks astonished about it and it bounces off his leg and behind.
77 mins: Albrighton cuts in from the left and lashes a low 30-yarder too close to Mannone, who saves.
76 mins: Sunderland make their final substitution: Borini, face still stinging, comes off, and Jeremain Lens comes on.
74 mins: Leicester, for the first time today, do some nice passing, on the right wing. It ends with Mahrez going down in search of a free-kick and not getting one. “Not sure I’d call that a horrendous defensive error,” writes Alec Cochrane of the goal, “but if the old Suttonians 8th XI got done by a 70 yard, straight ball over the top to a quick, but not that quick striker I’d be more than disappointed.”
72 mins: Chance! Humiliatingly missed! Van Aanholt crosses low from the left and picks out Borini, who’s in space 15 yards out. But his left-foot shot would have gone embarrassingly wide, had it not even more embarrassingly flown into his own face first.
71 mins: Mahrez gets the ball 20 yards inside his own half and starts running. By the time he stops running he’s level with the penalty spot, and a good firm shot would probably have extended his side’s lead. Instead he tries a little nudge pass to Vardy, and it doesn’t come off.
68 mins: After the goal, Leicester tell Demarai Gray, who had been stripped off, to sit back down, and Sunderland tell Rodwell and N’Doye to strip off. They’ve now replaced M’Vila and Khazri.
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GOAL! Sunderland 0-1 Leicester (Vardy, 66 mins)
A goal! A GOAL! Drinkwater loops the ball over the Sunderland defence to Vardy and this time Kaboul can’t intercept and he can’t keep up either, and the striker runs in from the left, opens his body, and sidefoots in at the far post!
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65 mins: Leicester get plenty of players, and the ball, forward, but somehow the ball ends up bobbling lamely through to Mannone. “Not a lot between these two,” writes Alec Cochrane. “You probably wouldn’t be able to tell who was top and who was in the bottom three, until the inevitable horrendous defensive error that will hand the game to Leicester.”
63 mins: A substitution, as Leicester take off Okazaki, who has played all 90 minutes only once in the league since August, and bring on Ulloa.
62 mins: Fuchs and Albrighton have started hitting longer balls towards the area for Vardy or Okazaki. So far, Sunderland’s defenders have had this very much covered. “I’m a Leicester City fan so haven’t had much of an interest in the Premier League for the last 20 years or so,” writes Sean Boiling. “But I reflect today that football makes you feel the funniest things – whatever happens to my team in this match I really want Spurs to lose later on today. How did that happen? How did I become the sort of person that wants Man Utd to win a game?”
59 mins: Drinkwater shoots from the edge of the area. Pleasingly, rather than lash it high like so many before him he, well, sidefoots it wide. Mannone falls upon it before it can go out for a goal kick, though.
57 mins: A lull. A definite, noticeable lull. As if each team has noted that they have not been able to bulldoze the other, and are still working out what to try next.
54 mins: Space! For Vardy, on the right, allowing him to pick up Drinkwater. And for Drinkwater, as he takes his first touch and heads into the penalty area. And then, suddenly, none, as defenders converge upon him and Mannone slides out to gather.
52 mins: Leicester counter, and Okazaki carries the ball from right to left, plays in Kanté, accepts the return, and then blazes high. “Okazaki is a strange player, isn’t he?” wonders Shaun Wilkinson. “Work rate until the cows come home. He scored that brilliant overhead kick against Newcastle, and I think that he is the only time I have ever seen him make clean contact with a football. But he has … something.”
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51 mins: Oooh! Defoe’s shot from the left side of the area deflects to Borini on the right, and his drive flies a couple of feet high, and a few metres wide.
50 mins: Yedlin’s 35-yarder flies way high. I’m hoping that if and when the pace fades, we’ll see a bit more quality on the ball – because a slow-motion version of the first half would probably be a bit dull.
47 mins: The corner is flapped away by Schmeichel, sent back in by Borini, sent back out to Borini again, and finally half-volleyed wide.
47 mins: The first shot of the second half comes courtesy of Fabio Borini’s left boot, and as it flies over the bar the referee points to the corner flag, so there was clearly some kind of deflection.
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Peeeeeeep!
46 mins: They’re off! Again!
The players are back out. Can they possibly keep that going for another 45 minutes? We’ll find out, soon enough.
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Sky’s pundits are all convinced that Okazaki should have had a penalty when he was brought down by Yedlin. Meanwhile in footballland, the aforementioned Watford striker Troy Deeney is spending his Sunday being decorated like a giant 50p piece:
“I’m over this Leicester love-in,” moans Matthew Bate. “They were fortunate last week with those handball decisions and they were fortunate the previous game when Palace hit the bar in the last minute. Plus they’re becoming increasingly rubbish to watch with each passing game. Ranieri has done a great job, but this is no great side.”
This is certainly true. But in a league without a truly great team, they are at least giving us a different narrative, and giving fans of every not-massively-financially-doped-by-an-oil-aligarch side reason to believe that there might be something in this football business for them after all.
Half time: Sunderland 0-0 Leicester
45+3 mins: The whistle blows and the teams head back to the dressing-rooms. It’s been all work and no play, really, but thrilling in its way.
0 - Leicester City have now gone 7 hours and 25 minutes without conceding a Premier League goal. Barricade.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) April 10, 2016
45+2 mins: Save! Defoe has the ball on the right, and plays it inside to Borini, who thrashes a low shot goalwards that smacks Morgan in the elbow and deflects into Schmeichel’s legs.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time we go, and there will be three minutes or so of it.
45 mins: The ball is touched to Mahrez, just outside the area, and his left-footer hits the nearest defender. He claims a handball, but Kaboul’s arm wasn’t raised, and he can’t really be punished for possessing an elbow.
44 mins: Albrighton’s excellent pass finds Okazaki in the penalty area, and for the first time this afternoon’s someone got a bit of space in a key area. He waits for Vardy and then pulls the ball back to the edge of the area, but the pull-back is very firm, the chance very difficult, and the shot goes wide.
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42 mins: That long-range Kanté shot remains the only effort on target in this game so far.
39 mins: This is close. There’s nothing in this. Sunderland are working like the busiest kind of beavers, and Leicester’s key attacking players have seen very little of the ball. Indeed, for the last 10 minutes the home side have been the better team. What they haven’t done, though, is look like they might score.
37 mins: Khazri plays in Van Aanholt, surging down the left, and he bursts into the area, with three team-mates to aim at in the box. But he takes one touch too many, and his ball hits a jumble of Leicester legs.
35 mins: Chance! Borini crosses from the right and Kaboul meets it with his head, 15 yards out but with enough of a run at it to get some decent power on his effort. It goes over the bar.
32 mins: Lovely footwork from Khazri, as he dances and lollipops and backheels his way around the left wing, before working his way infield and having his pocket picked by Kanté.
30 mins: Another booking, this one for Fuchs. Borini was on his way down before the Leicester player got anywhere near him, but Fuchs did make contact, and he was late, and Borini made it look very dramatic.
29 mins: Mahrez has barely touched the ball so far, but now he gets the ball on the right wing and runs towards the area. Cattermole tackles him as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
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27 mins: Another Leicester corner, this one sent across the area to Drinkwater, who meets it on the volley on the 18-yard line. It would have been a beauty, had it only flown into the top corner of the goal, rather than the top corner of the stand behind the goal.
26 mins: Kirchhoff pulls back Albrighton and the referee waves play on. The ball is then chipped into the area towards Okazaki, who chests it and is then caught in mid-air by Yedlin, who has no idea where the ball is or what’s going on, and collapses. No penalty, says the referee. And also no punishment for Kirchhoff.
25 mins: Leicester win a corner, but nothing comes of it. Goal kick. “If ever there was one dance number that required no remix it is that classic,” rages Kerry Davies of my choice of Mory Kanté track. “That video is terrible as well. The guy looks as if he is dancing to some other track.” Sorry. Here’s the original.
23 mins: A diagonal ball from deep finds Kazri sprinting goalwards, but lands just too far away from him.
21 mins: A booking! Fabio Borini goes in the book. He gives the ball away with three Leicester players around him, and then chases after it like a steroidal bloodhound as they work it around the triangle, until he eventually chops one of them down.
19 mins: Simpson gets the ball, 15 yards inside his own half, and has nearly two seconds of time on the ball before he’s closed down, by which time the home fans are absolutely baying. The pace here is lunatic, and they will accept no let-up.
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17 mins: Cattermole nearly picks out M’Vila in the area. Nice spot, and a decent pass. Inevitably, however, Huth is on hand to slam the ball into row Z.
Huthian should really be acknowleded as neologism to describe old-fashioned defending like a defender (antonym Stonesian) @Simon_Burnton
— Gary Naylor (@garynaylor999) April 10, 2016
15 mins: Moments later Kirchhoff sends Borini running down the inside right channel, and he just keeps on running until the angle is totally unpromisingly, before bashing a shot high and wide.
15 mins: Chance! Okazaki’s cross is cleared for a corner, sent in by Fuchs and met by Morgan at the near post. He’s unmarked, eight yards out, but heads across goal and wide.
14 mins: Is it K-on-té or K-an-té? I’m not sure we’ve had resolution on this. I’m sure Mory Kante was K-an-té, but this might have changed.
12 mins: Vardy batters a header high and wide from Simpson’s right-wing cross. “The gap is 8 points now. They’re machines, I tell you,” writes Matthew Jones.
11 mins: Cattermole sends Drinkwater over, and the Leicester player’s flailing legs bring Cattermole down with him. It’s (a bit) like ballet, this.
10 mins: A massive roar from the home crowd as the ball sails well high of Defoe and into the arms of Schmeichel. If the home side score first here they’ll hear it in Holland.
8 mins: This is thrillingly British high-tempo football. Long throws, agricultural clearances, towering headers, clattering challenges – it’s had the lot and we’re barely eight minutes in.
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7 mins: A right-wing free-kick from Leicester is headed out, headed back in, headed back out, headed back in again, headed back out again, and then headed back in, before being definitively headed out.
5 mins: It’s all a bit manic in midfield. There seem to be eight players around the ball at all times, throwing themselves around. “Shouldn’t the real magic number here be 12 rather than 10?” posits John Kim. “This would get Leicester to 81 points and mathematically put them out of Spurs’ reach – assuming Spurs win all of their remaining games.” Yes, that is the magic number, but it can’t be achieved today and is thus useless to me.
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3 mins: The day’s first shot comes from Kanté, hit pretty hard but straight down the middle from an optimistic distance.
2 mins: Leicester attack, and Kanté gives the ball away three times without any Sunderland player actually controlling it, before Vardy’s cross is headed behind. Okazaki heads the corner well over the bar.
Peeeeeeeeeep!
1 min: They’re off! And within moments, Sunderland have parlayed their possession into a Leicester goal kick!
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Jermain Defoe and Fabio Borini stand over the ball, ready for kick off. Deep breath now.
Out come the teams! The sun in Sunderland is very much evident this afternoon, but who will be walking under a figurative cloud when the day ends? We’re about to find out!
We haven’t talked about the number 10 for a while. “I note with interest your in-depth treatment of 10,” writes Austin Baird. “What stands out is how you avoided italics. Fear, phobia or a tragic encounter with italics in the long distant past? I think we should be told exclamation mark exclamation mark.” I just felt that italics convey a more nuanced emphasis than use of bold and exclamation marks, and this is no time for nuance. I don’t think either manager, giving his players their final instructions and exhortations, is talking in italics right now.
If you’ve not read Troy Deeney’s tactical analysis of Leicester on the BBC website, published earlier this week, it’s still very good. Find it here.
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Sam Allardyce has had a lengthy chat with Sky. He seems both optimistic – in that he genuinely believes his side can win – and concerned – in that he’s not sure his side genuinely believes they can win.
The way the game is looking today it’s going to be very tight. Hopefully it goes in our favour but we’ve got to be the team that scores first today I think. I think the last eight or 10 games our in-possession play has got ever better, more production in terms of creating chances, and of course keeping our nerve in the last moments of the game has been a problem. We got that right last week. It’s going to be a hugely difficult task for us based on the form they’re in and the belief in their squad. We’ve got to break that down, and it’ll be one of the biggest results of the season if we get that right.
We’re massive underdogs today. We’re third from bottom, Leicester are top of the league. If the Premier League continues the way it is, there’s going to be more and more upsets by the lesser boys beating the bigger boys, and you can’t say Leicester aren’t one of the bigger boys at the minute because they’re top of the league. I think we have the capabilities, I just hope the lads have the belief that they can do it as well.
On going training at the beach:
It was about a change of environment. We have a fantastic facility at the academy but it becomes too familiar for me. Get out and about in the fresh air, let the supporters see us. The sand was firm and wet.
Both sides are unchanged, and Sky have grabbed a player from each side for a little pre-match chinwag. Wes Morgan said this:
They’re very desperate at the moment, they need the points badly. It’s going to be a very tough game, we have to be prepared for what they come at us with. It’s going to be a tough game. We need to keep the pressure on, if we can stretch the gap that we’ve got at the moment. We want to win, but at the same time we know it’s not an easy job.
And Fabio Borini said this:
They’ve shown all year long that they’re very solid, and you need to actually deserve what you get. Like Arsenal, who played them and beat them twice. We need to be inspired by them and get a result.
The teams!
The team sheets have been handed in, and these are the names written upon them:
Sunderland: Mannone, Yedlin, Koné, Kaboul, Van Aanholt, Kirchhoff, Borini, Cattermole, M’Vila, Khazri, Defoe. Subs: Jones, Larsson, Rodwell, N’Doye, Pickford, O’Shea, Lens.
Leicester: Schmeichel, Simpson, Morgan, Huth, Fuchs, Mahrez, Drinkwater, Kanté, Albrighton, Okazaki, Vardy. Subs: King, Amartey, Gray, Ulloa, Dyer, Chilwell, Schwarzer.
Referee: Anthony Taylor.
Hello world!
Ten points. 10. It’s very hard to say how big this number could be, but what I do know is that this font size can’t convey it’s magnitude. Even in capital letters, it’s just TEN. I can bold it up and add an exclamation mark, but even TEN! doesn’t do it. If Leicester can win this, they will – at least for an hour or two, depending on the result of Tottenham’s game against Manchester United – hold a 10-point lead at the top of the Premier League, with just five games still to play. It’s beyond humungous. Leicester’s last four games have finished 1-0. And what’s 1-0 without the -? It’s 10, that’s what it is. They’ve been obsessing about this number for weeks. This is the biggest 10 I can muster, and even this isn’t big enough.
Ten points is also the distance between Sunderland in 18th and Crystal Palace in 16th. Even if the Black Cats, before kick-off, have seven matches to play this margin is still enough for Palace to feel fairly secure. But if Sunderland could win this, not only might Alan Pardew’s side once again feel a little wobblesome, but 17th-placed Norwich would be just a single point away, with the two teams to meet at Carrow Road on Saturday.
This game, then, is proper massive. Someone asked Kasper Schmeichel the other day whether he was feeling the pressure ahead of this weekend. He spoke about a loan spell at Bury when they were battling relegation from League Two. “That would have been catastrophic,” he said. “There’s no pressure now, this is what you play football for. Those games where absolutely everything is on the line, that’s proper pressure. People’s livelihoods are on the line, mortgages and families. You are making decisions which can affect people. That’s why I will keep saying this season that we’re just having fun.”
Nice answer, Kasper, but I don’t buy it. It may have been fun for a while, this top-of-the-league lark, but it’s no joking matter now. It’s history, and it’s inconceivable achievement. And it’s also reaching the point where anything other than the title would be a failure, and that’s got to weigh on a man’s psyche (Schmeichel says the title “is not even in my mind right now”, which is just ludicrous).
Also, Premier League footballers may be cushioned from the blow of relegation by their massively inflated wages, but the same isn’t true of all their clubs’ employees. As Aston Villa’s restructuring shows, relegation costs jobs, and at Sunderland people’s livelihoods are very much on the line, their mortgages and families. They’re not footballers, but they’re still people. That pressure is there, however much footballers tell journalists that it isn’t. Talking of people telling journalists things, here’s Claudio Ranieri on Leicester’s achievements:
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