Premier League Hangover: Have Leicester Left the Door Ajar for Tottenham?

Kasper Schmeichel was the last Leicester City player to leave the field. He looked like someone who had been informed they had won the lottery, in a week with an unprecedented number of winners and subsequent diminished returns.

Jubilation competed with irritation as he repeatedly punched the air and engaged in loud and lively dialogue with nobody in particular. An internal monologue vocalised. Ball boys with water bottles approached with a caution usually reserved for stroking dogs in possession of shirtless owners.

A point gained or two lost? Schmeichel, like the rest of us, wasn’t sure. Schmeichel senior, Peter, hit Kanye West numbers on Twitter when he opined: "Is that ref on drugs." He missed off a question mark after struggling to type while wearing goalkeeping gloves. It isn’t the first time this season the Premier League has been the subject of a doping accusation.

If this was a wobble, Leicester have nothing to worry about. Scoring a 94th-minute equaliser with 10 men to extend a lead at the Premier League summit to eight points is a problem right up there with not having a big enough vault to store all of your gold.

Any blip on the home straight is magnified, but a 2-2 draw at home to away-day specialists West Ham United, who are themselves now unbeaten in eight, is hardly Devon Loch inexplicably jumping on to the air and landing on his stomach 40 yards from the winning post when five lengths clear in the 1956 Grand National. Even if Jamie Vardy’s dabble in the dark arts that earned him a second yellow card was not dissimilar in its execution.

On a day when Barcelona blew a nine-point lead to only be ahead of Atletico Madrid on goal difference, Leicester can feel quietly content with their lot. If Barcelona wobble any more, expect Rowntrees to make a bid to be their shirt sponsors next season. No one said league titles are won without complications. 

To discuss the referee after such a tumultuous, volcanic affair is to dine at a Michelin star restaurant and chat only about the restroom facilities. Unfortunately, we need to talk about Jon Moss. He’s the elephant in the room that defecated all over the carpet. The stink won’t go away until it has been cleaned up.

Rare is it that both sets of managers, players and supporters can find common ground at the end of such a controversial contest. In Moss, there was a unifying bone of contention. It is a unique situation perhaps to have a player from each side nervously expecting a letter from the Football Association after giving frank assessments of a referee’s performance. Neither Vardy nor Andy Carroll are exactly Henry Kissinger when it comes to diplomacy. Henry Kissmyass, perhaps.

Leicester’s club motto is Semper Eadem. It means "always the same." For the 56 minutes prior to Vardy’s red card, it could have summed up the game. The home side stayed true to the principles that have worked for them all season. Leicester sat deep and looked to hit West Ham on the counter-attack. They scored, sat even deeper and looked to score again, ad infinitum.

Vardy’s opener could not have been more Leicester had Richard III converted a pass from David Attenborough. From the moment Schmeichel plucked a set piece from the sky and bowled the ball out to Riyad Mahrez, the league leaders needed just nine touches to take the lead. Like water flowing down stream, the Foxes always choose the path of least resistance. 

Mahrez, who will have to rediscover a faded mojo in Vardy’s enforced absence, produced his best moment of the game in twisting to make a yard before sliding the ball to N’Golo Kante in space.

Leicester’s galloping major showed he is just as fast gliding forward as he is chasing back to make inroads on West Ham’s goal. After slipping in Vardy with a perfectly weighted pass, the striker’s finish on his weaker left side was typically unerring. A 22nd Premier League goal of the season takes him level with Harry Kane. 

Whoever is slicing together montages for the PFA Player of the Year awards at the end of the month is now in possession of a piece of footage that won’t need any editing.

Tottenham striker Kane posted a less-than-cryptic message on Instagram ahead of his side's game at Stoke City on Monday night.

Thereafter, Leicester’s fairytale become more of the Grimm variety, darker in tone and context.

Vardy had already been booked for a nothing first-half foul on Cheikhou Kouyate—who in just the second minute had hit both of Leicester's posts with a header—when he felt Angelo Ogbonna’s hand on his arm when racing through on goal. Given he had already scored with his left foot, it made his decision to seemingly deliberately tangle his legs with Ogbonna’s and subsequently go down rather than shoot all the more bewildering.

Moss was having none of it and reached immediately for a second yellow card. The genie was out of the bottle.

The Mail on Sunday’s chief sports reporter Oliver Holt was incandescent, taking to Twitter to vent his ire.

He’s right, you know. That Moss fella hates fairytales. Watch the incident back carefully and you can clearly make out how before the red card comes out of his top pocket, he mouths to Vardy: "Prince Charming left Cinderella for one of her three sisters and is behind on his child maintenance payments. By the way, you’re off son."

As verbal missiles rained in and the beleaguered official stooped to take cover, Huw Davies of FourFourTwo suggested Vardy referred to him as a ducking runt (warning: link contains NSFW language). Vardy’s ban could be extended should Moss include it in his report. It may take the FA until the start of next season to finish reading it.

Leonardo Ulloa has been the most willing of workers for Leicester all season off the substitutes'  bench, but Claudio Ranieri will be only too aware he will have to change his side's approach to compensate for a lack of pace in Vardy's absence.

Ulloa could set off now and still not make the type of ball Danny Drinkwater played over the top of Sunderland's defence last weekend for Vardy to run on to and dispatch. 

Moss' take on the penalty he awarded to West Ham with six minutes remaining, duly dispatched by Carroll, will make for interesting reading. He was already on the thinnest of ice with Leicester supporters when he pointed to the spot to exacerbate a sense of injustice simmering in the home stands.

Given his penchant for the spotlight, if he isn’t dancing on it in the next few years, he needs to get himself a new agent. He might be a crap ref, but I bet he does a lovely Bolero.

In fairness to Moss, he did look to have already warned both Robert Huth and Wes Morgan to stop grappling in the penalty area earlier in the game. Given the endemic levels of pushing and pulling before every set piece, though, asking players to stop it is like standing on the Gaza Strip and pleading with both sides to play nice. 

His patience snapped when he somewhat softly awarded a penalty after noticing Morgan putting his arms on Winston Reid. It was no more an offence than when, in the build-up to Vardy's goal, Huth cynically blocked Reid or, when in the opposite area, Leicester implored Moss to give a penalty when Huth went down after Ogbonna puts his arms around him from behind at a long throw. 

Technically, Morgan's challenge on Reid was a foul. Technically, there should be around 40 penalties awarded every game. Spare us the moral hand-wringing about how it is all the players' fault for being naughty boys and trying to trick officials. The game needs cleaning up, but it's probably not best to attempt a one-man crusade in the middle of one of the most critical games of the season.

Maybe Moss should have lifted his shirt to reveal a message of support for Fathers 4 Justice while he was on a roll. 

Aaron Creswell's remarkably accomplished and technically superb effort, in front of Roy Hodgson, which saw him cut across the ball to drive it past Schmeichel into the far top corner from range, ultimately proved no more than a footnote. Moss was to take centre stage again. At full-time, West Ham rightly felt just as aggrieved as Leicester. 

To give Moss his due, back to Holt's point, he looked fairly swayed by Leicester's fairytale when giving them a 94th-minute penalty. Carroll's ever-so-slightly awkward if largely innocuous shoulder-to-shoulder challenge on Jeffrey Schlupp just inside West Ham's box saw the award of arguably the cheapest penalty of the season.

It could be the most important, too. One suspects Vardy's colourful language was positively quaint in comparison to what may have been uttered in north London.

Substitute Ulloa kept his nerve to earn his side a point from 12 yards. Carroll attacked the official post-match as he attacks a high ball into the box, with menace and no little force, per the Guardian:

"

I think it was a poor decision. It is the same week-in, week-out. The same decisions, bad decisions costing us games. It is eight points now that we’ve dropped.

It is not acceptable, to be honest. I know that, the manager knows that, all the players know that and a lot of the people standing around, like yourself, know that.

I think he’s trying to even it up and I think a lot of people have said that. 

I mean, it is a bad decision – it is bad decisions he has given all game. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last.

"

Slaven Bilic, with his tie askew at full-time looking for all the world like he'd stopped for one after work and ended up having eight, agreed with his striker's assessment in his own briefing with the press. 

Whether the Football Association are of a similar mindset remains to be seen. Both Carroll and Vardy will be waiting by the phone. 

 
Aguero makes 3 points about Player of the Year omission

 
Wenger concedes Arsenal title tilt over after Palace draw 

 
Sorriest of Aston Villa sides relegated as Rashford hammers final nail in coffin 

 

Black Cats shred Canaries to reignite survival hopes  

 
Benitez issues rallying cry as Newcastle slay Swansea

 
3 wins in a week for rampant Liverpool