sport news LEICESTER 2-1 WEST HAM: Foxes are RELEGATED from the Premier League despite win trends now
No-one needed a transistor radio to know that the beautiful Leicester City story had been reduced to dust - from champions to the Championship - inside seven years.
The news of Everton’s goal was imparted brutally from a gleeful West Ham contingent taking great delight in another team’s misfortune. ‘Going down,’ they sang of Leicester. ‘Going to Prague,’ they sang of themselves. ‘Say hello to Millwall.’
The weird reality of the modern last-day relegation fight also included Leicester’s fans launching into spontaneous cheers on a few occasions in the second half, which implied Everton had conceded an equaliser, when they had not. ‘West Ham fans were rubbing our noses in it. Our fans were jumping in where they thought we had a goal,’ manager Dean Smith said at the end.
And then, after only a second victory since the back-to-back wins which had created brief optimism in early February, came the final indignity for Leicester’s players - milling around on the pitch, clustered around a phone at one stage, awaiting the delayed final whistle at Everton. There were precious few words between them. Nothing to say. They watched West Ham fans acclaim Declan Rice and urge him to give them ‘ten more years.’ And then they were relegated.
A lap of honour was as risky as it was inappropriate, given the nine months which had preceded all this, so the players just walked in a vaguely circular motion just beyond the centre circle. Half-hearted boos rang out and they vanished down the tunnel.
Leicester City were relegated from the Premier League despite beating West Ham 2-1 - seven years after being champions
Everton's 1-0 win over Bournemouth meant the Foxes' nine-year stay in the top flight ended regardless of their result
It was devastation for Leicester's players and supporters at full-time after their fate was sealed after a frustrating campaign
In truth, it has been a dismal season for the club who had no excuses after losing 22 of their 38 league games
A few hours earlier, the same supporters had gathered in numbers at the statue of Vichai Srivaddhanacpraba, ‘The Possible Man’ who built Leicester City into a Premier League club, while a singer a few yards away hammered out a rendition of ‘Walking on Sunshine’ - searching in vain for a little local enthusiasm.
The stadium announcer’s request that ‘if you are not a flag waver please pass yours on to someone who is,’ said a lot – because not everyone was in the mood for flags. ‘Leave them behind after the match,’ the announcer also asked. For what? To wave the one-time Premier League champions on against Huddersfield and Rotherham?
Though the match programme cover stated, in block capitals, that: ‘Foxes never quit’, it certainly didn’t look like that in the first 20 minutes, when Leicester couldn’t put three passes together.
But somehow, and from somewhere, that talk about them being a squad of players ‘too good to go down’ seemed a bit less hubristic.
Kelechi Iheancho, a figurehead of all that was good about Leicester in this match, got the show started. Harvey Barnes started to find some zip down the left. And James Maddison, whose last Leicester season will always taint what he had hitherto achieved, drove into the spaces in front of West Ham’s defence which Declan Rice occupied. It was a glimpse of what might have been, for Leicester.
There will be so many ifs and buts in the days ahead but the quality of their football for an hour of this game was testament to the folly of Brendan Rodgers describing the squad as one set for a relegation fight, way back in August.
The club never recovered from the machinations of that time, when Rodgers had realised he wouldn’t have the money he wanted. The quartet of
