Leicester City vs Norwich City. Sky Bet Championship.
The King Power StadiumAttendance31,825.
Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship match between Leicester City and Norwich City at the King Power Stadium on Easter Monday; goals from Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Stephy Mavididi and Jamie Vardy gets Enzo Maresca's Foxes back on track for promotion
Monday 1 April 2024 22:16, UK
Leicester got their Championship promotion bid back on track on Easter Monday after coming from behind to beat play-off chasing Norwich 3-1.
Gabriel Sara put the Canaries in front inside 20 minutes after a clever corner routine - a carbon copy of the goal John Stones scored for Man City against Liverpool last month.
But Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall ended a run of six games without a goal involvement when he headed in to equalise and then provided the assist for Stephy Mavididi to win the game with some individual brilliance.
There was even time for Jamie Vardy to come off the bench to add a third in injury-time and atone for his four misses in the defeat to Bristol City on Good Friday.
The Foxes' second win in their last seven games had lifted them into the top two above Leeds, but the Whites responded later with a 3-1 home win over Hull to push Leicester back into third.
Enzo Maresca's side are now a point behind Leeds while they are two points off leaders Ipswich, who went top with a dramatic 3-2 home win against Southampton on Monday night.
Meanwhile, Norwich remain sixth, though Coventry, Preston and Hull below them have all played one game fewer.
A sense of dread returned for Leicester after 20 minutes, when Norwich took the lead in impressive fashion from their first shot of the game.
Ben Gibson shepherded Dewsbury-Hall away from the near post, allowing Sara to nip into the space he had vacated to poke Marcelino Nunez's corner past goalkeeper Mads Hermansen.
The lead lasted only seven minutes, though. Wilfred Ndidi pumped the ball to the byline, where Mavididi was waiting to cushion the ball for Dewsbury-Hall to head in the equaliser and lift the confidence of the players and the morale of the anxious home fans.
Then, in first half stoppage-time, Leicester appealed for a penalty when Ndidi's clipped cross appeared to strike the outstretched arm of Gibson. Referee Darren Bond, however, was not interested.
In the grand scheme of things, it mattered little. Leicester upped the intensity after the break and got their reward for doing so just after the hour, as Dewsbury-Hall moved the ball onto Mavididi, who dinked it past Jack Stacey and into the bottom right corner.
As the search for a crucial third went on, there was a heart-in-mouth moment for the hosts, when Stacey burst into the box and struck a shot just wide of the right-hand post, when he might have been better advised to square for substitute Liam Gibbs.
But in the 93rd minute, Vardy found himself perfectly placed to lash in and secure the points after Harry Winks' shot had been blocked and fallen kindly for him.
Leicester's Enzo Maresca:
"It was especially for the moment, because for different reasons, we didn't win so many games.
"So this was important, because we are in the final part of the season. But then we started by conceding a goal, and 1-0 down from a corner, we needed to be mentally strong.
"But after that, the game was completely in our control, we dominated.
"Probably in the last six games, we won one game and it was the one we didn't deserve - Sunderland.
"We lost four games, and not one of them we deserved to lose.
"At the end, we are human beings - we have emotions so when we scored the last one with Jamie, the game was finished, so we were all happy and we enjoyed the moment."
Norwich's David Wagner:
"We're better than what we showed here. This is disappointing, but it can happen.
"I'll quickly put this to bed because we'll speak about the truth. I have so much trust and belief in the guys, I know they'll have the biggest fire in their belly for the Ipswich game.
"The positives were that we scored a super set-piece goal, so credit to our set-piece department for that.
"But I felt we were well organised until their second goal. In ball possession though, we were below par. We've been better in recent weeks, but that doesn't mean we should automatically have won the game.
"We not good enough to get some points out of this game. So we'll work on it and analyse it.
"It was very clear that too many individuals did not do what they are capable of doing. But they are humans and for us to make sure that everybody is on the same page and our demands are higher than what we showed here."
