No team with talented players such as James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Youri Tielemans should be this bad
As the clock ticked past 80 minutes at the King Power Stadium, with Leicester beating West Ham but hostage entirely to events at Goodison Park, it felt fitting that this should be one of those relegations sung to its rest by ghosts of other games, of goals unscored, energy waves, rumours, the Mexican wave of death.
Several times through those final 10 minutes the ground was gripped by sudden contortions of false joy, leaping, roaring sections of crowd lifted by news of fake survival, reality-lag, non-redemption. If Bournemouth score a non-goal and nobody tells the King Power it doesn’t exist: is that non-goal still a goal? And who does Youri Tielemans sign for next season?
More Stories
Claressa Shields: ‘I’m not here for people to cry and feel sorry for me’
Kevin Nolan poised to become Northampton Town’s new manager
Generation TikTok: how sportswomen set the bar higher than the men