For a reminder of how the outlook has changed for Leicester, on this day two years ago they were\u00a0cavorting with the FA Cup\u00a0after lifting the trophy for the first time in their history at Wembley. Five of the starting lineup from that day, which was played in front of a limited 20,000 crowd owing to the pandemic, also began here, including the club captain Evans, who made his first league start since October after a hamstring complaint. Evans initially seemed to provide a welcome calm but two Liverpool goals inside three minutes soon shifted even the slightest sense of comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now they are staring at relegation to the Championship, seven years on from their\u00a0unthinkable 5,000-1 title win.\u00a0The galling thing for the interim manager Dean Smith is that until Jones\u2019s first goal, on 33 minutes, Leicester had kept Liverpool at arm\u2019s length. Luis D\u00edaz, one of two Liverpool changes from victory over Brentford last time out, skittled a shot against the side netting a few minutes earlier. Then a long ball downfield by Alisson altered the picture. Wout Faes did not deal with the ball and D\u00edaz was first to it. Henderson, Klopp\u2019s other change, found Salah, who sent a ball towards the back post. By the time Boubakary Soumar\u00e9 spied Jones in his peripheral vision it was too late and Jones arrived to sweep the ball in with his left foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a painful goal from a Leicester perspective but the pain was about to get much worse. Cody Gakpo accelerated clear of Wilfred Ndidi and Soumar\u00e9 on halfway and played in Salah, who fed the roaming Jones with a cute pass. Jones collected the ball on his right foot, swivelled and promptly smacked the ball beyond Daniel Iversen with his next touch. By now \u2013 with 36 minutes on the clock \u2013 any grains of belief had been shredded. A couple of supporters headed for the concourses. Liverpool would have added a third seconds later but for Iversen\u2019s instinctive stop to deny Gakpo. Smith placed his hands on his head as Gakpo soared through on goal and was slapping his thighs as Liverpool squandered another chance before the interval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The slate-grey skies at half-time married with a bleak forecast for Leicester, who visit Newcastle before hosting Brighton on the final day. Last week, after\u00a0a humiliating defeat at Fulham, Smith cancelled the players\u2019 day off and this week the end-of-season awards night was canned. The Leicester chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, naturally struck an upbeat tone in his programme notes. \u201cI feel sure our fatewill be determined by our own actions,\u201d he said, but failure to yield victory means they will be relying on their rivals to do them a favour or two from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leicester did not roll over and Alisson had to make the first notable save of the second half. Harvey Barnes exchanged passes with Jamie Vardy and then Youri Tielemans before picking the ball up on the edge of the Liverpool 18-yard box. Barnes took aim with his right foot but Alisson flew to his left and pushed a curling shot wide with a strong right hand. Leicester\u2019s lax defending always offered Liverpool encouragement and D\u00edaz was allowed to trickle an inviting ball across the six-yard box. The full-back Ricardo Pereira, who scored to send Leicester into a first European semi-final 13 months ago, was unsurprisingly rusty on his return from injury. Luckily for Leicester, no red shirts were on hand to prod in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when Evans felled Henderson Liverpool seized the opportunity to add a third goal. Salah back-heeled a free-kick half a yard into the path of Alexander-Arnold, who lashed an unstoppable strike high into the top corner. Alexander-Arnold wheeled away and embarked on a knee slide in front of the pocket of Liverpool supporters. Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 decided to copy his celebration and the rest of the red shirts soon joined him to turn up the volume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" J\u00fcrgen Klopp had said there are five millions ways to win a game and in a routine victory that ensures Manchester United can feel\u00a0Liverpool breathing down their necks, Trent Alexander-Arnold exhibited one of the finer ways in which to score a goal. Alexander-Arnold emphatically sealed victory with a stunning free-kick and he could have hardly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7717,1827,7489,1911,8924,8591,11381,9171,9505,5984,9883,746,5500,5247,7619,9969,1261,6232,2118,5624,11294,5139,6654,7031,6286,6043,301,197,12791,11252,115,9349,9683,1717,11973,5485,13256,267,12871,12778,11259,5818,8840,10885,11622,6076,3954,594,7033],"class_list":["post-33547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-brentford","tag-brighton","tag-chairman","tag-champions-league","tag-chance","tag-cody-gakpo","tag-complaint","tag-crowd","tag-european","tag-fa-cup","tag-fed","tag-feel","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-fulham","tag-gakpo","tag-gareth-southgate","tag-grains","tag-henderson","tag-holland","tag-injury","tag-jones","tag-jordan","tag-jurgen-klopp","tag-klopp","tag-lax","tag-leicester","tag-liverpool","tag-manager","tag-manchester","tag-manchester-united","tag-married","tag-millions","tag-newcastle","tag-one","tag-pandemic","tag-players","tag-premier-league","tag-salah","tag-seized","tag-shot","tag-strike","tag-strong","tag-victory","tag-vision","tag-wembley","tag-will","tag-who","tag-youri-tielemans"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Trent](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ffdf324131fd02d56e375f5ca098307e506ab2a3\/0_0_4763_2858\/master\/4763.jpg?width=445&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none\")