Sunday, January 3, 2021 at 5:17 PM• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 17:19

Leicester City has started the new calendar year well. The team of trainer Brendan Rodgers triumphed on Sunday afternoon with 1-2 at Newcastle United and thus continues to participate fully in the upper echelons of the Premier League. Leicester is third, one point behind and one more game against Manchester United and Liverpool. Andy Carroll scored Newcastle’s only goal, scoring for the team for the first time since Boxing Day 2010.

All goals were scored in the second half; the first act was less attractive to the neutral spectator. There were hardly any chances before half-time, although a goal by Jamie Vardy was disallowed because he was offside when James Maddison sent the decisive pass. After the break, Vardy got into a one-on-one situation with goalkeeper Karl Darlow, but fired into the side net. Not much later, the visitors took the lead against the impotent Newcastle.

Leicester was able to counter quickly, because Harvey Barnes was allowed to make the necessary meters on half of Newcastle. The midfielder found Vardy, who passed his own guard and allowed Maddison to shoot hard. The 0-2 came eighteen minutes before the end of Youri Tielemans, who cleverly turned the ball into the right corner from the edge of the penalty area on a pass from Marc Albrighton. It was his first club goal for the Belgian since his double strike against Leeds United (1-4) on 2 November.

Fifteen minutes before the end, Vardy hit the bar, although a goal would not have counted because the striker was offside. Leicester thus failed to make the final decision and therefore tension returned when Carroll took the ball out of the air in the penalty area after Leicester failed to clear a free kick. There were 10 years and 8 days between Carroll’s last two Premier League goals for Newcastle, the biggest gap between two league goals for the same club in the Premier League after Wayne Rooney’s 13 years and 121 days for Everton. However, there were no really big chances for the equalizer; Darlow even prevented Vardy from making it 1-3 with the head.