Leicester Win 4-3 at Stockport But Had No Right To: A Match That Should Never Have Been That Close
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Final score: Stockport County 3, Leicester 4. Seven goals. Three yellow cards. Two teams doing their level best to make the other look good. If you wanted a coaching masterclass, look elsewhere. If you wanted ninety minutes of League One football with all the chaos, desire, and defensive lapses that come with it, Saturday afternoon delivered.
Let me be straight with you. Leicester won. The result stands. But the way this unfolded tells you more about what is wrong with both sides than what is right.
The First Half: Leicester Asleep, Stockport In Control
Stockport came into this in decent nick. Three wins from their last five in League One, 13 goals scored in that sample. They had momentum and they showed it early.
Liam Cullen opened the scoring on 11 minutes with a left-foot finish, set up by Louis Donald Page. Good goal. Composed. Exactly the kind of clinical execution Stockport had shown in that 4-0 demolition of Wigan Athletic the week before.
Emil Riis then took the game by the scruff of the neck. He scored on 30 minutes and again on 48 minutes, both right-foot efforts. A striker doing what a striker is supposed to do. Stockport were 3-1 up going into the second half and looking comfortable. At that point you are looking at a routine home win.
Leicester got one back through Jack Diamond on 22 minutes, a right-foot shot. But going in at half time 2-1 down with their away form reading one win, two draws and two losses from their last five in League One, and having just been hammered 4-0 by Oxford United seven days prior, nobody on that away bench should have been feeling confident.
The Second Half: Leicester Wake Up, Stockport Fall Apart
Here is the thing. Stockport did not lose this game in the second half because Leicester were outstanding. They lost it because they stopped doing the basics.
John Lundstram headed Leicester level on 52 minutes, assisted by Louis Donald Page of all people, whose yellow card had arrived just two minutes earlier. That is the kind of moment that tells you what you need to know about a team's concentration levels.
Then Oliver Norwood pulled one back for Leicester with a free kick on 57 minutes. Then Kyle Wootton made it 4-3 to Leicester on 61 minutes. Three goals in nine second-half minutes. Nine minutes. Stockport had been three goals to one up and somehow contrived to lose the match.
Listen, you cannot concede three goals in nine minutes at any level and call it bad luck. That is a collapse in standards. That is a defensive unit that lost its shape, its accountability, and its desire to hold what it had earned. Unacceptable. End of.
The Stats Tell the Story
Look at the numbers and it gets worse for Stockport.
Leicester had 18 shots to Stockport's 9. They had 14 shots inside the box compared to Stockport's 6. They created 4 big chances and missed 3 of them. If they had taken their big chances at a normal rate, this scoreline is not 4-3. It is uglier.
Stockport, by contrast, created 2 big chances and missed none. They were ruthless when they had their moments. The problem is they stopped creating moments in the second half entirely. Leicester's attacking numbers in this match were overwhelming once they got going.
Stockport had 1 corner all match. One. Leicester had 8. Leicester put in 29 total crosses with 11 accurate. Stockport managed 2 total crosses. When one team is winning the width battle by that margin, the scoreline should not be a surprise.
Leicester also won the dribble battle, completed 7 successful dribbles to Stockport's 2, and hit the woodwork twice on top of everything else. The chances were there in abundance. They were just wasteful enough to make it a contest.
Riis Was Outstanding. Then He Was Taken Off.
Emil Riis scored twice and was the best player on the pitch for the first hour. He was replaced by Tommy Watson on 76 minutes. I am not going to second-guess every substitution, but when your striker has two goals and the game is still in the balance at 4-3, you had better be very sure about that decision.
Liam Cullen, who got the opener, was also taken off at 86 minutes for Wes Burns. By then the damage was done, but Stockport's attacking threat was being systematically removed at a time when they needed a goal.
Leicester, to their credit, held what they had. Three yellow cards in the game, two for Stockport's Ethan Pye and Kyron Gordon, one for Leicester's Louis Donald Page, but nobody was sent off and Leicester saw it out.
What the Signals Got Right and Wrong
The both teams to score no signal also lost. Obviously. Stockport scored 3 and Leicester scored 4. Both teams to score no was never getting out of here alive.
The Verdict
Leicester take the three points. Stockport take nothing but questions about their second-half attitude and their defensive standards.
Going 3-1 up at home and losing 4-3 is not a tactical problem. It is an attitude problem. It is a standards problem. You do not concede three goals in nine minutes because the opposition played brilliantly. You concede three goals in nine minutes because you stopped competing.
Stockport's form coming in was encouraging. Three wins in five, goals being scored freely. This result will sting, and it should. Because this was a game they had in their hands and they let go of it completely.
Leicester will take the win and move on. It was not pretty. But results are the only currency in this business. Three points is three points. End of.