Leicester maintain 100% record by exposing Burnley's limitations
Leicester continued their bright start to the season by ruthlessly exposing the limitations with which Sean Dyche must cope at Burnley. Although Chris Wood opened the scoring, Brendan Rodgers’ side stormed back and won thanks to class that Burnley just do not have, plus a little luck, of which Burnley are also short.
Harvey Barnes, James Justin and Dennis Praet found the net while Erik Pieters turned a cross from Timothy Castagne into his own goal, making Jimmy Dunne’s late effort merely a nice memento for a Burnley debutant. Rodgers, meanwhile, could take satisfaction from the fact that his team struck four times even without Jamie Vardy getting on the scoresheet, as part of the manager’s mission is to keep diversifying his team’s attacking. Here the full-backs added a potent dimension, and the gifted Barnes looked closer to clinical. “If he can add more numbers [goals and assists] to the quality of his game then he is going to be a superstar,” said Rodgers.
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Dyche has no superstars but can get his team to make life difficult for anyone. Given how tough things are on the transfer front for him – he has no new outfield players so far for this season – he might have thought Leicester were trolling him by announcing their own latest signing just before this game.
Cengiz Under arrived on loan from Roma, with Leicester ensuring they have an option to make the deal permanent if the speedy Turkish winger proves as big a hit this season as Rodgers hopes. Under arrived too late to feature but Rodgers was able to give another outing to Castagne, the £21.5m recruit who delivered another fine performance following his impressive debut in the previous week’s win at West Brom.
The positive spin on Dyche’s plight is that his team selection at least had the merit of being straightforward, as a raft of injuries, including to both their first-choice centre-backs, meant picking the team was only slightly more difficult than deciding what to wear at a nudist beach. Dunne, a 22-year-old Irishman, was given his first top-flight start and did well but Dyche’s problems increased when sore ribs led to Robbie Brady being replaced before half-time.
Burnley were still on level terms at the stage thanks to qualities they will never lose: spirit, strength and set-piece prowess. Wood showed a couple of those when driving them into the lead in the 10th minute, outmuscling Justin to chest down a cross – via a ricochet off the top of an arm – and fire into the net.
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Leicester continued to pass patiently and then, in the 20th minute, Barnes injected something special. He picked out Vardy with a splendid pass from deep and hurtled forward. Vardy duped two defenders and then showed tremendous restraint to turn down a chance to shoot and instead feed Castagne, who teed up Barnes to equalise from 10 yards.
Barnes threatened again seven minutes later but curled a shot over from the edge of the box after service by Youri Tielemans, who was starting to pull strings beautifully in midfield. Then Nick Pope denied Barnes with a fingertip save.
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Burnley survived until the interval but not much longer, as Leicester gained the lead thanks to a cross by Castagne that took a fiendish deflection off Pieters, who had come on in place of Brady. Castagne, in fairness, had done well to get on the end of a sumptuous pass by Tielemans.
Burnley could have equalised near the hour when Jay Rodriguez slipped a pass through to Wood, who scuffed his shot from eight yards. Moments later Justin encapsulated the turnaround in the match by showing Wood how to finish, guiding a low shot into the net from close range after good work by Ayoze Pérez and Praet.
Dunne kept Burnley’s hopes flickering by bundling a header into the net from a free-kick by Dwight McNeil. But Praet soon made sure of victory by firing into the Burnley net from 18 yards. Wood might have rattled Leicester’s nerves more if he had found the net, rather than a post, with a late chance after smart work by Matej Vydra. “We’re stretched at the minute but our mentality was excellent,” said Dyche. “We created some good chances. The way the players kept trying will serve us well.”
