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?
