As Kieran McKenna, in a deep blue trench coat, marched back towards the tunnel, the joyous Ipswich Town supporters serenading him from a corner of this stadium launched into a chorus about winning the Championship. That honour will likely elude them – Leicester have topped the division since September and remain favourites to clinch the title – but it is not as absurd a thought as it would have been at the outset of the season when promotion from League One was still fresh in the memory.
Jeremy Sarmiento fired in an 89th-minute equaliser at Leicester to leapfrog Southampton and return to second, seven points behind the leaders. “We have come a long way in a short space of time,” the Ipswich manager said.
Enzo Maresca was matter of fact about the implications of both the best and worst-case scenarios playing out in this contest being much the same but that will do little to appease him after Leicester squandered the chance to open up a 10-point gap at the summit. Ipswich, stirred and revitalised by McKenna, a prodigious manager schooled at Tottenham and Manchester United, attacked the second half with gusto before the substitutes Sarmiento and Omari Hutchinson, on loan from Brighton and Chelsea respectively, injected further zest.
With a minute of the regular 90 to play, Sarmiento pounced when the Leicester goalkeeper, Mads Hermansen, failed to keep out a long-distance strike by Massimo Luongo at the end of an absorbing contest. “For me, it will be a race right until the end,” Maresca said of the increasingly congested picture at the top. “And don’t forget Leeds, the Championship is very long.”
A quick glance at the team sheet and the temptation is to assume little has changed since Leicester were relegated last season. After all, Ricardo Pereira, James Justin and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall are in the starting lineup and Jamie Vardy, 37 earlier this month, was a late substitute, back in the squad after a knee injury. Kelechi Iheanacho and Patson Daka would be involved were they not at the Africa Cup of Nations. The same goes for Wilfred Ndidi, who is sidelined through injury. Even some of the summer signings feel old, Harry Winks running midfield, Conor Coady on the bench. Nothing new here, then?
Only this is an altogether different, free-wheeling proposition compared with the team that was meekly ushered out of the top flight. Maresca, watching on from an executive box owing to a touchline ban, is a disciple of Pep Guardiola and the Manchester City influence is immediately apparent. Hamza Choudhury, who spent last season on loan at Watford, is playing as an inverted left-back and Wout Faes is attempting Cruyff turns on the edge of the opposition six-yard box.
These days the captain Pereira, signed as a right-back from Porto for £22m six years ago, is a marauding midfielder. Jannik Vestergaard, frozen out last season to the point that he trained alone, has been reborn as the key pillar at the heart of Leicester’s defence, conducting their rhythm from the off.
There are so many moving parts to this Leicester incarnation, a wonderful world of midfield rotations, it is almost as if each player is a different condiment on the kitchen table. Vaclav Hladky, the Ipswich goalkeeper, made the first meaningful save of the match when pushing Choudhury’s whipped effort from the edge of the area to safety with both hands on 26 minutes. Dewsbury-Hall and Tom Cannon, who joined from Everton last summer, passed up chances before Stephy Mavididi lured Leif Davis into inadvertently turning his cross past Hladky. Ipswich were not quite themselves. “There was a real conviction in the dressing room at half-time that if we’re going to lose, we’ll do it in our style,” McKenna said.
Four minutes into the second half, Davis’s zipped free-kick forced Cannon into an unorthodox clearance. Hermansen, an important part of the jigsaw assembled by Maresca and Leicester in the off-season, then thwarted Wes Burns, pushing the Ipswich winger’s side-foot volley over the bar. Ipswich, all in orange, began the second half with purpose and grew in confidence.
Cannon tested Hladky but Leicester had to survive a few hairy moments, including a penalty appeal against Vestergaard. There was a sense they were inviting problems. Nathan Broadhead hounded Hermansen into a panicked clearance and suddenly Leicester were less assured. Ipswich prospered when Sarmiento reacted fastest when Hermansen’s handling presented the visitors with a golden opportunity. In the end, both teams probably got what they deserved. “We’re competing with teams that we’ve got no right to,” McKenna said.
