Reuters
London, March 2: Leicester City played some brilliant attacking football and had 22 attempts on goal but dropped two vital points in their pursuit of a first Premier League title when they were held to a 2-2 draw Tuesday night at home by West Bromwich Albion.
The leaders were denied victory by a stunning free-kick from Craig Gardner and while they moved three points clear of Tottenham Hotspur, the Spurs will replace them at the top if they win Wednesday at West Ham thanks to a better goal difference.
While Leicester and Spurs are locked in hot pursuit of the title, reigning champions Chelsea continued their revival under interim coach Guus Hiddink with a third successive league win – 2-1 over relegation-threatened Norwich City.
At the top, Leicester, on 57 points with 10 matches to play, would have opened up a five-point gap with a win but manager Claudio Ranieri was far from despondent despite the two dropped points.
“I am very pleased with our performance,” he told the ‘BBC’. “They (players) played so well, there was no panic after the first goal. We played much better than against Norwich (on Saturday). I want to create a lot of chances and sooner or later we score. Tonight we did just that, only victory was missing.”
Leicester fell behind after 11 minutes when West Brom’s Salomon Rondon became the first player to score a league goal against them at the King Power Stadium in 2016.
However, they struck back with a fortuitous deflected shot from Danny Drinkwater and went ahead with a brilliantly-executed first league goal of the season for Andy King on the stroke of half time.
Leicester, however, were pegged back after 50 minutes when Gardner’s 25-metre free-kick left goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel rooted to the spot.
Leicester struck the woodwork twice with efforts from Jamie Vardy and Shinji Okazaki, while Leonardo Ulloa, Saturday’s match-winner against Norwich, almost grabbed another winner in the final few seconds but his effort went just wide.
Meanwhile Chelsea stretched their unbeaten league run to 12 matches since former manager Jose Mourinho left in December after their win at Norwich, where Kenedy scored the fastest goal in the league this season, after 39 seconds, to put the visitors ahead.
The victory was secured by a second goal from Diego Costa, which looked offside, and lifted Chelsea to eighth position in the league table.
Interim coach Hiddink told ‘Sky Sports’: “We didn’t want to go into the battle but they forced us. We were sloppy in the first half, starting well with a beautiful goal but then we were complacent with the last pass. They made our life difficult.”
Norwich pulled a goal back through Nathan Redmond after 68 minutes but defeat saw them slide into the bottom three behind Sunderland.
