Gary Lineker’s ‘awful’ verdict tempers his mood over Leicester City controversy
The City icon has been giving his thoughts on his boyhood club’s FA Cup exit at the hands of Manchester United, and on Harry Maguire’s late offside winning goal
Gary Lineker is not wallowing in despair over Leicester City’s controversial FA Cup exit because he believes they’re not good enough to challenge for the trophy anyway.
City were knocked out of the cup in the fourth round on Friday evening after their former centre-back Harry Maguire scored a 93rd-minute winner for Manchester United. Replays showed he was clearly offside, but with no VAR in use, the goal stood.
Lineker was not impressed by the quality of the fixture, describing it as “awful”. Seeing City play that way, he’s not “devastated” that his boyhood club have been knocked out.
He said on The Rest is Football podcast: “There’s no fifth round for Leicester. I must say, that was an awful game of football. There was a lot of one-touch football. Man United had a touch, Leicester had a touch, Man United had a touch, Leicester had a touch. It wasn’t great.
“Obviously I’m entitled to whinge at this offside decision but I wasn’t devastated because I was thinking: ‘I just can’t see how Leicester could possibly win the FA Cup this season playing that way.’ But I’m surprised he missed it
“I’ve always been a big fan of VAR! This new technology, semi-automated, is coming in before the end of the season. It’s coming in a few weeks too late for Leicester.”
Their FA Cup exit means they now have just the Premier League to focus on this season. They resume their survival bid against Arsenal this weekend, City currently sitting 18th in the table, two points from safety.
The Leicester City side that won the Premier League was the stuff of dreams.
Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester side in the 15/16 season was simply electric. The ‘Tinker Man’ had the likes of N’Golo Kante, Riyadh Mahrez and a prime Jamie Vardy. Class.
Vardy in particular was a major catalyst. His goals were critical, and he broke records along the way. But whilst Vardy was banging them in, one Leicester striker couldn’t hit a barn door, and subsequently, was shipped off.
Now, his career couldn’t look much more different. He’s a history-maker in one of the best leagues in the world.
Andre Kramaric didn’t succeed at Leicester City
On the 8th of January 2015, Leicester City announced that they had agreed a deal to sign highly-rated Croatian forward Andrej Kramaric from Rijeka.
After some issues with a work permit, eight days later, the Foxes announced Kramaric had officially joined the club, for an at-the-time, club record fee of £9 million.
He made his debut the day after signing, replacing Vardy for the last 25 minutes of a 0–1 home defeat against Stoke City.
Chances were few and far between for Kramaric with Vardy in the Foxes squad, but when he did feature, he simply couldn’t score.
