Jamie Vardy fires back to inspire rampant Leicester to shock Liverpool

It was a surreal evening and it is hard to know where to start other than to say that the Leicester City players clearly felt they had a point to prove. Debate will have raged long into the night about what this exhilarating performance says about their players and the club’s decision to sack Claudio Ranieri, yet the only thing that matters for the owners is that the Premier League champions are back.

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the chairman, and Aiyawatt, his son and the vice-chairman, will feel a sense of vindication about the controversial call they made to dismiss Ranieri and Leicester, inspired by Jamie Vardy, recorded their first Premier League win of the year to climb up to 15th place in the table.

Leicester were unrecognisable from the side who had been sleepwalking towards the Championship and much more like the all-encompassing team of last season. Vardy scored twice – his first Premier League goals since December – and Danny Drinkwater, another of the stars of the title-winning campaign, chose an opportune time to register his first of the season with a fine shot from outside the area.

One of the abiding images of the evening, however, came on 65 minutes, when Ranieri’s name was sung with gusto for the first time. Lighting up the stadium with their mobile phones, the home supporters stood to applaud the Italian manager who was gone but not forgotten.

Moments later Philippe Coutinho pulled a goal back but this was never going to be Liverpool’s night. Jürgen Klopp’s team were blown away as soon as Leicester started and on this evidence, that 16-day break without a game did them more harm than good. It was a chastening night for them, in particular Lucas Leiva, who was asked to deputise for the injured Dejan Lovren at centre-half and never gave the impression that he was up to the job.

Vardy, back to his best, gave the Brazilian the runaround and on another night could easily have scored a hat-trick. Instead he finished with two goals, just as he did in the corresponding fixture last season, when a Hollywood screenwriter came to watch him for the first time and it seemed as though everything Vardy and Leicester did turned to gold.

It has been a different story for so much of this season and it was impossible not to wonder what would have been going through Ranieri’s mind as Leicester turned back the clock with a dynamic display that was full of aggressive running, with Wilfred Ndidi catching the eye in central midfield. They pressed high up the pitch – something they have rarely done over the last couple of months – and carried a genuine threat whenever they attacked.

The only surprise was that we had to wait until the 28th minute for the opening goal. By half-time, however, Leicester had doubled their lead, Craig Shakespeare was being asked to wave to the home supporters and the club’s owners had big smiles on their face in the directors’ box.

It was a stunning first half that raises all sorts of questions about the players’ motivation, Ranieri’s tactics and where that performance had been hiding for so long. Shakespeare made the point that Leicester had played with similar verve and conviction against Manchester City under Ranieri, yet this seemed different because of the circumstances.

Vardy’s opening goal was Leicester’s first in the Premier League for 638 minutes and owed much to Marc Albrighton’s vision as well as Lucas’s poor defending. Albrighton’s perfectly weighted pass exposed the Brazilian and Vardy did the rest with the minimum of fuss, coolly dispatching a low shot inside Simon Mignolet’s near post.

That goal had been coming. Shinji Okazaki, restored to the starting lineup, had come close in the sixth minute with a header that Mignolet turned around a post. Robert Huth wastefully headed Albrighton’s corner over the bar and Vardy, after a brilliant first touch that took him around Lucas, should have scored with a left-foot volley that the Liverpool goalkeeper managed to claw away.

Liverpool had threatened only sporadically, although Kasper Schmeichel did make a decent save to smother Coutinho’s shot. Leicester, however, kept coming back for more and scored a second in spectacular style.

James Milner’s header from Albrighton’s floated centre dropped invitingly for Drinkwater about 25 yards from goal, yet there was still much to admire about the way the midfielder expertly speared a controlled volley into the far corner of the net.

Klopp, not surprisingly, sent Liverpool out early for the second half and for a period the visitors put Leicester under pressure. Yet it was the home team who scored what seemed like the decisive goal of the evening when Vardy struck again on the hour mark. This time the architect was Christian Fuchs, who created a yard of space with a neat turn to dig out a right-foot cross that Vardy met with a superb glancing header.

Coutinho, picked out by Emre Can, beat Schmeichel with a nice finish from 18 yards a few minutes later but there was never going to be a way back for Liverpool, who looked like a team who had feared the worst from the moment Ranieri was sacked. Leicester, in contrast, appeared liberated.