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WILFRED NDIDI, COMPOUNDS LAMPARD WOES, FIRES LEICESTER TO TOPPLE MAN UNITED ON PREMIERSHIP TABLE

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Nigeria’s Wilfred Ndidi celebrates goal against Chelsea.

Nigeria’s Wilfred Ndidi opened scoring as Leicester compounded Chelsea’ s misery in the English Premier League.

And so, the pressure continues to mount on Chelsea’s Frank Lampard after his Blues fell to a 2-0 defeat away to Leicester City on Tuesday evening.

The result also means that Leicester have overtaken Manchester United on top of the league table. Chelsea lie eighth on 29 points.

Lampard came into Tuesday night’s game as the coach with the joint-worst record under Roman Abramovich, level only with Andre Villas-Boas, and things didn’t get any better for the former midfielder.

Leicester led after just six minutes through Wilfred Ndidi. A cleverly worked corner ended in a cutback that found Marc Albrighton free on the edge of the area, but his mishit fell to Ndidi, who was able to drive his own strike in off the post for the opener.

Sports Village Square recalls that two years ago, Ndidi also scored against Chelsea. Edouard Mendy did well to deny Jamie Vardy Leicester’s second, and then Chelsea momentarily had hope as they were awarded a penalty for a Johnny Evans foul on Christian Pulisic.

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VAR, however, intervened and ruled that the tackle had taken place outside of the area, with Mason Mount then firing over with the subsequent freekick.

Leicester went down the other end immediately to double their lead. Antonio Rudiger got caught out by a simple ball forward, being drawn towards Vardy rather than following the ball, and James Maddison was then able to calmly finish past Mendy.

The second half saw Chelsea come into the game a little more, but the hosts’ lead was never really at risk, and Brendan Rodgers’ side saw the game out to go top of the Premier League table.

Timo Werner looked to have pulled a late goal back in the last five minutes after coming off the bench, but his strike was ruled out for a slight offside, while Hakim Ziyech had a chance of his own in stoppage time.

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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