Leicester City 3-2 Millwall: Foxes return to top of Championship table
- Published
- comments
Leicester City fought back to beat lowly Millwall with three second-half goals and return to the top of the Championship.
The Lions stunned their hosts after nine minutes when Murray Wallace swung a cross into the box and Tom Bradshaw flicked a header past Foxes keeper Mads Hermansen.
City turned the game on its head shortly after the break, levelling when Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall's floated cross looped into the net off Jannik Vestergaard's shoulder, before Wilfred Ndidi stood up a deep cross for Patson Daka to nod in an unmissable second from a yard out.
Ricardo Pereira forced home after Tom Cannon's shot was blocked to wrap up the three points, before Kevin Nisbet hammered in a stoppage-time consolation for Millwall from George Saville's corner.
Leicester have hogged the Championship's top spot for the vast majority of the season and moved back to the summit just 24 hours after Ipswich had leapfrogged the Foxes with their victory at Watford on Tuesday.
A 17th win of the season also means the Foxes are the joint-quickest side to reach 50 points in a Championship season, tying with Ipswich, who had reached the landmark in their 21st game.
Millwall, in contrast, are now within a point of the relegation places in 20th position after a fourth defeat in five under Joe Edwards - although two of those losses have come away to the division's top two.
Edwards reacted to a lack of goals by dropping leading scorers Zian Flemming and Nisbet to the bench, and the new broom seemed to work as replacement Bradshaw gave the Lions a shock lead.
Having conceded just a fifth league goal of the season at King Power Stadium, Leicester slowly turned up the heat and could have had a penalty when Abdul Fatawu went down under a challenge from Wes Harding.
Vestergaard's long-range effort also forced a save from Millwall's Matija Sarkic and Ndidi should have done better than blaze over when teed up by Fatawu, but the hosts were largely frustrated before the break by a five-man Lions defence.
Without Jamie Vardy and Kelechi Iheanacho and having managed just two attempts on target in the first 45 minutes, Enzo Maresca's men showed their clinical side to be in the lead just seven minutes after the restart.
The hosts bossed the ball as Millwall sat back and cashed in when Pereira netted - with perhaps a touch off Ndidi - and it proved decisive when uncharacteristically sloppy set-piece defending allowed Millwall a late second, but the hosts saw out a nervy final few minutes.
Leicester City boss Enzo Maresca told BBC Radio Leicester:
"They surprised us a lot. We were expecting them to be 4-4-2 as they had played for all their matches under the new manager and tonight they completely changed so the first half we struggled to find space and create a solution.
"Then the second half we adjust something and it was much better.
"We usually attack with five players so it was five against five and it was difficult, but in the second half we bring one more player in the last line, six against five, and it worked much better.
(On becoming the first Championship slide to reach 52 points in 21 games): "They are all important numbers and they are going to be even more important if at the end of the season we reach the target which is not easy."