Castagne and Maddison on target to give Leicester win over Brentford

Crisis? What crisis? Into the top half of the Premier League and the quarter-finals of European competition, important players coming back from injury to enable rotation, Leicester City saw off Brentford with some comfort and a couple of memorable early goals from Timothy Castagne and James Maddison. They even came up with a ploy to counter their opponents’ set-piece threat, so no wonder Brendan Rodgers, notwithstanding Yoane Wissa’s late goal, was smiling in the spring sunshine at the final whistle.

Brentford rallied in the second half, as Leicester tired in their 42nd match of the season, following Thursday’s Europa Conference League trip to Rennes, and started to believe they could cope without Christian Eriksen, sidelined with Covid, when Wissa cut back to score from the edge of the penalty area five minutes from time. But Leicester, now defeated only once in 12 home games, deserved to hold out and, after successive wins over Norwich and Burnley, Brentford, eight points clear of the relegation zone, still have some work to do to be certain of retaining their status.

Leicester’s goals came from almost exactly the same spot but from vastly contrasting sources. Castagne produced such a brilliant right-footed shot from just outside the left corner of the penalty area, after receiving Harvey Barnes’s short pass, for only his third goal since joining from Atlanta in September 2020, that he ran away with his hands to his head, as if in disbelief. On his first start of the year, after a thigh injury, this was some way to mark his return.

That shot swerved powerfully into the far top corner, in the 20th minute, and 13 minutes later, David Raya, the Brentford goalkeeper, was picking the ball out of the other corner. Maddison