Late scenes ensured Leicester took all 3 points away from St. James’ Park, as they topped newly promoted Newcastle 3-2

The Foxes looked absolutely dreadful in the opening exchanges and were 1-0 down on 4 minutes after Dwight Gayle was able to beat the offside trap down the left hand side and square it in for Joselu, who easily tapped home.

2 minutes later and Leicester nearly gave up another after Wilfred Ndidi was cheaply dispossessed in midfield. Mikel Merino played it in to Gayle, who was once again able to get in behind the Leicester defence. Luckily for the Foxes, he fired wide of Kasper Schmeichel’s goal.

Leicester finally woke up around the 20 minute mark after a sloppy pass from Merino in midfield gave Riyad Mahrez all kinds of space to curl an absolute screamer of an equalizer into the back of the net from 25 yards to make it 1-1.

The Foxes had a real penalty shout moments later after Jamie Vardy was played through on goal, only to be taken out by DeAndre Yedlin near the penalty spot. Although there was definitely enough contact to warrant a penalty, referee Neil Swarbrick waved play on.

Leicester did eventually take the lead in the 2nd half courtesy of a nice team goal that saw Riyad Mahrez ping a spectacular cross-field ball to Marc Albrighton to cushion down for Demari Gray, whose deflected shot sailed into the top corner to give the Foxes the 2-1 lead.

Despite looking the far better of the two sides for the majority of the half, Leicester’s inability to defend from set pieces came back to haunt them. A corner for Newcastle in the 73rd minute completely stumped the defence, and after multiple failed clearances, fell to Gayle who slotted it home to make it 2-2.

Leicester nearly found themselves behind a couple minutes later after Shinji Okazaki took a boot to the head and was forced off for treatment. While that was all going on, Gayle got the better of Harry Maguire and fired a shot just wide of goal.

Despite looking the weaker of the two sides for the remaining 15 minutes, Leicester got themselves a late winner after a ball was played up to Vardy who was able to hold off Florian Lejeune and square it to Okazaki to control on the penalty spot. As Okazaki looked to get his shot away, substitute Ayoze Pérez, looking to clear, buried it into the back of his own net to give the Foxes the 3-2 victory.

The win brings Leicester up to 8th in the table and in striking distance of the European places with a couple winnable fixtures against Southampton and Crystal Palace in this coming week.