{"id":379351,"date":"2025-12-30T01:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T01:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/379351\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T01:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T01:08:07","slug":"leicester-city-2-1-derby-county-foxes-ease-pressure-on-boss-cifuentes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/379351\/","title":{"rendered":"Leicester City 2-1 Derby County: Foxes ease pressure on boss Cifuentes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The result means Leicester will sit 12th in the second-tier table at the start of 2026, a year in which the club mark the 10-year anniversary of their astonishing Premier League title win \u2013 a sporting triumph in which the 5,000-1 outsiders confounded expectations<\/a> to gatecrash their way to English football’s biggest prize.<\/p>\n

While Leicester are six places adrift of the play-off spots, and there remain loud grumbles of discontent among supporters about the current state of the club, Cifuentes’ side are just four points behind the top six and among a pack of promotion hopefuls.<\/p>\n

Despite the loss, Derby also remain among the play-off aspirants at the midway stage of the season, being just two points and two places below their regional rivals.<\/p>\n

There had been a near 12-year gap between Leicester and Derby league meetings before the rivalry was resurrected earlier this month, and De Cordova-Reid has relished it \u2013 with his two goals against the Rams in 23 days being among his four in six matches.<\/p>\n

But the lead he gave the Foxes on Monday lasted just three minutes, with Brewster coming up with an equally clinical first-time finish after meeting a piercing low cross from Callum Elder.<\/p>\n

Both sides carved out half chances before James made the most of a searching ball forward from Luke Thomas, outmuscling Liam Thompson on the edge of the box before composing himself to find the bottom corner.<\/p>\n

Derby pressed for a leveller after the break against a Leicester side hit hard by injury, with Hamza Choudhury limping off and Aaron Ramsey lasting only three minutes after coming on as a second-half substitute.<\/p>\n

And still, the only save of consequence after the break came from Derby’s Zetterstrom as he tipped a misdirected header from Ebou Adams over the bar to ensure an own goal did not increase the Leicester lead late on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The result means Leicester will sit 12th in the second-tier table at the start of 2026, a year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-379351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}