Vardy defies the odds to earn equaliser for Foxes

There is still proof of Leicester’s penchant for the improbable and it comes in the inimitable figure of Jamie Vardy.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Leicester City 1

Vardy (57)

Tottenham Hotspur 1

Porro (29)

His career has been an exercise in the remarkable, and equalising against a Tottenham team who had appeared utterly dominant ranks low in his list of unlikely feats. But as long as Leicester have the last remnant of their title-winning team, there is the sense they can conjure some of the spirit of 5000-1 outsiders.

And if those were scarcely the odds before Vardy levelled, Leicester’s return to the top flight, eight years after they won it, was shaping up as a chastening affair. For almost an hour, they were outclassed. But not, it transpired, out of the game. Steve Cooper became the eighth Leicester manager to benefit from a Vardy goal, his own introduction to a new club smoothed by a man signed by Nigel Pearson.

And the Vardy story, one so outlandish it once attracted Hollywood’s attention, always has another chapter. He was playing in non-league at 25. He is back in the Premier League at 37. It is not a normal trajectory but then Vardy and normality parted company quite some time ago. In a match when Tottenham’s £65m signing Dominic Solanke had seemed the striker likeliest to score, when the Leicester luminary shining was the returning James Maddison, Vardy contrived to upstage both. Maddison, at least, should not be surprised. He has seen this before.