They are Leicester City, they are top of the league. For once the story was not about Jamie Vardy, unable to equal Jimmy Dunne’s top-flight record of scoring in a dozen consecutive games, but about his impressive deputy Riyad Mahrez. The winger reached double figures for the season with a clinical hat-trick to send Claudio Ranieri’s team back to the top of the tree, strengthening their case to be this year’s Christmas No 1.


No longer can chants of “we’re going on a European tour” be considered tongue-in-cheek. Leicester were rampant here, delivering a display of such dazzling counterattacking play that the hosts were lucky to be still in with an outside chance at half-time.