Ipswich demolish Leicester

Ipswich 6 Leicester 1

Matt Holland and Pablo Counago scored twice each to emphatically maintain Ipswich’s 100% record this season and inflict a humiliating first defeat of the campaign on Leicester, who were struck by three first-half injury blows.

The victory made it two out of two for Town and showed they had suffered no ill-effects from their midweek trip to Luxembourg for a UEFA Cup tie.

Republic of Ireland midfielder Holland struck the first of his brace in first-half stoppage time, a goal which was almost immediately cancelled out by a Jon Stevenson strike for Leicester, and netted again 12 minutes after the restart.

Darren Ambrose made it 3-1, Nigerian substitute Finidi George got in on the act and Counago completed the rout with a double as the Foxes, whose goalkeeper Ian Walker had saved a Marcus Stewart penalty midway through the first half, crumbled disappointingly.

This had looked like proving an evenly-matched encounter between teams who were relegated from the Premiership last season and had made the ideal start to their campaign to bounce straight back.

But instead it became one-way traffic after Leicester lost a trio of their most influential players before 40 minutes had elapsed.

First of them to leave the field was defender Gerry Taggart, who missed almost all of last season due to injury and was forced off after 17 minutes to be replaced by Jon Ashton.

And within four minutes of his introduction, the 19-year-old had handled the ball to concede the penalty which Stewart struck straight at Walker.

Ipswich were not deterred by the miss, however, and although they had been second best until that point they quickly began to get on top.

Their cause was helped further when Leicester boss Micky Adams had to reshuffle his side due to two more injury setbacks in the space of seven minutes.

Turkey midfielder Muzzy Izzet was next to go off, with Stefan Oakes his substitute, and Nicky Summerbee had to make way for Stevenson.

Just when it looked like the first half would be goalless Holland broke the deadlock with a sweetly-struck shot into the bottom corner of the net, but within two minutes Stevenson had replied with a brilliant 25-yard curling effort.

The second period was all Ipswich and Holland restored their lead with his second goal, driving the ball home from an Ambrose cross.

Ambrose turned scorer as he headed home a centre by George, who then found the net himself when drilling the ball into the net from close range.

But the rout did not end there as Counago, less than two minutes after replacing Stewart, scored from a tight angle and then latched onto a Jermaine Wright through-ball to compound the visitors’ misery in stoppage time.