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Added time winner Ross Barkley led Aston Villa to second place in the Premier League by beating Leicester 1-0 at King Power Stadium.
The Chelsea midfielder’s 25-yard goal conceded when seasoned defender Jonny Evans fell back was the only quality piece in a pay-per-view game that was in danger of spectators asking for their money back.
In the first goalless draw of the season in the Premier League, Barkley picked up a pass from John McGinn and advanced 10 yards before launching a low shot that passed Kasper Schmeichel.
In truth, neither team deserved to win a game with little entertainment, with the Foxes suffering the absence of Jamie Vardy with a calf injury and Villa strangely low-key considering his last outing was a 7-2 win over Liverpool.
But Barkley’s goal, his second in as many games since joining, extended the only remaining 100 percent top flight record, as a team that escaped relegation by just one point in July found just one point down. behind leader Everton.
Villa has won his first four league games of a season for the first time since the 1930-31 campaign.
Full match details
Chief Dean Smith named the same team that beat the Premier League champions, but there was nowhere near the same clinical fluidity and efficiency.
The telepathy that Jack Grealish and Barkley seemed to have had in that game was on a different wavelength in the first half, allowing teenage rookie Wesley Fofana to advance in the game.
The 19-year-old Leicester center-back, who arrived from Saint-Etienne for £ 30 million on the day of the deadline, slipped safely into the bottom four in the absence of Caglar Soyuncu, failing with a kidnapper injury, and he relaxed with a couple of strong initial challenges and growing in stature.
The fact that Ollie Watkins, Villa’s hat-trick hero against Liverpool, struggled to make a similar impression two weeks later suggested that Fofana had done a good job.
Foxes right-back Timothy Castagne had the best of three shots on goal recorded in the first 45 minutes, all by the hosts, forcing Emiliano Martinez to concede a corner at his near post.
Villa’s best chance fell to Trezeguet on the rare occasion Grealish found space down the left, but fired wide under pressure.
And it wasn’t because the level of defense was so good, with Villa’s Matty Cash booked after resorting to taking Harvey Barnes’s shorts off to prevent the Leicester midfielder from escaping him.
The game was riddled with nasty fouls, 36 in total, and the fact that there were only two more shots on target (nine) than the cautions said all about the rudimentary nature of the game.
He improved little after the break, with Ezri Konsa finishing off a Grealish corner when he should have done better and Youri Tielemans testing Emiliano Martínez twice from distance, once with a deflected low shot and the other with a free kick.
Introducing James Maddison, back after a calf injury, failed to lift the Foxes, who then turned to Islam Slimani for their first appearance with the club in 1,006 days.
Villa finally registered a shot on goal in the 69th minute, Douglas Luiz fired his direct shot at Kasper Schmeichel from distance, but it was the last one in the first minute of added time that made the difference.
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