Leicester draw hope from ugly stalemate

Blackburn Rovers 0 Leicester City

It was not pretty – in fact, for most of the match, it was downright ugly. But scrapping successfully for a precious point at Ewood Park counts as considerable progress for Dave Bassett's side.

The point was not enough to lift Leicester City off the foot of the Premiership, but it shows that they could be capable once more of preventing teams from playing against them.

They did that effectively last night – the effect on Blackburn's composure all too apparent in their six bookings – and they even had by far the best chance to win a dismal game. Unfortunately, it fell to Adi Akinbiyi, a hard working front-runner who gives a sorry impression at the moment that he could not score if he was the only man on the pitch.

His golden opportunity for his first Premiership goal of the season came two minutes before half-time, when Henning Berg's misdirected header and Nils Eric Johansson's slip presented him with the ball, one-on-one with Brad Friedel.

The goalkeeper should have been helpless, but Akinbiyi drove his first effort against his legs and was then hit on the chest by the rebound. On another night, it might have bounced in for a lucky goal; inevitably for a player in his current run, it went wide.

"Sometimes those rebounds go straight in," said Bassett, a sympathetic boss, who gave the striker the credit he deserved for his wholehearted efforts to break his barren streak.

"He keeps going. Right to the end, he was causing them problems, but he couldn't get that final touch that would have made him the hero."

Akinbiyi almost set up Andy Impey eight minutes from the end and it would have been no injustice if Leicester had snatched all three points from a lethargic home side.

"I'm delighted with the point, but I would have liked all three because I'm always greedy," said Bassett.

"There's still a hell of a lot of hard work to do, but tonight it looked as though we've started to get through to them."

Until two minutes from the end, when Matt Jansen had a header saved from David Dunn's cross, Leicester had the better of the few chances in a generally barren game.

That left Graeme Souness bitterly disappointed with what he termed the worst Blackburn performance since he took over.

"It was a miserable game," he said. "One to forget. That's by far and away the worst we've played all season. Maybe we had some players now who feel they are good players and don't have to work as hard as they could. I also give Leicester some credit. They're bottom of the league and came here and worked harder than us."

That hard work was particularly noticeable in midfield, Robbie Savage hounded Dunn in his inimitably abrasive way. Savage and Dennis Wise were booked, but Souness was at a loss to explain how Rob Styles managed to put six of his own men in the book.

The last of them was the most bizarre, Craig Hignett being cautioned for taking a free-kick too quickly. The irony of David Beckham having scored with the same ploy at Ewood this season reduced Souness to rare speechlessness after the game.

"But the referee wasn't the reason we didn't play tonight," admitted Souness. "We've not excited the crowd, we've not entertained the crowd, and that's the first time I've sat here and said that."

Blackburn Rovers (4-4-2): Friedel 5; Neill 5, Berg 6, Johansson 5, Bjornebye 5 (Hignett, 69 5); Johnson 4 (Gillespie, 64 5) Flitcroft 4, Tugay 5, Dunn 6; Grabbi 4 (Bent, 39 4), Jansen 4. Substitutes not used: Short, Kelly (gk).

Leicester City (4-4-2): Walker 5; Marshall 5, Elliott 6, Sinclair 6, Davidson 5; Savage 6, Wise 5, Izzet 6, Impey 5; Akinbiyi 5, Benjamin 4 (Scowcroft, 70 5). Substitutes not used: Royce (gk), Heath, Piper, Oakes.

Referee: R Styles (Waterlooville).