Leicester City’s James Maddison scored twice in the first half as the Foxes beat promoted Nottingham Forest 4-0 on Monday to move off the bottom of the Premier League table with their first win of the season.
The visitors could have taken the lead against the run of play in the 22nd minute when a Taiwo Awoniyi shot bounced off the post, but Leicester were 2-0 up five minutes later with the King Power crowd roaring.
In the 25th minute, Maddison’s shot from just outside the box deflected in off the arm of Scott McKenna for the Foxes’ first goal of the game, and Harvey Barnes doubled the lead two minutes later with a spectacular long-range shot.
Forest goalkeeper Dean Henderson’s nightmare continued when Maddison scored his second goal in the 35th minute with a perfectly flighted free kick that flew over the wall and clipped the inside of the post as it went in.
Patson Daka, who replaced Jamie Vardy in the 62nd minute, made it 4-0 in the 73rd minute with a stunning backheel from a Maddison cross.
“It was a season-changing game. And to get the performance we did, hopefully we can push on. I felt we had a horrendous summer — that is the reality — and it continued into the season. We just didn’t play to the levels, but we’ve been able to reset that,”
said Foxes boss Brendan Rodgers.
Leciester, who had only one point from their first seven games and were the only winless team in the Premier League, overtook Forest on goal difference and now sit 19th in the table.
The defeat was Forest’s fifth in a row, piling pressure on manager Steve Cooper as he tries to gel a team full of new signings and Leicester’s first league clean sheet this season.
