Bournemouth grab lifeline at expense of 10-man Leicester with Solanke double

There simply was no better time for Dominic Solanke to score his first Premier League goals in a Bournemouth shirt. The striker’s double ensured Eddie Howe’s side rallied from behind to dent Leicester’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League with an improbable victory that relights their fight for survival.

Solanke scored in the league for the first time in 788 days before wrapping up a priceless victory with his second goal but it was a sore evening for Leicester, who imploded after being reduced to 10 men when Caglar Soyuncu’s minute of madness handed Bournemouth a lifeline.

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In midweek, Howe said he could muster half a smile after halting a run of five successive defeats and he embraced Solanke and punched the air with both fists after a first victory in 10 matches. As he conceded, it could yet mean nothing or everything but, most important, Bournemouth are alive with three games to go, though the first is a daunting trip to Manchester City on Wednesday, when they are likely to be without injured defender Nathan Aké after he left the stadium on crutches.

“We had tactical issues to solve at half-time so I’m pleased because in that moment when everything looked like it was conspiring against us, we found something from somewhere,” said the Bournemouth manager. “It was nice to celebrate that moment with Dom and it keeps us in there. We will not stop until the end.”

As for Leicester, they face a clutch of teams hunting them down in fourth before the curtain falls on a bizarre season.

Everything had gone wrong even before a ball was kicked from a Bournemouth perspective, with Watford, West Ham and Aston Villa all picking up victories and, at half-time, it looked to be game over. A hairy start festered into Jamie Vardy giving Leicester a deserved lead after seizing on the last of a series of calamitous errors, the division’s leading scorer scooping the ball over the line when Lloyd Kelly attempted to flick clear. It was a painful goal to concede from the moment Ayoze Pérez pickpocketed Dan Gosling on halfway to free Kelechi Iheanacho and Vardy feasted on the leftovers.

But Bournemouth showed enormous mettle to record victory in a league game despite trailing at the interval for the first time in almost two years. The catalyst was a penalty from Junior Stanislas midway through an extraordinary second period as Leicester unravelled.

The equaliser stemmed from a comical error by Kasper Schmeichel, who inexplicably smacked the ball against Wilfred Ndidi, inviting Callum Wilson to round Schmeichel, with the Leicester pair combining to bring him down. Stanislas fired home down the middle, leading to an agitated Schmeichel to wallop the ball into an empty stand. “Let’s go again,” roared Howe on the touchline. His team listened.

Leicester switched off from the restart and, almost immediately, Diego Rico slipped in Solanke, who drove forward unchallenged and drilled through the legs of Schmeichel. Then Soyuncu let his frustrations get the better of him, petulantly kicking out at Wilson to give those at Stockley Park an easy decision at the end of a wretched week. Bournemouth still had more to give, with Schmeichel wrong-footed after a Stanislas shot deflected off Jonny Evans and then Solanke sealed victory, seizing on a sloppy pass by Christian Fuchs before wriggling into the box and slotting home with ease.

In the end, it was Bournemouth who could have run away with things, the substitute Sam Surridge thrashing wide after latching on to another uncharacteristic error.

“I am very, very sorry to the fans for the second half particularly,” said Schmeichel. “They came out with a different mentality but we have to deal with that. We have to reflect on that and work harder if we are going to achieve anything this season. It’s an eye-opener.”