Vieites' vital moment as unpopular decision becomes masterstroke

CommentsSportopinionJordan Blackwell12:49, 11 Mar 2026If Leicester City do indeed avoid falling into League One and dodge the damaging consequences of relegation, they perhaps now have a pivotal moment on which they can say their survival hinged.

Given the evidence put forward by City this season, Jakub Stolarczyk’s penalty save was crucial.

City had looked comfortable at that point. They were leading 2-0 and had made a decent start to the second half. But that means little.

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Gary Rowett has spoken about nerves in the group amid the long wait for a victory. Had City conceded once, an implosion would have been feared.

But when they gifted Bristol City a route to recovery from the penalty spot, Stolarczyk stepped up to deny Emil Riis. Buoyed by that moment, one that perhaps deflated the Robins, City did not concede a single shot in the half-hour from the penalty save to the full-time whistle.

While it may have felt like an individual moment of excellence from Stolarczyk, the penalty save was in fact a team effort.

Upon the awarding of the spot-kick, substitute goalkeeper Fran Vieites was seen running down the touchline to pass on a message.

This was Bristol City’s first penalty of the season and so it may not have been known who would step up in such circumstances.

But Riis took, and scored, three penalties during his spell at Preston. He went the same way every time.

City will have done their preparation, and so Vieites’ message was perhaps just a reminder to Stolarczyk of where Riis likes to go. The Pole did the rest, getting his body in the way and ensuring he did not spill the ball for a cheap rebound.

Stolarczyk told the club: “I don’t want to give away too much but we always take our time with penalties a few days before the game, analyse them and go through them.

“It’s a decision from the whole goalkeeping union. Everyone has their part to say and then we come up with a decision.”

It’s a moment where preparation, teamwork and individual quality has combined to produce a vital save, one that could come to define City’s path to safety.

Perhaps also contributing to the win was Rowett’s two teams approach. The manager has subtly been suggesting that he doesn’t think City are fit enough and so tried something different to correct that.

It started with an unpopular decision. Supporters seemed unhappy with nearly all of the changes Rowett did and didn’t make to his starting line-up.

Fans did not want Jordan Ayew to replace Patson Daka, nor Hamza Choudhury to replace Ricardo Pereira. They wanted Jamaal Lascelles to come in for Caleb Okoli and Divine Mukasa to be picked ahead of Bobby De Cordova-Reid.

They will have been happy to have Jordan James back in the 11 for the first time in two months but dropping Harry Winks to accommodate him also raised eyebrows.

But what it did allow was for Rowett to bring on his more technical players for the final 20 minutes in Winks, Ricardo and Mukasa, as well as a burst of energy in Daka up front.

Up to their introduction, City had 37 per cent of the ball in the second half. That rose to 46 per cent after the subs. That cut down the number of opportunities Bristol City had to venture into City territory.

Rowett said: “Before the game, myself and Callum (Davidson, assistant manager) chatted at length about how it feels, at the moment, we’ve almost got to have two teams, a 60-minute team and then a 30-minute team.

“It feels like there’s different periods in the game, maybe towards the end of games, where that anxiety of not keeping a clean sheet or not winning games often enough manifests itself in what looks like a negative way.

“We purposely almost left real strength on the bench to then change and being able to bring Patson, Winks, Divine and Ricardo on, it actually changed the game completely.”

There are two players in the City squad that Rowett had worked with prior to joining the club and they combined to kickstart the win, James swinging in a free-kick for Ben Nelson to head in.

Rowett said upon his arrival that he wanted to see more of Nelson as an attacking threat at set-pieces, the defender having scored a crucial goal during Oxford’s run to survival last season. Now he’s delivered, getting himself between two defenders to power a header into the net.

Most interestingly is that it’s the third time in four games that City have scored from a free-kick. Half of the goals under Rowett have been from set-pieces.

The manager wouldn’t take any credit himself though, pointing to set-piece coach Andy Hughes. Indeed, after Nelson’s header went in, first-team coaches Andy King and Adam Sadler congratulated Hughes on the bench.

According to Opta stats, City now rank joint-seventh in the Championship for set-piece goals, with 13. That seems to have been helped by some good finishing though, as they’re still down in 17th for expected goals from set-pieces.

But it is an area that has long needed improvement, especially because the likes of Abdul Fatawu and Stephy Mavididi win so many free-kicks, and so those recent goals have been very welcome.

Rowett said: “Hughesy does all the set-piece work and does the details really well. They do a lot of practice.

“Part of being a centre-half is giving us that threat from set-pieces as well. Good centre-halves get four or five a season and it makes a big difference. You’ve seen that with Caleb’s goal the other week and Ben's goal today.”

With James replacing Winks in the starting line-up and then playing in a more advanced role, it often left Oliver Skipp at the base of the midfield by himself. He thrived, and was City’s star man on the night.

It’s not that Skipp has played poorly of late, but perhaps he was able to excel because he had to do all of the work in that area of the pitch.

There was nobody else to race back and protect the back four. There was nobody else to receive the ball and carry it forward. So Skipp had to do it all, and he did it very well.

Rowett was particularly pleased with one moment in the second half where Skipp got back to the far post and headed clear a deep cross to prevent an opportunity.

He impressed supporters in the way he used his body to get between Bristol City players and the ball, and then manoeuvred himself out of the tight spots and into space, starting plenty of attacks.

It’s difficult to say that City are better off without Winks and with Skipp as the sole man at the base of the midfield. Winks is still the better player on the ball. But it does feel like Skipp is able to come more into his own when there’s nobody alongside him.

It was City’s lowest attendance of the season and therefore their lowest in 12 years, but the performance saw a rise in the volume of the crowd at the King Power Stadium.

James’ return to the starting line-up meant there were plenty of renditions of his chant, but the man who got the most namechecks was the manager, with ‘Gary Rowett’s Blue Army!’ sung throughout.

It’s not that City’s previous few bosses didn’t have their names chanted, but it certainly didn’t feel like they were taken to as quickly as Rowett has been.

It may help that he’s a former player. It may also help that there’s a straightforwardness to him. He’s not trying to do anything special, just get results. He was grateful that his name was chanted, but was not willing to take too much acclaim.

He said: “I’d be an idiot to say it doesn’t mean anything to me. Of course it means something. It means we’re doing a lot of the right things on the pitch, which is all I’m bothered about.

“Myself and Callum are former players here, so it’s nice to have that connection. But the only way you build that is if people see what a slight change to what’s happening on the pitch.

“It’s not just us. It’s all the staff behind it. You come in and there's a lot of staff who have worked incredibly hard. It would be very easy for them to sit in the background when two new people come in.

“But every person has stepped up. There’s been a nice feeling of a galvanised group that all want to do well and all want to play their part. We’re just two people who are just trying to give it a different flavour and direction.

“It was a real team effort today, with the players, fans and staff all together. We want to feel that more often this season.”

It’s only one win, but there is already a discussion among supporters about what happens to Rowett in the event City stay up. It seems many would like him to remain.

It’s not a conversation to be had yet, really, as City’s destiny is still unknown. But now they’ve got the hoodoo of the winless and clean-sheet-less runs off their backs, the whole club can be more optimistic of survival.

If that's achieved, that's when discussions can be had over what's next. City may have won, but they still need another four or five to ensure they're in the Championship next season.

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