Prior to being summoned back to parent club Chelsea, Italian starlet Cesare Casadei stole the show in the first half of Leicester’s FA Cup third-round encounter with Millwall at The Den, heading in from a Marc Albrighton delivery before teeing up Ricardo Pereira for a warranted second.
Tom Cannon proceeded to add a third for Leicester, latching onto a magnificent long pass from Callum Doyle, but only after Duncan Watmore had given Millwall a lifeline, and the deficit was cut back down to one again when Zian Flemming converted a well-worked corner routine.
Flemming’s 86th-minute strike came too late to save Millwall’s bacon, though, as Leicester reached round four of the FA Cup for the fifth year running and recorded their 16th win in the competition since the start of the 2017-18 season; only Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea have more triumphs under their belt in that time.
However, the beating of Millwall was not an immediate sign of things to come for Leicester, who have since accrued just one point from their last two Championship affairs, suffering a surprise 3-1 loss to Coventry City before blowing a 1-0 lead in a two-goal draw with promotion rivals Ipswich Town.
The destiny of the Championship title is certainly not a foregone conclusion just yet, but Enzo Maresca’s team boast an unassailable seven-point lead over the Tractor Boys with 28 games played, and Tuesday’s stalemate did at least stretch the hosts’ unbeaten streak at the King Power Stadium to a respectable six matches.
Likewise, a one-goal victory over Championship counterparts was all that Birmingham City required to advance in the FA Cup, although both Blues and Koji Miyoshi needed two bites at the cherry to eliminate Hull City at the third-round stage.
Ten days on from a tense 1-1 draw on Hull’s turf, the Tigers silenced a sparsely-populated St Andrew’s through Jason Lokilo’s 16th-minute finish, but Jay Stansfield restored parity for Mowbray’s men before Miyoshi’s injury-time winner, which he inadvertently set himself up for with an initial miskick.
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By sending the Tigers home with their tails tucked between their legs, Birmingham marched to their inaugural victory over Mowbray, who only needed to wait another four days for his second at the Blues helm, masterminding a 2-1 Championship success over Stoke City thanks to Stansfield’s strike and Juninho Bacuna’s exquisite free kick.
Establishing an eight-point lead over the relegation zone and stringing together a four-game unbeaten run in all tournaments, Birmingham have adjusted to life with the well-versed Mowbray at the helm and now bid to reach the FA Cup fifth round for just the second time in 12 years.
On that occasion, Birmingham were coincidentally denied a place in the quarter-finals by Leicester in the 2019-20 season, and in their first meeting since that 1-0 win for the Foxes, the Championship leaders ran out 3-2 victors at St Andrew’s in December’s second-tier showdown.
