Bristol City 1-0 Leicester City: Jamie Vardy's miss proves costly as Foxes slump to fourth defeat in last six games and could drop out of the automatic promotion spots... despite leading the Championship for six months

How this Leicester City machine once purred under Enzo Maresca. So slick and so relentless, it threatened to eat up all in front of them and so inevitable was its return to the Premier League it was given its own name. All aboard the Marescalator.

Now, it coughs and it splutters and the black fumes that billow from it after defeat to Bristol City thanks to Anis Mehmeti’s winner only thickens the dark clouds threatening to engulf the club.

How Leicester needed a result here to lighten the skies after an international break that saw them charged by the Premier League for breaking its financial rules last season and hit with a transfer embargo by the Football League.

What a different result it could have been, too, had Jamie Vardy not spurned four great chances at Ashton Gate. 

Leicester’s woes, it seems, spread even to it’s greatest ever player and the man who has, for so long, led from the front.

Leicester started the day going into a game not top of the Championship for the first time in six months. They probably won’t end the day there now either.

Whatever Ipswich and Leeds to this evening, automatic promotion remains in Leicester’s hands – but only just. A 13-point gap on third after New Year’s Day now. Four defeats in their last six games.

Much more of this and the Marescalator could well become out of service.

Leicester boss Maresca spent the international break telling his players not to waste energy on off-field issues. Don’t think about the Premier League charge and a potential future points deduction. 

Don’t think about the transfer embargo. Don’t think about what catastrophe might lie ahead if they don’t get promoted this season.

Block all that out. Focus instead on just making sure you do get there, starting here at Ashton Gate, and not somehow balls-up a promotion bid that for most of the campaign looked like a season-long victory parade.

That message, though, had little impact as Bristol City swarmed over languid Leicester with forward Tommy Conway at the heart of it.

He forced the first of a smart crucial double save from Leicester keeper Mads Hermansen who reacted well to deny him and then team-mate Scott Twine.

Conway slipped away from Wout Faes before the Leicester defender hauled him down inside the box. Andrew Kitchen, the referee, was one of a select few around Ashton Gate who didn’t think it was a penalty. Faes was guilty in the other box, too, as he put a tame header over the bar from a free-kick.

As it so often has been over the years, it was Jamie Vardy who tried to spark Leicester into life. His wild, almost trademark, lunge at goalkeeper Max O’Leary gave the travelling supporters something to cheer about.

Even Vardy, who’d scored 10 in his last 11 games, couldn’t find the ruthlessness in the old dog as twice he pulled shots from inside the box wide of the post in the first half and then spurned the two biggest chances of the game in the second.

Through one-on-one, you’d have bet the house on him burying both the finish and the sense of woe but instead he fired straight at O’Leary who then palmed away the follow-up. Vardy kicked the post in frustration but stopped short of punching himself in the head.

If that wasn’t golden enough, just after the hour, Leicester pounced on a poor pass from the keeper and Vardy found himself with the ball at his feet in the middle of goal. He picked his spot but, again, O’Leary dived across to save.

The string of missed chances caught up with Leicester as it has often in recent months. Mehmeti’s strike, in the end, proved the difference.

Maresca called the last week ‘intense’ for the club. Now, they’ve dropped points again. The heat is turning up once more.