**Iain Wright**
If Jamie Vardy’s backheel at Manchester City is his most underrated Leicester City goal, then what he did after that game sums him up best.
As is customary for someone who’s bagged a hat trick, Vardy had grabbed the match ball for posterity. As he’s walking off with congratulatory team-mates around him, a photograph is taken. The picture captures him laughing (and dripping in smugness) at the absurdity of smashing three of the five goals to go past one of the game’s elite teams that day. A team who’d go on to reclaim the title and who wanted to create a breakaway league to avoid inconvenience of playing (and losing) to teams like us.
However, what makes the picture a legendary Vardy being Vardy moment is the meme it became. Out went the match ball and photoshopped in was a huge bucket with ‘Opposition’s tears’ written on it.
From a fan’s perspective, it’s probably our most used photo on social media. Whether aimed at elite players with serious sour grapes like Rodri after that game, or towards the many fans who treat him as the pantomime villain, this image really is Vardy being Vardy – scoring at the very highest level and then collecting a huge bucket of sobs from the vanquished opposition and their salty fans.
**Joe Brewin**
If there’s one thing opposition fans have never learned – you don’t goad him. It’s thick. It’ll only make him angry. And probably score against you.
Tottenham fans have often learned it the hardest way – never less so than in November 2017, when his response to chants about his wife’s purported… ahem, _activities_ in the jungle was one of the best goals of his Leicester career in a big home win.
He didn’t let them forget it then… and never has since.
**Helen Thompson**
Sorry, not sorry Tottenham, suspect you’ll appear in a lot of these. I’m going for one that only happened this season but it’s a classic. If you were concerned that Captain Jamie Vardy would have matured past winding up the opponents, nah.
Pointing at Spurs players and fans and then tapping his Premier League badge to ask how many titles they’ve won is arrogant, joyous and peak Vardy.
Because even though we’re on the decline and he is a little older now, Spurs fans would snap your hand off to have swapped with us and have been winners themselves.
**David Bevan**
Endless goals. Endless memes. Endless memories. But I’m not going to cast my mind too far back. In fact, this moment is from last weekend.
The narrative at the moment, even from our own players and manager, is that Leicester City’s entire existence revolves around Jamie Vardy scoring his 200th goal for the club. But, as he said this week in interviews for Sky Sports, Vardy has always been a team player.
Think Swansea away in December 2015 when he could have extended his record-breaking goalscoring run. We were already 2-0 up and when he received the ball on the edge of the box, a more selfish player would have tried to swivel and shoot. Instead, Vardy laid the ball on for the unmarked Riyad Mahrez to complete his hat-trick and secure the three points.
So, perhaps addled by age, I’m only thinking back to the City Ground last Sunday for my most Vardy-esque moment. Victor Kristiansen plays a hopeful ball towards the edge of the Forest box. Vardy, a 38-year-old towards the end of a long, arduous season in which he has played 2,760 minutes – 900 more than in any of the previous three campaigns – still manages his trademark burst of acceleration.
He gets there ahead of both his marker Nikola Milenkovic and a panicked Ola Aina. He nicks the ball expertly around the corner for Facundo Buonanotte who slaloms his way into the Forest box and scores the goal that severely damages the home side’s Champions League qualification hopes.
Not just a goalscorer. Not just a walking meme. Although he’s always been both of those things, he’s also a terrifically talented footballer, an exceptionally hard worker and someone Leicester City fans have been able to rely on to give us exactly what we’ve wanted.