With Leicester in town this was never likely to be a free-scoring occasion. In the last month Claudio Ranieri’s team haven’t really gone in for goals at either end. Still it felt like a match that was likely to showcase the qualities of English football’s current top guns Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy, scorers of 26 league goals between them and in direct opposition here as Vardy started the match after his groin surgery.

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In the end, though, as Leicester went joint-top of the Premier League with a sweaty, thrillingly tight 1-0 victory it seemed fitting the night’s dominant presence should be a 31-year-old rumbling buffalo of a central defender who 10 years ago was playing in League One with Nottingham Forest.

Wes Morgan has enjoyed a late-blooming Premier League second life with Leicester. It has been bumpy at times. This season, though, has been a quiet revelation, Morgan evolving toward his current plateau of muscular, poised close-range excellence in a team that again played to his strengths here, condensing around him as Spurs attacked like infantrymen rallying to their standard.

It had seemed likely to be a tough task for Morgan here with Kane on a fine scoring run. With Vardy back for Leicester there was a temptation before kick-off to see only the contrast between the two strikers, their different routes to the same spot, Premier League princeling versus non-league arriviste. Often overlooked, however, is the fact Vardy, Kane and Morgan too were team-mates three years ago. Kane and Vardy shared a bench, and occasionally the pitch all the way to the play-offs where Leicester lost their semi-final to Watford. Troy Deeney scored the winner that day in a Championship game that featured the current top three English Premier League goalscorers.

If this was an unforgivingly tight 90 minutes, with Leicester taking Spurs in a deep-blue headlock from the start, it was still a match to shine a light on the bracing social mobility at work this season. The Premier League often takes a beating for its disconnect from the tiers below, but this was in many ways a match to restore some faith in the idea of development and progress through the levels. Leicester fielded six starting players who were in the Championship two seasons ago. Spurs’ team had two players who have made a genuine step up from the Football League, plus six who have benefited from time spent there.

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Vardy and Kane are among these, although in the end neither really prospered in a match where the action was compressed into a narrow block of blue and white 10 yards deep in either half. Kane had entered this game with 13 goals in his last 14 games, while Vardy has taken a breath in the last month. That starburst of scoring form, the sense of some unstoppable, roving blue-sleeved alien goal-goblin loose among the pampered earthling defences was always likely to come to a halt, not least in a team that broke a four-hour goal drought here. Vardy was at least a constant harrying menace for 70 minutes as Leicester sat close to their own goal, unafraid simply to defend, while Spurs probed and picked at that deep blue double-bolt.

And so it carried on as a claustrophobic match moved scoreless into the second half. Vardy had the first close-range sight of goal, taking Marc Albrighton’s bobbled cross and seeing his shot blocked by – of all people – Kane. Otherwise England’s current No1 centre-forward struggled here, buffeting against Morgan pretty much constantly for an hour and a half.

It must be said, Morgan was wonderful. Error prone at times last season, he has evolved into a restrained colossus of the Leicester backline. Here he managed Kane as much with his upper body as his legs, that vast, double-helping frame shadowing him everywhere, invading his space, swallowing the air around him.

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As the game moved into its final knockings it was fitting a Leicester defender should score the winner. It was Robert Huth who got it, given the time and space at a corner to bend his back and butt the ball back past Hugo Lloris. Morgan had played his own small part, churning his way forward at the last moment to occupy a defender as Spurs were drawn into his orbit at the near post.

There is an ongoing fascination at Leicester with Morgan’s failure to draw a booking in the league, a sequence that goes back to April last year. Perhaps in the end it isn’t Vardy’s goals but Morgan’s yellow card vigil that has been the lucky charm, the ravens in the tower as that stellar run just carries on: this was his 34th game without a booking.

At the final whistle Morgan went across to grin and wave with the Leicester fans, captain of a team at the top of the league in January. It felt like a moment to appreciate the journey from there to here, and a player who embodies more than most this thrillingly insubordinate season.