How Leicester City bounced back against out of form Tottenham Hotspur

An impressive second-half comeback for Leicester City ensured that the three points on offer stayed at home.

Brendan Rodgers picked his favoured home setup of a 4-1-4-1 with James Maddison playing in the centre, rather than from the left in a 4-2-3-1 – which we’ve seen Leicester use against superior opposition.

The attacking nature of the formation made the message pretty much clear: that Leicester will go for the jugular at home regardless of who their opponent is.

Mauricio Pochettino had a very similar setup to that of Rodgers. A high-intensity press from the frontline backed up with midfielders who have ball recovery responsibilities and are used to possession-based attacking play.

Son Heung-min, Harry Kane, and Erik Lamela combined to make the visitors’ frontline. All three possess qualities that allow them to play out wide or through the middle. It’s this adaptability that provided Spurs with the first-half lead.

Harry Kane drifted into the wide-right position in the early phase of their attack, with Son operating centrally. Lamela found a pocket of space between Wilfred Ndidi and Leicester’s defence – as he did frequently during the first half.

As Lamela progressed with the ball, Caglar Soyuncu started to close him down, rather than tracking the run of Kane on the right – and that window gave Kane all the space he required.

A nice combination with Son was all the England international needed before putting his side in front. Spurs did have a two-goal lead just after the hour mark, but Serge Aurier’s strike was disallowed after VAR adjudged Son to have been offside.

It was a pivotal moment in the game. The Foxes had been committing men forward since the deficit and a two-goal margin was seemingly enough, but it was back to one goal and it wasn’t going to last long.

James Maddison, now back in his central position, was magnificent. It was his line-splitting pass to Harvey Barnes that eventually resulted in Ricardo Pereira’s equaliser, who made no mistake with his finish after Jamie Vardy’s delivery into the box managed to find him.

The game really did turn on its head thereafter and eventually, with only five minutes left in the game, James Maddison conjured a moment of wonderful quality to seal the deal.

Hamza Choudhury was the first to react to a poor clearance from Toby Alderweireld. He played a simple pass into and the no. did the rest. He drilled a low shot into the corner from nearly 30 yards, and the moment he hit it, you knew it was going to be out of reach of Paulo Gazzaniga.

A turbulent last few minutes saw Leicester having to defend a few set-pieces but the backline looked far too resilient and disciplined to let the lead slip.

It is one side of Leicester’s game that has been missing in recent seasons. One of the East Midlanders’ key features in the title-winning 2015/16 campaign was their resilience, a run of four 1-0 wins in a row being the perfect testament to that. Rodgers seems to have brought the same mentality again.

A lot of the credit will go to Maddison and rightly so. All of Leicester’s attacks began from him. However, Jonny Evans, Pereira and Soyuncu were fantastic, too. Ben Chilwell deserves an honorable mention as well, even if his level was just slightly lower than his three defensive partners.

It’s a combination that many argued would falter but after six games, Leicester find themselves in third place in the Premier League, a start that many wouldn’t have thought was possible, especially after the loss of Harry Maguire.