Leicester 0-0 Brighton: What is the Foxes’ missing ingredient?

Everyone is aware that Rodgers has the Foxes playing a distinct possession-orientated style of football, with an impetus on rotating the ball from either flank awaiting an opportunity to progress it safely. This relies on stretching the oppositions structure by playing the ball quickly from either side, hopefully opening a half space for Leicester’s creative players to capitalise on.

When the opportunity arises to progress the play, confidence is a crucial ingredient in ensuring the progressive play is successful. Advancing the play happens most commonly in one of two ways – a line-breaking pass or successfully dribbling past the opponent in a one-on-one, both of these actions require confidence to complete.

Unfortunately for the Foxes, whenever these chances occurred, the player in possession of the ball lacked the confidence to seize the opportunity and would favour an alternative option, either passing the ball horizontally or backwards.

It was this mentality that stagnated the usually free-flowing football Leicester City tend to produce, in fact as a stark contrast, the opening 10-15 minutes in the game against Watford were a great example of Rodgers’ ideologies been implemented successfully – so, what’s changed since Saturday afternoon?

Everyone can agree, playing football behind closed doors is a different experience for all those involved. Fans would make the case it’s them being impacted the most, to which I can definitely see the argument – but this is also negatively impacting the players, especially when playing as the home-side.