What went wrong for Leicester against Spurs?
On the contrary, there was little-to-no movement from the Foxes. Mourinho stated that he wanted his defensive line to sit deep, negating Jamie Vardy, and other forward runners, the space in-behind the defence. They were successful in doing this, but Leicester City showed no real desire to turn the Tottenham‘s defenders towards their own goal, the game was played in front of the deep-block and that’s incredibly easy to defend against – especially for a Mourinho team.
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I think that the opening five minutes were fairly positive for the Foxes, having six touches in Spurs’ defensive third and only allowing them two in our defensive third. But, as is so often the case, the confidence left the players as soon as they went a goal behind. The belief in Rodgers’ match plan had been diminished and it was palpable.
Looking at Leicester City performance out of possession is even worse, Rodgers’ tactical setup was considerably naive given how obvious Mourinho was going to play. Playing a high-line back three, consisting of Jonny Evans, Wes Morgan and Ryan Bennett, against the aforementioned front three was a disaster waiting to happen.
Personnel wise, the Foxes don’t have a great deal of experienced options given the injuries and suspensions, but it’s the managers job to utilise those at his disposal and to get the best out of them. This was quite evidently the wrong approach, even if the three at the back was the best option, playing such a high-line became tactical suicide.
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Underlying all of this, Leicester City played an alright game of football. To leave the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with 71% possession, 24 shots to their 7, and an xG – expected goals – of 1.3 to their 1.8. Although the Justin own-goal accounted for 1 of their xG. The statistics would argue the Foxes were unlucky and to a certain extent I’d accept that. Unfortunately, you can’t allow a team to dissect you as easily as Spurs did and expect to leave the game with points and for me, that was down to Rodgers’ setup.