Scott Parker’s Fulham are the latest team to arrive at The King Power Stadium and leave with all three points, but what similarities were shown from Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester City that made previous losses a blueprint for the fixture?
Leicester City have had an excellent start to the 2020/21 Premier League season, with some extraordinary results away from home. But, finding the same performance levels at home has been a question Brendan Rodgers is yet to find the answer for.
So far this season, the Foxes have gained zero points from three home fixtures against; West Ham, Aston Villa, and Fulham. Yet as a complete contrast, have gained maximum points on the road versus teams such as; Leeds United, Arsenal, and Manchester City. Which begs the question, what’s going wrong at home for Leicester City?
First and foremost, I’d like to address the structure – formation – and outline why that isn’t the issue, in my opinion. The 3-4-3 formation can be considered negative in its defensive stages, and rightly so, most teams that utilise the formation drop into a 5-4-1 out of possession, and Rodgers’ Leicester City are no different. But, during the losses at home, the Foxes have averaged 62.3% possession, meaning the formation is predominantly in its attacking structure (3-4-3) as Leicester City are controlling the ball.
Against Fulham, the wing-backs – two of the players who shift between making the formation a 3-4-3 and 5-4-1, James Justin and Luke Thomas, operated as wide-midfielders for the entirety of the half. Particularly Thomas, who appeared to be told to maintain an advanced position – similar to that of Harvey Barnes, as a way of occupying Ola Aina (Fulham’s right-back). This meant that the Foxes had three/four “central-midfielders”, two wide-players and a forward in the attacking third for their attacks – I’d say that’s the complete opposite of negative.
Nevertheless, accompanying Jamie Vardy in the forward line was Dennis Praet and James Maddison. This shifted the Leicester City formation, turning the 3-4-3 into more of a 3-4-2-1 – as both players naturally dropped into the central-attacking-midfield area behind Vardy, rather than playing alongside him on the opposition’s defensive line.
For me, this was one of the biggest issue for the Foxes. Leicester City’s attacking balance is better with a wing partnership that compliments each other, rather than two wingers playing the same role. An example of this was shown versus SC Braga earlier in the week, both Barnes and Cengiz Ünder have the same profile (on-the-shoulder, looking to connect play close to Vardy/Kelechi Iheanacho) and they started the UEFA Europa League game alongside Iheanacho. Throughout the first-half, they struggled to breakdown Braga’s defence, as the connecting option between the midfield and attacking line was vacant – a player like Maddison or Praet excels in this space.
What Rodgers has benefited from is tandem movements in the final third – i.e. when Maddison/Praet drops into the space between the lines, the opposing winger (Barnes/Ünder) makes an advancing run through the defensive line and gives the defence a movement to worry about. Instead, in the last two fixtures, Leicester City have played wing partnerships that offer identical movements and have made the Foxes linear and easy to defend against during their attacking sequences.
I understand why Rodgers wanted to experiment with playing Praet and Maddison together as both have played very well this season and have both excelled as focal points in a couple of Rodgers’ different systems. Against a Fulham side, that ordinarily plays a 4-2-3-1 (with two defensive-midfielders) this was always going to be redundant. All it required was for Fulham manager, Scott Parker to instruct André-Frank Zambo Anguissa and Harrison Reed to man-mark the two dropping midfielders, or just control the spaces they like to operate in, and Leicester City were limited in their attempts to progress the ball.
However, the main issue for the Foxes and the reason why they’ve been losing games at home that they “should be winning” is because of the possession rotations and stagnant movement in the final third. I’ll explain this fully below.
It’s highly likely that travelling teams, in particular those that reside in the lower-end of the table, will adopt a deep-block versus Leicester City. The system is fairly simple; remain compact, push the Foxes into playing through the wings, and transition the ball quickly to create chances on the counter – it’s worth mentioning that this approach also deserves praise from Foxes fans, as it’s an integral reason for Leicester City’s exceptional victories on the road this season.
To beat a deep-block you need a couple of core ideologies. Firstly, in possession you need to rotate the ball quickly – even when playing sideways, as you want to disrupt and move the defensive block to enable spaces to form in between the lines. This requires two things, a fast tempo to your build-up and a clever usage of passing lanes. Unfortunately for Rodgers, Leicester City didn’t utilise either of these.
Looking at passing lanes, when the ball was with the left-centre-back (Christian Fuchs) he’d make a pass into Jonny Evans (centre-back), rather than utilising Wesley Fofana (right-centre-back). This may seem “nit-picky”, but I’ll explain its relevance. When a block is pressing, they don’t want to be shifted from side-to-side (the extremities), they want micro movements that are easy to synchronise across all outfield players.
If you play the ball to the immediate passing lane (LCB to CB) you’re allowing the block to make a slight adjustment and maintain their compactness. However, if you bypass the initial option and play two-to-three passes further, you’re shifting the block with more purpose (LCB to RWB/RCB) and thus creating spaces in the block. It’s difficult to track the movements of the ball and also the attacking players when the play is being shifted with more conviction.
Obviously it’s not as simple as just that, it will probably take a couple of smart passes in a row to form a gap – which players like Maddison thrive in, but the Foxes rarely shifted the ball further than their immediate short option, and Fulham found this very easy to adapt too. The same can be said about the previously mentioned home games, as this is an issue that has been reoccurring in fixtures where Leicester City control possession.
Contrast this to the away victories, you’ll see quicker transitions that are facilitated by playing more direct passes. Think back to Arsenal (away) and Youri Tielemans’ pass into Ünder (who was two-three passes away), that unlocked the Gunners’ defence and created the only goal of the game. It’s fundamentally harder to find spaces when you’re controlling the ball, but that’s why the core principle of fast tempo and smart passes are integral into unlocking this type of structure.
In all honesty, the game against Fulham was a massive underperformance from all players connected with Leicester City – aside from Justin, in my opinion. It’s always difficult to get results in the Premier League when you don’t play to 100 per cent, and that was clearly shown. Thankfully, the Foxes midweek trip to Ukraine comes after qualification in the UEFA Europa League, so key players can have a well-earned rest ahead of an important game against Sheffield United next weekend.
I anticipate that Rodgers will revert back to a complimentary wing partnership for the game against the Blades, and we may see the likes of Timothy Castagne or Ricardo Pereira back in the squad. It’s easy to forget that the squad is still lacking crucial players at the moment. But, the bottom line is that the Foxes had enough quality to beat Fulham, yet they didn’t show it. Onwards and upwards.