How Everton managed to beat Leicester at King Power Stadium

Leicester City remain in the top four by just one point, as goals from Richarlison and Mason Holgate knocked the Foxes into fourth.

The Foxes squandered their opportunity to capitalise on points dropped by Liverpool and Tottenham days ago, instead slipping into fourth place, with the rest of the chasing pack closely behind them. With the Reds and Spurs set to clash later that evening, a win at home would have effectively guaranteed Leicester City second place- but it was not to be.

Leicester opted for a compact 4-2-3-1 formation and aimed to seize control of the midfield early on, but the industry of Abdoulaye Doucouré and the Brazilian Allan ensured that this would not go to plan. The game remained even until Richarlison’s hopeful shot from the edge of the box found itself in the back of the net, in what should have been nothing more than a routine save for veteran keeper Kasper Schmeichel.

With the Foxes behind, Rodgers’ men retaliated quickly, winning a succession of corners early in the first half. However, despite improved deliveries from James Maddison and Cengiz Ünder, Leicester looked as unthreatening as ever on set pieces, with the first half ending 0-1 in the Toffees’ favour.

Leicester City were no better in the second half – if anything appearing to lose their desire to bite back and equalise, allowing Everton to sit back and comfortably defend their repetitive, predictable tirades on goal. A Benny Hill-esque Everton corner in the 72nd minute put the Toffees two goals to the good, before a penalty shout for Leicester was overturned ten minutes later.

Corner Calamities

Full credit to Everton tonight- Ancelotti’s men defended superbly, regaining their shape quickly, remaining compact and making life hard for the Foxes all evening. However, it must be said that Leicester were certainly in this game tonight, with poor decision making in the final third and sloppy defending on set pieces the deciding factors.

In the attack, James Justin found himself in the perfect position all night down the right flank, but just couldn’t seem to deliver the killer final ball as he could against Brighton. Cengiz Ünder and Justin looked to be playing on entirely separate teams today as their passes seemed to utterly evade each other, rendering their hard work getting into attacking positions useless.

Aside from Schmeichel’s freak error, defensively, the Foxes looked fairly ok- until lazy defensive awareness saw Leicester City concede yet another corner, taking the total this season to seven- the highest in the Premier League. It’s clear to me at this point that zonal marking just isn’t working and a new approach must be found urgently.

Leicester have long had problems with corners at both ends of the pitch, with a lack of aerial dominance ensuring that they concede many and score few. It isn’t an easily rectified problem, but I’m tired of wanting to turn my T.V. off every time a corner is awarded. With Leicester set to take on high-flying Spurs this weekend and Harry Kane firing on all cylinders, hopefully we can concede as few set pieces as possible this Sunday.