Brentford vs Leicester: 3 things we learned from FA Cup win
By James Bishop
Leicester City advanced to the FA Cup fifth round after beating highflyers Brentford in a hard-fought cup tie.
The Foxes looked to have started well with a couple of opening in the first five minutes, but another set piece calamity soon put an end to that, as Leicester failed to clear a corner leaving Mads Bech Sorensen to poke home.
A sluggish first half clearly led to some harsh words from manager Brendan Rodgers, as 45 seconds in the second period, Cengiz Under calmly finished thanks to some great play from James Maddison.
Five minutes after that Youri Tielemans won and scored a penalty, and from them on it was a comfortable final 40 minutes, with Maddison scoring his fourth in as many games to close out the victory to ensure a fifth round tie at home to Brighton.
But what did we learn from this intriguing game?
Set pieces are a worry at both ends of the pitch
Leicester’s problems from set pieces, both attacking and defensive, have been well-documented. Having scored one all season, the East Midlander’s have now conceded nine goals from defensive set plays, and it is bound to become a lot more given how appalling they are at defending them.
I don’t want to go down the stereotypical road of ‘low league side, good at set pieces’; given what a good side Brentford are, but you can’t deny that any set piece -including long throws- the ‘Bees’ had they looked dangerous.
There seems to be no organisation or commanding figures in the area to try and sort this problem out.
You would have thought that with the returning Caglar Soyuncu in the mix, it would get a lot better, but throughout the game the Turkish international struggled to get his headers away, thus creating more problems.
Offensively it’s just as bad. For every good ball Maddison whips in, he then hits the first man the next four times.
Leicester City had seven corners in the match, the first four of which hit the first man. However, the delivery isn’t solely to blame as when a good ball is delivered, there seems to be no intelligence from anyone to get into good positions.
Corners are supposed to be exciting for any side, but they may as well kick it back to the keeper and build an attack from there.