Leicester City’s European hopes took a massive blow today at the King Power Stadium with a crushing defeat to Leeds United.
Having not lost in their previous 7 Premier League matches and not lost when they’ve scored first this season, the omens were looking good when Harvey Barnes finished well, after good link up play with James Maddison, for his 11th goal of the campaign.
But from then on it was slow, sluggish and uninspired, and Stuart Dallas expertly scored from a Patrick Bamford through ball to equalise.
Bamford then put Leeds ahead, slightly against the run of play in the second half, with a superb goal and then made sure he had a hand in every goal; as he broke clear from a Leicester City corner to set up Stuart Dallas and put the nail in the Foxes coffin.
Clearly there are a lot of questions after such a damaging defeat, but what did we learn?
Leicester City need pace without Vardy
Towards the end of the infamous title season five years ago, Jamie Vardy was suspended for two games. Many posed the question of how the Blues would cope and Claudio Ranieri answered by playing Jeff Schlupp instead of Marc Albrighton to keep pace in the side.
The call was inspired as Schlupp kept the penetration in the team by making the ‘Vardy’ runs in behind, and Leicester gained four points in those two games.
Leicester City are now in a similar situation as they are without Vardy and are in need of some pace. Harvey Barnes is very quick, but he loves to carry the ball rather than run in behind, so without their talisman it is all very slow and predictable.
This afternoon screamed for someone to run beyond the Leeds press and in where it hurts, and as good as he has been, without Vardy Marc Albrighton struggles offensively, so Under or Ricardo should have played on the right to add an injection of pace that was missed so dearly.
Against teams with low blocks you can get by, but not against Bielsa’s Leeds.
I love Ayoze Perez and today was tough for him. Therefore it is unnecessary to get on his back when the manager should adapt to the loss of such a key player.
Always in need of a wakeup call
There is nothing more frustrating than when your side suddenly starts playing well after they concede a goal or at the start of the second half.
Well Leicester City are the leaders in this particular category. Far too often this side struggles to get itself going and is always in need of something to happen so they can react to it.
After such a bright start to the game, Dallas’ equaliser rocked Brendan Rodgers’ team and they never really recovered.
However, a little change to the system at half time to make it a back three gave them a little bit more control and they got into some dangerous positions without creating chances.
The game started to drift as did the players until Bamford got his goal and then all of sudden; Leicester started to play, with five attempts in the six minutes after the goal, with three of those being really good opportunities.
It is just infuriating that they can’t sustain their early pressure or energy for long periods, rather than just drifting through some games and relying on an incident to get them going. It’s infuriating because we all know how good this team is.
Scrappy games are disastrous for the Foxes
Against Everton in mid-week Leicester started well and were looking dangerous but then in a 10 minute period the game started to go away from them.
Throw-ins, set pieces, and silly free kicks enabled Everton to slow the game down and push further up pitch, which enabled the Toffee’s to take the lead.
In todays game there was a total of 33 fouls, 17 of them committed by the Foxes.
Those watching the game would argue that about 20 of them were questionable or due to sly play from opposition players.
It cut the momentum out of the game, and as I have previously discussed, Leicester City struggle to create momentum.
There were so many times where a Leeds player was on his goal line and a Leicester player would fall for the trick and give away a silly foul.
It is good play from the opposing side, knowing that it will get them back into the game, and it will allow players to run off Foxes players, due to lapse in concentration now the game has slowed down.
It is something Rodgers needs to work on as, at the moment, it is costing Leicester points in their Champions League charge.