Leicester 1-3 Leeds: This Vardy obsession is holding us all back

Replacement Ayoze Perez worked tirelessly, dropping deep to win the ball and bring others into play. He had a goal disallowed (rightly) for offside and forced 2 decent saves from the Leeds goalkeeper IIIan Meslier. But his game wasn’t without flaws, missing simple passes and getting knocked off the ball too easily. He also can’t match Vardy’s desire for playing off defenders shoulders and the Leeds back line were comfortable for the most part in those areas. It could be argued that Perez isn’t really even a striker with much of his best games coming when playing behind a striker in the number 10 role or even out wide.

Many will be annoyed that Kelechi Iheanacho wasn’t brought on late in the game but the Crystal Palace game can’t be forgotten easily. Iheanacho being the main reason Leicester didn’t emerge from Selhurst Park with 3 points. Rodgers certainly seems to favour Perez over the frustratingly inconsistent Kelechi Iheanacho but in truth neither of those players play anything like Vardy. But then who does?

With Vardy’s recent form in front of goal drying up, midfield runners have been more than willing to weigh in with goals. Harvey Barnes scored yet another fantastic goal this afternoon linking up well with James Maddison. But there was little to no creativity beyond that with many of Leicester’s openings being from long range. Maddison in particular had a very poor game compared to his recent displays (set pieces today being a particular annoyance) and Youri Tielemans was muted throughout. With Leeds aggressive press Wilfred Ndidi could have been seen as a bigger miss, his aggression and prowess may well have forced Leeds back further, with only Mendy doing much of the hard work and not always that well.

A few months ago Leicester embarrassed Leeds without Ndidi and with a back 5, this game saw Rodgers keep the same team and back 4 set up that drew with Everton (bar Mendy for Ndidi) and arguably this was a mistake. After Leeds found space down both flanks and peppered a flurry of shots at Schmeichel, Rodgers decided to go for 3 centre backs at half time. Strangely it had the opposite effect on the team with the midfielders playing far too deep and the centre backs desperately trying to get them going forward.