Foxes of Leicester
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Why Leicester’s defence can become best in Premier League

By Elliot Mackness

Richarlison of Everton, Leicester City's Wesley Fofana and Johnny Evans (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Richarlison of Everton, Leicester City's Wesley Fofana and Johnny Evans (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images) /
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Leicester City
Richarlison of Everton, Leicester City’s Wesley Fofana and Johnny Evans (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images) /

Leicester City have a balanced set of defensive partnerships, so join FoL as we analyse the partnerships and roles which can make the Foxes the best defence.

This will be a short series of articles, beginning with the centre of defence with this article, then looking more in-depth at the fullbacks, with a final glance at our goalkeeper situation. You might even find I have snuck in a few potential options to improve the defence even more. Wink.

Feel free to also check out FoL’s article on Leicester City’s Europa League squad, there is one major defensive omission which might change how we play!

Leicester City’s marvellous trio

The Foxes outfit is blessed with three of the leagues most exciting central defenders. Those are quite obviously Wesley Fofana, Jonny Evans, and Caglar Soyuncu.

It is already well documented how important these figures are to the current success of the Foxes. To illustrate this, here are two meaningful combined statistics.

Firstly, they have together contributed 1.7 blocks per 90. A block is defined as an action preventing an on-target shot on goal. So although the physical number does not sound like much, to put that into perspective, we have played 22 games of the 20/21 season thus far, each game tends to last 90 minutes, so we can see the per 90 as indicative of per game since at least one of them has featured in every match. So, 1.7 goals per match equals 37.4.

37.4 shots on target prevented. Some of those may have been converted into goals, some may not. Nevertheless, you can tell why Leicester City have only conceded 25 goals. They have been instrumental in preventing shots.

They also have an astronomical combination of 12 clearances per 90. This is slightly obscene. It is humbling to know that we have central defenders capable of noticing dangerous balls through or over, and preventing them from meeting their intended target.

Now, I want to look at the individuals more carefully. We will look at who they are, what they have done for us, and what role their strengths lend them to.