Where Leicester must improve to secure Champions League football

Leicester City have stayed in the top four longer than any club, and once again fallen at the final hurdle. That won’t happen next season, here is why!

As reported by LeicestershireLive, 242 days is how long Leicester City held top four, where they held every single position from first to fourth throughout the campaign. By the midway point, Brendan Rodgers’ side were looking dead set on not letting last season haunt them.

Our first ever FA Cup, the longest time we have spent in top four, and the continuation of Europa League football are the highlights of our season.

This was a rollercoaster of a season, so let’s review the season and explore where improvements are needed to push beyond Europa League and into Champions League.

What went wrong for Leicester City?

Most of the King Power outfit’s season was fantastic. From exciting and incisive football, to assured defensive performances and resounding felling of top six rivals.

We had the famous victories over Manchester City and Liverpool, and the resurgence of a newly confident Kelechi Iheanacho.

And let us not forget the historic Emirates FA Cup victory for the Foxes, won with a joint Kasper Schmeichel and Youri Tielemans masterclass. Such a moment has got to be the highlight of a great season.

And yet still Leicester were pegged back once more. This was no bottling or failure, there are a mixture of issues which culminated in an inability to see the task through to the end.

First, we had the injuries. Oh, how those injuries came at the worst time and destroyed our ecstatic form.

At some point in our season, we have seen Barnes, Justin, Maddison, Wilfred Ndidi, Dennis Praet, Ayoze Perez, Wesley Fofana, Jonny Evans, Caglar Soyuncu, Ricardo Pereira, Timothy Castagne, Jamie Vardy, and Daniel Amartey injured or completely ruled out.

The only senior first team members not to fall victim at some point were Schmeichel, Youri Tielemans, Iheanacho, and Marc Albrighton.

Second, we had a couple of terribly unlucky games. The defeats to West Ham United (TWICE) and Newcastle United standout as games where everything happened against the run of attacking play, or our defenders made one of their very few mistakes.

Should any of these unlucky games had been turned into draws or wins, then the Foxes may well have clinched top four by a whisker.