Leicester 1-0 Man City: Tactical breakdown of Community Shield victory

It was back-to-back victories for Brendan Rodgers and Leicester City in pre-season, as the Foxes beat Manchester City in the season curtain opener — a 1-0 win in the Community Shield.

Perhaps not the ecstasy of the FA Cup victory, but an important realisation of the stage Leicester City are performing on with an increased level of consistency. The performance itself was definitely noteworthy and that’s what I’ll dissect below.

After implementing a couple of different structures in the previous fixtures in pre-season, the Foxes started in a reformed — yet very recognisable — 4-2-3-1. Across the board the starting XI was fairly self-explanatory, aside from Daniel Amartey who replaced Wesley Fofana as the right centre-back.

For clarity’s sake, the side was as follows, again inside the 4-2-3-1 formation; Kasper Schmeichel. Ricardo Pereira, Daniel Amartey, Çağlar Söyüncü, Ryan Bertrand. Wilfred Ndidi, Youri Tielemans. Ayoze Pérez, James Maddison, Harvey Barnes. Jamie Vardy. The strongest XI that Rodgers has fielded ahead of the new campaign, and an excellent insight into the proposed XI for the upcoming season. But, how did the side actually play?

In possession, Leicester City did a fantastic job of isolating the opposition full-backs, Benjamin Mendy and João Cancelo — both known for their offensive acumen and perhaps weaknesses defensively. To create this isolation, the Foxes would invert the wingers (Barnes and Pérez) forcing the defenders to track their men internally and subsequently would free up the full-backs to advance into space.