Leicester City played out a tough fixture against promoted side Norwich City. Here are the players who influenced the match most and their xG.
Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester side faced off with Norwich City in a 1-2 win for the travellers. The Foxes still looked a little lethargic, but they managed to make it through the match only conceding one goal.
In this piece, I want to highlight how the King Power side played from a statistical perspective, and how influential particular players were to the game – or how they should have.
I’ll use Understat for xG statistics and Sofascore for individual stats. I have already collated these stats for the previous matches, so we will go through those totals.
Leicester’s xG scoreline
xG refers to expected goals, and can be used to understand how many goals a side or player should have been expected to score/concede on the basis of the chances created.
In what is perhaps no surprise to supporters, for the third time running, Rodgers’ Foxes have conceded more in xG than they have created.
With 1.27 in xG created and 1.44 in xG conceded, this shows a lack of creative ability against a low block and a counter-attacking side. This brings the xG favour (xG – xG Against) to -2.49 so should expect to concede more than we have scored by some margin.
Even when Norwich were not in a low block, Leicester struggled to progress the ball into meaningful positions, and this is reflected in the involvement of individual players such as James Maddison and Harvey Barnes.
While Norwich used their main strengths to their advantage, they still struggled to break LCFC’s block. When they did though, they appeared lethal and could have scored another on a different day.
The influential men for Leicester City
Rodgers can look towards defensive stats versus attacking stats to realise the immense amount of work defenders are having to do for the side. To be blunt, they are involved an obscenely greater amount than our attackers.
Caglar Soyuncu alone had to provide six clearances and one interception, as well as providing a progressive outlet with two successful dribbles past players. On top of this, he provided 54 successful passes. Totalling all his contributions makes him the most influential fox this season.
This might sound weird considering he conceded a penalty and has been regularly shocking. Nevertheless, he is performing a lot of work and making some mistakes; too much is being expected of him.
So, what about the assisters and goalscorers? Jamie Vardy and Marc Albrighton scored against Norwich, with Ricardo Pereira assisting Vardy before Vardy assisted ‘Kevin’.
However, in terms of xG, Albrighton should not have been expected to get anywhere near scoring (only a 0.06 xG shot), though Vardy could have been expected to score.
Our legends obviously play different roles, but Vardy was – as always – hardly involved in the match. When he got involved, he was deadly. Kevin was much more involved in providing defensive cover for Castagne.
Albrighton in one match was more involved and influential than Harvey Barnes and Ayoze Perez in total. Barnes only has 1.25 in total involvement: combined with 41 accurate passes, we see that he has done little defensive work and offered very little going forward.
Youri Tielemans and James Maddison both put in plenty of tackles and interceptions last match. They struggled to get involved in the attack.
Madders did collect 0.21 in xG, but did not successfully dribble past anyone or even win many fouls. Those elements of his game we have come to expect were absent, and replaced with a more conservative and defensive player.
With Vardy our most deadly player, Ricardo Pereira is our most creative player. With 0.48 in expected assists, he has been more influential in creating chances than Youri and Madders combined (0.4).
So, we need Ricky P back and Rodgers needs to get our attackers more involved. At the moment, all our most influential players are primarily defensive bar the ever-amazing Vardy,