Worrying stat illuminates poor start to Leicester’s season

Foxes of Leicester examine Leicester City’s poor start to the 2021/22 season, especially illuminated by a particularly worrying statistic.

Drawing with Napoli in the Europa League – despite throwing away a two-goal lead to the Italians – is not a bad start in a competitive competition. Defeating Millwall 2-0 in an early Carabao Cup round at the terrifying Den is also a mediocre feather in the cap for a new campaign.

Though Leicester’s Premier League form is very inconsistent, accompanied by uneven performances along with inefficient team selections.

Just to be completely straight, Brendan Rodgers is a top manager and pretty much the ideal candidate to do far more than merely steer the Foxes ship in the correct direction. In fact, the Northern Irishman is probably as perfect a boss for LCFC as could be imagined: he rates and inducts talent well, embraces modern techniques and retains ideas from past aspects of the game.

So, why are results fluctuating rather more than usual? Simply put, Rodgers has dealt with a horrid amount of injures to vital players; as well as the element of welcoming quite a few newly signed first team members who have to gel in together.

Not to mention the gaffer’s task of finding a place in the squad or eleven for fresh signings in an unfinished first team XI. That also explains why Rodgers occasionally gets his starter choices wrong now and again. But which area is the most problematic, or more precisely, who are the personnel that are letting the team down?

Worrying Leicester City stat partially explains underwhelming beginning

Defending for LCFC hasn’t been too awful, I mean, Caglar Soyuncu must recreate his incredible displays from times gone by soon. Yet peripheral men such as Daniel Amartey and Luke Thomas have filled in very impressively. Though, generally, it’s not too bad at the back – a deficient attack is arguably affecting the Foxes’ proficiency in winning matches mostly.

As seen in the above tweet from WhoScored, in the English top-flight Leicester have had the fewest shots this term! That means outfits such as Norwich City, Brentford and even Newcastle United are possibly creating more quality opportunities with confidence.

And, worryingly, with the east Midlands club’s first choice forwards still under consideration – Ayoze Perez and Ademola Lookman, for example – the issue may not be resolved that fast. With only five Leicester goals netted in the EPL, the side are slightly under average with regard to scoring in the division. Getting the ball to stars like Jamie Vardy in promising zones will help solve this issue.