What is Leicester’s best structure and XI at the moment?

This article follows Leicester City’s lacklustre performance against Burnley — which saw the Foxes scrape a 2-2 draw with Sean Dyche’s side, and a disappointing, if not controversial, loss to Brighton & Hove Albion the week prior.

The question I want to try and answer, is how do Leicester setup to maximise this current squad? I think the tinkering from Brendan Rodgers highlights his struggles to pin down the Foxes strongest XI, but what options does he have?

In recent weeks, LCFC have played a 4-3-3 formation. This has a lot of net positives, mainly the additional man in the centre of midfield — Boubakary Soumaré. Having another ball-player should aid possession, progression, and even additional defensive coverage for the centre-backs from central penetrations.

I won’t go into the minute tactical discrepancies, I sort of touched on this in my last article, but the roles of the midfield three seemed counterintuitive. Essentially, Soumaré played as the most “advanced” midfielder despite being stronger in depth and this has bottlenecked the output from this trifecta.

Another net positive for the 4-3-3 is the usage of wingers. It allows Harvey Barnes to play in his strongest position, in close proximity to Jamie Vardy as a left-winger (instead of playing deeper as a midfielder). The signing of Ademola Lookman also means the Foxes have an excellent option to play on the right-side of the front three — after trialling James Maddison in this role to no avail.

Despite being, on paper, Leicester’s strongest system (in my opinion), it does have a couple of negatives. The major fault of the formation is that it struggles to facilitate Kelechi Iheanacho — whose performances from the bench can no longer be overlooked. However, to play a front two, the system needs to change.