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.
If the Foxes want to field the partnership that prevailed so successfully at the tail end of last season, they have a couple of options. Either switch to a back three and play a 3-5-2 formation, or transition to a very traditional 4-4-2. There’s upsides and downsides to both of these, and I’ll provide those now.
The back three poses a lot of problems for Leicester, particularly with the injuries limiting who can actually play as a centre-back. The best options are Çağlar Söyüncü, Daniel Amartey, and Jannik Vestergaard — the latter being my third pick out of the three. However, with James Justin returning soon, and Jonny Evans slowly becoming an option again, there’s a few better alternatives to play inside the three.
Once you’ve solved the back line conundrum, the midfield has three central positions available — enabling any composition Rodgers likes. There’s also room for both forwards, however, in the wide position you have to balance the choice of wingers and wing-backs. With excellent options for full-backs, it seems fairly limiting to only utilising wingers as the wide-players. You could play Timothy Castagne as one of the centre-backs — and I think his physicality could definitely adjust to the role — but he struggled when fielded there last season.
There’s of course the 4-4-2, but it’s simplistic positional structure does limit the Foxes’ hand in a couple of areas. Only the pivot is available in midfield, meaning that only Wilfred Ndidi and Youri Tielemans can start — instead of having an extra ball-player (or an attacking-midfielder) to accompany them. I also don’t like the passing lanes that the positions naturally form, there’s not a lot of diagonal options in possession and that’s the easiest form of progression.
Overall, I think that Brendan Rodgers’ best bet is to introduce Kelechi Iheanacho alongside Jamie Vardy. To facilitate this, either play a 4-3-3 and drop Ademola Lookman, but the RB Leipzig loanee was my “Man of the Match” versus Burnley. This solution would also have the Nigerian drifting in from the right-side and that’s not his game. Instead, playing a 3-5-2 could be the best option.
Add an extra central defender to provide screening cover to Jannik Vestergaard — who could benefit of the extra defensive coverage (he’s also very familiar with back three formations). Both the wingers “can” start, although I doubt Rodgers would start both, instead Lookman could play as an inverted winger — like he did for the opening exchanges against Burnley, and one of the wing-backs can start on the right.
This is what I’d suggest; Kasper Schmeichel, Timothy Castagne, Çağlar Söyüncü, and Daniel Amartey. Ricardo Pereira, Wilfred Ndidi, Youri Tielemans, Harvey Barnes, and Ademola Lookman (#10). Jamie Vardy, and Kelechi Iheanacho — in a 3-5-2 formation. This allows a lot of the “key” players to start, and also provides versatility in positioning.
For example, when one of the wing-backs (mainly Harvey Barnes) advances, Castagne can push out of the defensive three into a left-back position to create a back four. There’s also plenty of room for diagonal passes throughout the pitch, and this is crucial to Leicester’s verticality. Not to mention, having Lookman centrally could offer a few intriguing dimensions to the Foxes attack — either bypassing his defender one-vs-one, or doubling up with the wing-backs and creating a numerical advantage.
It’s slightly unorthodox, but I think it’s the system that allows the most key players to start. It would require a bit of work in training — so players understand how to position themselves to offer for possession from teammates, but it can’t bottleneck the output of Leicester City anymore than the current system is. Only a single point from the aforementioned games isn’t anywhere near good enough, and the performances have also been incredibly underwhelming.