Leicester 0-2 Arsenal: 3 key things we learned

Wing-back dilemma

In recent games, Brendan Rodgers has found lots of joy with the wing-back system. Having the fantastic Timothy Castagne on the left and Ricardo Pereira on the right has helped exploit their fitness up and down the lines as well as their reading of the game. To play wing-backs you need to have the confidence to press high and push your opponent back. So what happens when either of those two dangerous performers are out of the side? In this case, Ricardo.

Rodgers idea was to bring in Luke Thomas on the left and push Timothy Castagne over to the right. This was a tall ask for Thomas against a dangerous and powerful Bukayo Saka. Incidentally, Saka was involved in both goals, with the second one most noticeable for how Thomas struggled to get back and put pressure on him. Rodgers acknowledged post-match that the wing-backs weren’t pressing high enough and had to completely change the system second-half to try and get LCFC back in the game.

It worked so well that Thomas was far more effective as a more attacking left-back and he nearly scored a goal for his efforts. But with Ramsdale in stubbornly good form the game had already got away from the Foxes. It’s a shame for Rodgers that whenever he finds a formation that is working he is then hampered by available personnel. But he will need to find answers to this dilemma, because on this evidence Thomas is not quite ready to play as a left wing-back in a game of this magnitude.