Leicester City succumbed to their first defeat for 5 games against a revitalised Arsenal. With early goals from Gabriel and Emile Smith-Rowe, Leicester were chasing the game throughout, so what were the 3 key elements that cost the foxes the game?
Awful Leicester City defending continues
At the time of writing Leicester currently has the fourth-worst defence in the Premier League. And it shows. 17 goals conceded in the opening 10 games has got to improve or the Foxes will struggle to get anywhere near the successes of last season. Defending on crosses and corners was once again easily exposed with a ropey zonal marking system which is easy to attack.
In as early as the 4th minute Gabriel had to do very little to get away from Boubakary Soumare to head the opener. In the 18th minute, the Foxes were chasing shadows and second to every ball as Emile Smith-Rowe stroked home Arsenal’s second.
Right now, every team in the Premier League will be rubbing their hands when attacking LCFC as they know defensively they can be easily got at. But even with a rock-like Jonny Evans, the team are not looking solid. Perhaps the absence of Wesley Fofana is making a huge difference? Fofana would certainly help keep some of those goals out, but defensively the foxes have been poor for far too long, and defending as a team needs to improve quickly. Two clean sheets in all competitions tells its own story.
Slow starters
Being two-nil down in as early as the eighteenth minute should be a watershed moment for Brendan Rodgers. Starting games slowly is as common as the bad defending. Last week at Brentford, they were lucky not to be a couple of goals down before they took the lead. It sounds like a cliche, but it does seem to take Leicester thirty minutes to wake up into matches before they look like they are dangerous. They’ve conceded seven goals this season in the opening half an hour and it can’t continue.
The complete lack of aggressive pressing on a susceptible Arsenal back-line was strange and in complete contrast to the Manchester United victory. It almost seemed like they were being asked to just purely sit in pockets of space when defending from the front. This permeated through the rest of the team with Gunners players able to find time to pick passes and turn and run with the ball. The only notable Leicester City chances created were long-range efforts. With a truly world-class double save by Aaron Ramsdale from a James Maddison free-kick being a particular highlight.
This seemed to completely change in the second half with the introduction of Harvey Barnes and Ademola Lookman replacing Kelechi Iheanacho and Daniel Amartey. Although it may have been harsh, would it not have been better to make those changes earlier in the first half when it clearly wasn’t working.
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.