Rodgers threatened to drop Leicester stars for lack of effort

This requires an immense amount of concentration, coordination, and individual effort to maintain the highest possible level of each throughout a game. Unfortunately, some players may be sacrificing more than others to achieve this.

According to LeicestershireLive, Rodgers has commented on this previously:

"“It is not all the team, we have players who are performing to a really good level, they’re showing that desire and mentality to do the dirty work. I say the same thing to them… we need to run more. And as a collective”"

The one thing holding back Leicester is the lack of collective work rate in defence, with some players pulling much more weight and running around more than others. In particular, our fullbacks have put in a lot of effort where some midfield players have given up when on defence.

When defending, a compact low block in some variation of a 4-4-2 or 5-3-2 is preferred to maintain a strong block able to quickly counter when the ball is won back. Inevitably, this requires pressure.

Pressure can only be applied if multiple of our players are working in unison to apply that pressure. Youri Tielemans, Ayoze Perez, Jamie Vardy, Marc Albrighton, and until recently Ademola Lookman have all been brilliant in the final third in applying pressure collectively.

However, in the defensive third, Tielemans has not always run the way back: he expects an Ndidi-like figure to take responsibility for that as that is what he is used to in this system. He is obviously not alone.

Centre-backs like Jannik Vestergaard, fullbacks like Ryan Bertrand and Luke Thomas, or even more attack-minded players like James Maddison have failed to apply pressure as a unit and defend more aggressively for a longer period of time.