Something’s got to change in Leicester City’s defence
By Nathan Wong
What needs to change for Leicester City?
Last campaign LCFC had a valid reason for any defensive or cohesive issues in their team, with the club suffering an extensive injury crisis in defensive areas. This excuse is no longer valid with Leicester City ‘only’ missing James Justin and Wesley Fofana in defence.
Caglar Soyuncu epitomises the problems in the Leicester defence. The Turk had a frankly atrocious start to the season making some glaring individual errors. More recently Cags has been much better, going ‘back to basics’ nevertheless whilst individually he’s been reasonably dominant, his side of the defence has conceded the most chances. Due to the Turks aggressive style of defending, this leaves huge spaces if he misses his tackle, and this has happened all too much this season.
Take the Spartak goal, for example, Soyuncu failed to cover for Bertrand on the left side as he went diving in recklessly. This left Mikhail Ignatov with time and space to cross the ball with Victor Moses somehow escaping six Leicester players to head home.
The lack of cohesion and tendency for rash decisions has led to Leicester being much easier to get at. Naturally poor performances have impacted Cag’s confidence, but with the alternative defender being the ponderous Jannick Vestergaard, you’d probably stick with Soyuncu any day. Now, this is not a dig at Caglar exclusively! Ricardo, Vestergaard and Bertrand have all failed to hit their required levels this campaign. Nevertheless, the problems are most apparent down Soyuncu’s side, and the stats don’t lie…
Ultimately this begs the question, should Rodgers revert to a back four and play Jonny Evans and Daniel Amartey together?