Every now and then a game comes along that you know will be talked about and remembered for years to come. Sunday 6th February 2022 will be miserably remembered by Foxes fans as the day that their East Midlands rivals humiliated them as they relinquished their FA Cup crown. So what did we learn?
No more excuses for Brendan Rodgers
I make no apologies for backing Brendan Rodgers this season, the amount of injuries he has endured has been unbelievable. But this game can have no excuses whatsoever. Leicester City have had a two-week break to give some much-needed rest to tired legs. Two key players in Kelechi Iheanacho & Wilfred Ndidi have returned from AFCON. James Justin is now back as well as Ricardo following his broken leg. Injuries can’t be used as a viable excuse anymore, there is plenty of quality in the squad to beat a team a division below. A championship side (albeit one in wonderful form) made Leicester look like a poor Championship side themselves this afternoon.
Weirdly the first fifteen to twenty minutes was mostly Leicester’s with promising plays from Harvey Barnes and Kelechi Iheanacho. But as soon as Philip Zinckernagel poked in the opener on 23 minutes for the hosts, the Leicester City players crumbled in nine first-half minutes as wave after wave of attack culminated in a 3-0 scoreline. The players looked shell-shocked, as did the foxes bench with no answers coming and an onslaught only given brief respite with Iheanacho’s smartly taken finish. They went in at halftime 3-1 down and it was no more than Steve Cooper’s men deserved.
The second half was not much better and on the hour mark Djed Spence waltzed into space to make it 4-1. Forest took their foot off the pedal and even rested some of their players with carefully thought-out subs, it could and should have been even worse. Brendan Rodgers seemed lost in his tactical decisions.
James Justin was overloaded on his right, the Central midfield had no cohesion all game, wide players came into central areas, and the defence? We’ll get to that shortly. But he did nothing to change it. Even staunch defenders of Rodgers like myself, are struggling to understand what performances like this are all about. Rodgers spoke recently of a clear out in the summer of the playing squad, I don’t disagree. But now I question if he is the best man to oversee it.
Bad defence is Leicester City’s main identity
Baffled commentators are mentioning the defensive problems in every live game and the embarrassment just grows and grows for City. Set piece marking (I’m getting sick of typing it this season) is nothing more than an abject failure in coaching and player responsibility. They should be better organised when marking on corners and even when Jonny Evans and Wesley Fofana are back in the squad, I’m not convinced that the organisation will magically change regardless of it being zonal or man-marking.
But in individual duels, the players are not doing enough. James Justin should have done better on the opening goal when not winning his header. Daniel Amartey stupidly didn’t check his shoulder when giving a gift to Brennan Johnson for number two. Wilfred Ndidi’s lack of marking on Joe Worrall was infuriating. These are not brilliant movements to the ball, these simple crosses are lifted into areas to attack and Leicester City simply don’t do that simple basic requirement of being physical and having desire and that is not good enough.
Foxes never quit?
Above the King Power tunnel do we need to replace the word ‘never’ with ‘always’? It was only two matches ago they relinquished a 2-1 lead deep into injury time. We’ve thrown away games time and time again recently. We’ve thrown away seemingly nailed on top four positions two season in a row.
Getting caught like rabbits in the headlights is a common theme and the mentality just simply isn’t there anymore. Nottingham Forest could have beaten them by more goals, 4-1 was a very fair representation of their dominance. There simply isn’t the right mentality within the squad right now with the required hunger to get better. We now only have a third-rate European campaign and Premier League season to finish off. But given the last two season’s complete collapse, can Leicester‘s season get any worse? They need to sort it quickly or you can rip those three words off the wall now.