Leicester 2-1 Brentford: Rodgers needs to fix hot and cold performances

Without possession, Maddison had to remain wide in the structure and worry about the marauding runs of Rico Henry (Brentford’s left-back). The idea was to suffocate, but it required a decent control of possession first, and Rodgers’ side sacrificed the ball too frequently in the second-half.

There was also excellent defensive aggression by the Foxes, not allowing the opponents to control the ball upon receiving it with their backs to goal. Timothy Castagne excelled at this on the defensive-left, while Söyüncü also dominated Ivan Toney centrally by negating his first-touch. During the first-half this added to LCFC’s control, as in the few instances the Bees escaped their half, they’d be stopped instantaneously. As previously iterated, this wasn’t the case in the second-half — the added athletic industry of Shannon Baptiste (in central-midfield) probably aided this, as the Foxes started to tire.

But, despite dropping the level of performance quite considerably for the second-half, Rodgers’ shift to a back five — which enabled Jonny Evans to get some minutes, eventually saw the game close out in a victory. The blueprint of adding defensive numbers still seems to be one that the Northern Irishman favours, at the time of the substitution the Foxes had a two-goal cushion — although, that didn’t last with the added pressure defensively. If the, incredibly unlikely, push for European places in the league is still on, ‘BR’ needs to understand why his team can run so hot and cold during a 90-minute period.

Contextually, the revolving door of injuries isn’t helping with consistency. Players are fielded out of position, alongside a new player every game, and also those that are consistent are struggling with fatigue. The squad size was increased ahead of this season, no big sales, and a couple of excellent pieces of business, all done to balance the life of multiple competitions — yet, injuries have forced Rodgers into experimental setups and benches full of U23 players. Judging them too harshly this season would be removing these contextual variables.