Foxes of Leicester
Fansided

Stats and style prove Leicester deserved to beat Man United

By Dominic Wells

Leicester City's Northern Irish manager Brendan Rodgers (Photo by LINDSEY PARNABY/AFP via Getty Images)
Leicester City's Northern Irish manager Brendan Rodgers (Photo by LINDSEY PARNABY/AFP via Getty Images) /
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Leicester City
James Maddison checks on teammate Nampalys Mendy of Leicester City (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images) /

An initial style of dropping Nampalys Mendy between the centre-backs was designed to spread the pitch in the depth for the East Midlands team. In addition, it also opens up passing lanes for the likes of Jonny Evans and Wesley Fofana to utilise in possession — whilst also having the security central of Mendy.

An alternate version of this was having Mendy and Youri Tielemans offer for possession like a defensive-midfield pivot. Both players would look to receive on either the right or left, side of the midfield and provide a platform for the full-backs to advance their positioning. By having a wide starting position, turnovers wouldn’t be exploited by the Red Devils, as the “pivot” could plug the vacated space of the full-backs.

Lastly, the more traditional usage of the structure was keeping the majority of players in their “starting positions”. This involved the full-backs holding positions inside the defensive four, and the box-to-box midfielders (Tielemans and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall) would split into the half-spaces providing a close option to the wingers. The platform of the back-four enabled more risk-taking in regards to positioning from the midfield. Outside of just these processes to build play from Kasper Schmeichel, Leicester City circulated possession with a modicum of comfort.