Leicester City 0-0 Aston Villa: 3 things FoL learned

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Scarves featuring Leicester City’s Northern Irish manager Brendan Rodgers and Aston Villa’s English head coach Steven Gerrard (Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images) /

Football supporters often complain about when their club’s matches are placed in the running order on BBC’s Match Of The Day. They once again got it wrong by placing Leicester City 0-0 Aston Villa on last – they should have just shown the result and spared everyone a waste of time. But although the quality of the game was severely lacking, the talking points were not.

No risk, no reward for Leicester City

This fixture was arguably a dead rubber, with both LCFC and Villa marooned in mid-table and little to go for in the Premier League except a ninth placed finish. So what was remarkable from both managers was how deeply unambitious they both were. The less said about Steven Gerrard’s ugly Villans side the better, although if awards were given for time-wasting, foul-buying and general petulance then they will be cleaning up soon.

Brendan Rodgers set the foxes up with a 4-3-3 that once again moved the normally dangerous No.10 James Maddison, out wide and a focus on wide players which left Patson Daka isolated. With Kelechi Iheanacho, Ayoze Perez and Jamie Vardy on the bench it was a surprise that not once during the 90 minutes did the Northern Irishman take a risk by attempting to use two strikers.