With the 2-1 aggregate defeat to Roma on Thursday night, Leicester City’s 2021/22 campaign has come to a disappointing conclusion. Sure, there are several rounds left to play in the Premier League, but with the Foxes mathematically missing out on a European place, as well as no threat of relegation, there really isn’t much to play for other than pride.
After the highs of the last two seasons which saw some brilliant football and a historic FA Cup trophy, this feels like a real mundane season. It isn’t a reality check – the Premier League title, FA Cup win, and three European runs have shown that Leicester can compete for the top 6 – but it is a blow to the momentum the club were building.
Currently 11th in the Premier League at the time of writing, the Foxes must finish in the better half of the table. Wolves sit comfortably in 8th – 7 points ahead of Leicester – but Rodgers can still claim 9th with a couple of positive results. Still, 9th isn’t the success that the fans and the club were aiming for. Excuses of injury can only legislate for so much, but Leicester’s inability to keep a clean sheet or defend set-pieces are inexcusable.
With all this being said, it’s around this time of year in which we reflect on the season as a whole. There will be time for celebrating the best that this season has had to offer, as well as the players that have shown real quality. However, for now, it is time to look back at where this season went wrong for Brendan Rodgers and his men.
Whilst it was hard to narrow it down, here are the three most disappointing results from this season. Buckle up everyone, this is going to be a bumpy ride.
Leicester City 2-3 Tottenham
To say that Leicester endured a mixed start to their Premier League campaign is an understatement. After winning the Community Shield against Manchester City, there was a lot of hope for the fans, especially after a resilient1-0 opening victory over Wolves.
Then came the crushing reality of the 2021/22 season. Losses and draws just kept occurring, with the occasional victory to keep morale temporarily high. The 4-1 horror show to West Ham, the 2-1 loss to Brighton as well as the 6-3 hammering to Man City. However, at the very end of the year, Rodgers managed to get one over his former employers as an Ademola Lookman strike saw Leicester beat Liverpool 1-0.
A 4-2 win over Watford in the FA Cup third round kept the positive streak going; then Spurs came to town. Daka’s opening goal was equalled by Harry Kane’s inevitable strike against his former side, and the score was 1-1 at half time.
A tight and tetchy second half started, but Rodgers’ tactics were working against Antonio Conte’s men. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall played to perfection – something we have all grown used to this season – and the game looked won when Maddison’s deflected shot saw the Foxes lead 2-1 with 76 minutes played. Enter: Steven Bergwijn.
With the game deep into the fifth minute of stoppage time, Spurs managed to grab their equaliser with the Dutch substitute levelling. After holding out for so long, a draw felt like a real kick in the teeth for the Foxes. Still, it was better to end with a point rather than nothing.
A quick restart and a long ball later, Bergwijn had raced ahead of Caglar Soyuncu and did the improbable. In the 97th minute of the game, he had scored his second, put Leicester to the sword, and snatched all three points. If the equaliser was a sucker punch, this was a knockout blow.
After snatching defeat from the claws of victory, Rodgers had this to say to BBC Match of the Day:
"‘We are disappointed to concede the equaliser. If we win a couple of duels the game is over. But we didn’t. You then have to take your point. So to lose the game, it is all on us. We can have no complaints. We gift-wrapped three goals and presented them the three points.’"
It’s a defeat that still hurts, and one that feels like an antithesis of Leicester’s season: doing all the hard work and then conceding sloppy goals. We’d see it later with the last minute goal that earned West Ham a point in their 2-2 draw at the King Power, the 2-1 loss at Newcastle and the 1-1 draw to Everton.
Since the 1-0 win over Liverpool, the Foxes have played 25 games and have kept only five clean sheets. It’s clear to see where the problems lay this season.
Nottingham Forest 4-1 Leicester City
Reflecting on the season doesn’t get any easier with this game. If the Spurs comeback left fans in shock, this game left fans furious. Losing 4-1 whilst defending the FA Cup is one thing, losing 4-1 to Championship side – and local rivals – Nottingham Forest was a whole new kettle of fish.
Coming only one game after the Tottenham farce, the FA Cup was a good chance to have another cup run to keep the fans entertained and build up confidence in the squad. Credit where credit is due, it isn’t like Rodgers played a weakened line-up. Aside from Danny Ward in goal, it was as close to the strongest team that Rodgers had at the time.
After looking threatening for the opening stages of the game, Leicester conceded a soft goal as Zinckernagel stabbed home to put Forest ahead on 23 minutes. Conceding first was clearly not in Rodgers’ plans, but there was still over three quarters of the game left to get a result. Less than a minute later the game was won; a dreadful pass gifted Brennan Johnson a 1-on-1 with Danny Ward and the winger duly slotted the ball into the net.
2-0 down and it was clear that Leicester’s mentality was gone, shattered. This season, the only thing more vulnerable than the defence has been the belief of the players. When they’ve come under pressure, a few players have been known to crumble or disappear – Soyuncu and Youri Tielemans in particular.
The third goal was, from that point, inevitable, and no less than what Leicester deserved. Most fittingly was the fact that it was a goal conceded from a corner. At this point, I think every fan has run out of ways to describe their feelings about our corner-shaped Achilles’ heel – especially after the trip to Rome.
Iheanacho got a goal back before half time with a shot from an outrageous angel, but it wasn’t enough to make up for an awful start. In the second half, the Foxes looked livelier, but the game was already lost. The score was then settled when the impressive Djed Spence got a deserved goal to wrap up the tie with only 61 minutes played.
A dark day for the Foxes, made even darker by some idiotic and shameful actions of a certain ‘fan’ who has thankfully faced a long-term ban from the King Power. After such a heroic, historic FA Cup win last season, this was the worst way to lose it.
When asked about the game, Brendan Rodgers had one word: ’embarrassing’. He then ripped into his squad – rightfully too – stating that the result was the reason ‘why a lot of these players are not top players — because they can’t sustain it [keep the FA Cup]’.
Rodgers also added:
"‘There are a lot of these players, between now and the end of the season, who need to prove they are still worthy of being here, because we’ve seen it now for a little while. There are players here who may have achieved everything they can.’ Via the Daily Mail"
Whilst he didn’t name names, Rodgers was almost certainly talking about Caglar Soyuncu who has endured a terrible season. With Fofana and Evans missing for a majority of the campaign, it was all set up for Soyuncu to show his quality. Instead, he has regressed and has been easily outshone by fellow defender Daniel Amartey.
The faith still isn’t with Soyuncu either. This game occurred in February, yet on Thursday, when Leicester needed stability in their defence against Roma, Rodgers turned to Amartey on the bench instead of the Turkish international. All the signs suggest that this could be his last season in the East Midlands and he could be sold to raise funds for the upcoming squad overhaul in the transfer window.
Leicester City 1-1 Roma
If you’re following the trend here, so far we’ve looked at an example from the league and an example from the domestic cups so, naturally, the last example has to be from Europe. It was hard not selecting a game from the disastrous Europa League group stage – the opening draw against Napoli in which the Foxes surrendered a 2-0 lead, and the loss away to Legia Warsaw are noteworthy examples.
If we had of been eliminated from Europe after the poor group stage, then one of those would have been selected, but this season UEFA introduced a third-tier European competition which could act as Leicester’s saviour. The goal was simple: win the cup and secure a European place next season, as well as winning the club’s first ever piece of European silverware.
After being dumped out of both the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup, and being safe from relegation, Leicester’s season relied upon their success in the Conference League. Danish side Randers proved to be a simple task as the Foxes booked their place into the round of 16.
Stade Rennes were the next opposition as a crucial 2-0 home leg victory put the onus on Rennes to perform in the second leg. The French side did just that, but a goal from the returning Wesley Fofana put the Foxes through to the quarter finals against Dutch giants PSV.
0-0 was the score in the home leg and, after conceding to PSV in the second leg, it looked like the dream was over. That was until James Maddison and Ayoze Perez changed the game in a memorable comeback, with Ricardo Pereira getting the winning goal. It set up a huge semi-final against Jose Mourinho’s Roma.
Now, many of you would perhaps expect for me to choose the 1-0 loss away to Rome, but it was in the first leg where the tie was lost. In lockdown, we all learnt about the importance of your fans and having home advantage; the 12th man isn’t spoken about for no reason.
Yet in the first leg, we conceded first within the opening 15 minutes and left ourselves with a game to chase against an Italian Mourinho side – aka the master of sitting back and defending for their lives. Credit to Rodgers, his substitutions had an impact on the game, and Barnes’ good work led to Leicester’s equaliser.
After that though, we hardly threatened. In fact, in that game we only had two shots on target yet we dominated possession and had eleven corners. We saw against Rennes how critical it was to have more than a single goal advantage against a side in Europe. In not beating Roma in that first leg, we left ourselves with everything to do in Rome, a task made virtually impossible after a Tammy Abraham header.
Perhaps the biggest crime is the fact that the squad didn’t learn from the lessons they’ve been taught in previous rounds. Against Rennes we were taught the importance of winning your home leg, of making your opponent work for the victory. Against PSV we were let off the hook with the comeback, but we didn’t learn from it.
In fact, the whole season has been one giant example of this. As a squad, we haven’t learnt from the painful lessons we’ve been dealt on so many occasions. Some of this is down to the players, some of this is down to mentality, but a lot has to do with Rodgers himself.
In 2019/20 we were so close to getting top 4, but we bottled it. In 2020/21 we didn’t learn and, once again, bottled the most crucial games, the winnable games. Now, this whole season has felt like a broken record. Goals from set-pieces, conceding early, dominating the play but not actually putting pressure on the opposition. All these traits were on display against Rome in both legs.
Rightfully, we talk about the physical rebuild in the summer. Clearly there are personnel changes that must be made. But as a squad, the biggest rebuild has to be in our ability to learn from the past. We need to recognise and remember the awful results, the disappointing moments, in order to progress. If we don’t, then Brendan Rodgers’ project at Leicester City is only destined to fail. A big summer is needed indeed.