Bournemouth 2-1 Leicester City: 3 lessons learned

Leicester City fell to their seventh defeat of the season away at Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon, a first half goal from Patson Daka was not enough to hold off a second half comeback from the opposition. Here are three lessons Foxes of Leicester learned from Saturday’s loss.

Brendan Rodgers no longer trusts the majority of the squad

For the majority of managers it can understandably take a few games for them to nail down what their best XI is. Of course this can be situational – teams tactics vary from game to game, so when enforcing those specified instructions other players can be more suited to doing so – but generally, a manager knows what their most efficient and effect team is.

However, in this case it seems that it is in fact that Rodgers has lost complete faith in the majority of the squad. How do we know this? Well the lack of willingness to change personnel throughout the game is a clear indication of this lack of trust for his squad, while also continuously never using his five allocated substitutes . Additionally, only ever using a select few to bring off the bench no matter the scenario i.e bring Daniel Amartey on and placing him at right-back instead of the more logical choice of replacing Timothy Castagne with Thomas and shifting James Justin to the other side.

LCFC were crying out for a change in the second half even at 1-0 where City had completely lost control of the game in the middle of the park. Youri Tielemans continuously gave the ball away all throughout the contest, what the Belgian offers you when playing is, dictating the game from deep, aid in retaining possession and allowing your side to beat the oppositions high press with relative ease. Tielemans supplied none of this during the defeat, therefore he is quite a large net-negative while on the field thus replacing him with Dennis Praet would have helped in defensive intensity in midfield as well as regaining control of the midfield. But we know quite clearly now that Rodgers has lost all faith in Praet hence why the Belgian has only featured very briefly throughout the year.