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.
The Nottingham Forest was clearly an aberration
When people witnessed 4-0 demolition of Nottingham Forest at the King Power on Monday night, the general consensus from around the league by fans and pundits alike, was that the Foxes had turned their season around and had put this difficult start to the campaign behind them. But in reality it was another example of City’s elite forwards scoring exceptional goals and taking games away from less than exceptional teams. Leicester consistently outperformed their xG – expected goals – last season and they did the same again on Monday night.
Which brings us to Saturdays game at the Vitality Stadium very few clear cut chances created by Rodgers’ side, even the goal itself came from multiple Bournemouth defensive errors and an excellent finish on the turn from Daka. Once the goal for the Foxes went in it felt like every other game from this season no defensive intensity a lack of organisation and no control of game. In the second half you almost felt like City were just waiting to concede as it had almost become an expectation that the current side holds.
There is no confidence within that team that they can see out a game which is still in touching distance of the opponent – something not experienced on Monday with Leicester going up 3-0 before half time. Again reflected in the stats that this is a continuous problem for the side, as that is now 30 points dropped from winning positions in the year of 2022, which is of course more than any other side in the Premier League. Whatever Rodgers is doing is not working and respectively, his time at the club must surely now be up.
Leicester City look much improved from set-pieces
Although it is early days to Lars Knudsen’s tenure at the East Midlands club the side already looks mightily improved especially defending set-pieces. They look more organised and it is very clear what everyone’s role is when defending them as well as you can feel that the whole sides confidence levels has risen exponentially in the process. Of course this is a small sample size but the signs of improvement are there – even if the opposition faced in that time are two teams pipped for relegation. Unfortunately for Leicester’s case, there are now much more pressing defensive worries to deal with than just defending set-pieces.