After the highs of the 4-0 win over Nottingham Forest, Leicester City fans were soon brought crashing down to earth as they watched their team lose 2-1 at Bournemouth. Having led 1-0 at half time thanks to Patson Daka’s goal, the Foxes crumbled as the Cherries came back to snatch all three points.
The Vitality stadium has become a real bogey ground for City; they haven’t won a game there since 2014 in the Championship-winning season. The loss, combined with Forest’s draw to Aston Villa, confides Leicester back to the bottom of the Premier League table and sucks out any positive momentum they may have been gaining.
It’s a loss we’ve seen time and time again: the Foxes go ahead in the first half only to try and protect their one goal advantage rather than putting themselves further ahead. Sure enough, they invite pressure on themselves, concede the equaliser and lose all their power in the game. It’s a squad-wide mental weakness that Brendan Rodgers can seemingly only worsen rather than amend.
There were positives to come from the game: Daka’s scoring form continues and he looks a far better option than Jamie Vardy this season whilst Timothy Castagne put in an outstanding shift down the right of the pitch, a constant thorn in the side of the Cherries. Wout Faes also deserves some praise, especially for his first half performance. The Belgian’s second half was marred by a few costly individual errors, but he was let down by the defence around him.
Unfortunately, this is where the positives end as we now look at the three worst players on the pitch on Saturday. Up first – you get no points for guessing who – is our troubled Welsh goalkeeper.
Danny Ward of Leicester City
There are five commonly recognised stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. When it comes to my feelings on Danny Ward, I’d say I’m firmly squeezed between depression and acceptance.
When he made his Premier League debut against Watford last season, there was a lot of hope surrounding the Welsh international. Sure, he couldn’t keep a clean sheet – though this was a set-piece error rather than Ward’s fault per se – but he looked like the obvious successor to Schmeichel. This season, he has proved he is anything but.
There was a lot of denial on my part to begin with. ‘Give him more time’ I thought, ‘just wait until we get our Fofana replacement in’; anger and bargaining swiftly followed. Now most fans are at the stage of accepting he isn’t good enough and are growing impatient at the lack of Iverson’s involvement.
Saturday was yet another example of why the Dane deserves his shot between the sticks. Against Bournemouth, Ward faced four shots on target but could only save two of them. For Billing’s volley, you can excuse the Welshman as the shot was cannoned into the net. For Christie’s winner though, he tried coming out of his area to block the high ball, only to flap at the prospect of making a save.
He didn’t come out with confidence, instead looked lost and desperate. If you’re an attacker facing up against Ward, you’d back yourself right now. So far, he has conceded 24 goals and has only made 26 saves. Worse though, as per FotMob, his xG for conceding goals is only a 15.19. He’s conceded almost 10 more goals than he’s expected to.
His overall FotMob score this season is a 5.77/10 – his 7.4/10 against Forest propping up his overall score considerably. It’s clear Leicester need anyone else between the sticks against Crystal Palace.
James Justin
James Justin is going under the radar at the moment, but for all the wrong reasons. The England full back is enduring his worst season at Leicester since he signed from Luton in 2019.
Having made a deserved – and delayed – international appearance for England during the summer, it looked as if the fullback was going from strength to strength. This season though, his form has faltered.
When looking back at the 2020/21 season, you’ll find a man full of confidence as he took full control of the left side of the pitch. His bombing runs caused havoc for the opposition and his partnership with Harvey Barnes worked wonders in attack.
Then, in 2021, Justin ruptured his ACL and missed 331 days of football. Since his return from injury, he’s looked the shell of that player. He still makes attacking runs, but he struggles with combining that and his defensive duties. Too many times he has left his defence vulnerable being caught out of position.
His struggle reminds me of Ricardo Pereira’s as he too looks the shell of his former self since recovering from his own ACL injury nightmare. With both, the biggest thing is confidence and belief. Get your confidence in check and you start to find your groove. Justin is guilty of trying too hard rather than letting the game come to him.
Both of Bournemouth’s goals come from the left of the pitch and responsibility must be placed on the young fullback. For the first, he doesn’t anticipate the Cherries’ quick throw in and is caught in the centre of the pitch, leaving Solanke acres of space to make a clever run and out-pace Faes. Immediate blame is placed on Faes for losing out on that battle, but it would have played out differently if Justin has been there as support to either add pressure or push him out wide.
For the winner, only a few minutes later, Christie gets the turn on Justin and runs down the left channel, supported by the bombarding Ryan Fredricks. Justin doesn’t know who to close down, but by the time Fredricks has the ball and is aiming to cross, Justin’s attempted block comes off as a half-hearted jump. He follows that up by failing to win his header against Solanke – the aerial battle has always been a weaker side of his game – and the winner is scored.
Justin is only 24, he’s got a lot to learn and a large room for improvement, but I’ve every faith in him. With Castagne potentially injured for the weekend, it bodes a perfect opportunity for Justin to play his favoured right-back. Hopefully we start to see the old James Justin soon enough.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall
There’ll be a little less written about Dewsbury-Hall compared to the others, and that’s because he didn’t necessarily have an overall poor game. Plus, with his performances last season, he has a lot of faith bottled up from the fans, no one is calling for him to be dropped from the starting XI.
The youngster does need to be careful over the direction of his football journey, however, and can’t keep making costly mistakes is he is to be relied upon in the centre of midfield. For the equaliser, it was a silly and sloppy bit of play from KDH in which he tried to spin out of the press he was under. Instead, his attempted flair led to a Bournemouth throw-in.
Whilst annoying to give away the ball in such a needless situation, it is easily atoned by winning the throw-in and pressing back into the game. Instead, in a moment of complacency, he turns his back on the play to dwell on his mistake and is caught out by the quick throw.
In football, mistakes happen. No one is perfect and everyone loses the ball at some point. But football is a fast sport, and the opportunity soon comes to make up for your mistakes. You cannot stew on a missed pass or a poor shot because you’ll be caught out.
Two of KDH’s signature strengths are his pressing ability alongside his ball control. Both were missing at crucial periods of the game for Leicester City, both would have been great at killing off Bournemouth’s second half momentum.
Hopefully Dewsbury-Hall can learn from this and help lead his boyhood club out of the relegation zone. If the Foxes are to turn around their recent woes, they’ll need a fully-firing KDH. Let’s see how he can put things right against Palace.