With the hope of three back-to-back wins dashed by a piece of Kevin De Bruyne magic, Leicester City fans went home with an air of optimism and a few things to ponder.
Defensive solidity shows more positives
Large parts of this game seemed like the football equivalent of chess. Leicester concentrated on shuffling their rooks into position to deny opportunities for Man City to get into attacking positions. Brendan Rodgers and his coaching staff had drilled into the team a well-oiled defensive operation. Caglar Soyuncu made the centre-back pairing of Wout Faes and Daniel Amartey into a three with Timothy Castagne and James Justin not pushing too far forward and exposing the backline. This helped consistently push the Citizens out wide as they pursued chances, with Youri Tielemans and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall offering expert support throughout.
Manchester City struggled to find decent spaces throughout with the foxes giving them space to keep possession but very little to thread passes through the lines. This was no mean feat against one of the best footballing teams in Europe – although admittedly without their talisman striker. Brendan Rodgers had produced a defensive masterclass with Danny Ward doing his job solidly with some decent saves and expert handling. When Leicester City were deep in their bad run and shipping more goals than Tory cabinets were having reshuffles, this game was looking down on us with impending doom. To have turned the defence around to concede only one goal in the last four games is remarkable. The set-piece defending has also improved significantly since the set-piece coach Lars Knudsen arrived in September.
But for all this defensive quality – when a player produces a piece of magic like Kevin De Bruyne did on a dead ball, crashing an amazing shot in off the woodwork, there’s little answer. Except for LCFC’s best moment from a nearly goal-of-the-decade volley from Youri Tielemans that Ederson pushed onto the crossbar.
Counter-attacking should be next on the Leicester City agenda
Harking back to the 2015-2016 season shouldn’t be a pastiche activity. We should all take note of that team’s remarkable ability to soak up pressure and hit teams with fast, aggressive pressing that can knockout opponents swiftly. Rodgers hasn’t quite mastered this art yet and in the majority of games he might have use possession to his advantage. Remember back to the more successful LCFC teams, and this element was a positive staple feature.
But against MCFC, the quick counter never quite materialised, with the tentative nature of the Coxes attacking play a hard habit to shake in advancing positions. James Justin seems to be one of the players struggling with managing this balance between attacking and defensive duties, too often he took the safe option and refused to commit too far forward. Given how bad Leicester has been defensively not too long ago that is an understandable reaction. But to beat the cream of the Premier League will require more bravery. Counter-attacking will need to be the next weapon as the only way to defeat a team that a times saw centre-back John Stones roaming into attacking positions confident in the lack of leaving his team exposed against a tentative opposition.
Jamie Vardy should not be starting
As sacrilegious a statement as any Leicester supporter could make, but I stand by it. Vardy simply hasn’t looked threatening all season. With one goal to his name – a simple tap in at Molineux. He again offered no attacking threat whatsoever against Pep Guardiola’s team and this is something we shouldn’t really accept from any striker even if they are a club legend. But oddly his lack of goals isn’t really my main issue with his play.
In the Sky Blues contest, the former England attacker was positioned extremely deep, holding a sensible defensive position and almost serving as a central midfielder. But Vardy doesn’t press opposition defenders in any shape anymore. This may be an instruction given to him by the manager, but increasingly it is looking like he is losing that ability to play that way, possibly trying to preserve his energy. It is even more noticeable when Patson Daka is on the field who presses aggressively into defender’s spaces forcing them into errors.
This isn’t necessarily the end of Vardy but if Leicester want to play a high-octane pressing game, Daka is the one that needs to be the player starting. Being player that comes off the bench in the final third of games as an impact substitute suits ‘JV9’.