Football management is a funny old game – a winning run could see you heralded is a potential club legend, and just five games later you could be out on your ear without a soft landing into a similar-sized club. It often works in cycles, increasingly so in the last few years – the longevity exhibited by Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger are seldom seen in the modern game.
There have been times in the last 12 months where Brendan Rodgers’ cycle at Leicester City appeared to be in its dying phases, and it takes an adaptable and pragmatic manager to not only understand that, but also to accept it and adapt to make sure this isn’t the case for too long. For what it’s worth, when the Newcastle takeover by the Saudi PIF was finalised, I suggested it would be the right thing for all three parties if Rodgers headed up to the North East.
That of course couldn’t have been more of an inaccurate assessment, given the Northern Irishman pulled the Foxes out of the doom and gloom of inconsistency into a very respectable 8th placed finish last year, not to mention the wonderful job Eddie Howe is doing with the Magpies. The other instance where the writing appeared to be on the wall for Rodgers’ Leicester tenure was after game number seven of this year, the humiliating 6-2 defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
After that scoreline came a frustrating sense of bemusement – City had bossed the first half in open play against a top side with an elite manager, but felt drastically short of the required level from defensive set pieces and a softness in midfield. It was the draining of any sort of urgency in the tackle and how easily Spurs’ middlemen carved through that struck volumes that day.
At that point, supporter dissatisfaction was at an all-time high for Rodgers’ reign, and it felt like only a matter of hours before the club was posting a statement with the corner flag as its featured image. Fans were even beginning to turn on Khun Top for sticking with his man, as they were of course entitled to do within reason.
That result crowned the worst start to a season in terms of goals conceded for a top flight side since the 1960s, with 22 goals conceded in just 7 matches – an astonishing rate of over 3 goals shipped per Premier League fixture. From the next 7 games, astonishingly, the ball would only hit the back of Danny Ward’s net three times – with the Welshman keeping 5 clean sheets.
The turnaround has been astonishing, and completely unforeseeable, and the credit has to be applied predominantly to the manager. Rodgers has had the patience to allow the team to finally bed in to a coherent playing style, with the flexibility to adapt to a variety of different approaches, putting the chaos of the transfer window well and truly behind them.
The one shining light from the summer switch season was the arrival of Wout Faes from Stade de Reims, who has been nothing short of a revelation. The Belgian has forced himself into the starting line-up, and proven that not only can he be immensely disciplined, and strong in the air, but very assertive against opposition target men.
This was clearly evidenced in his assured handling of Dominic Calvert-Lewin on Saturday evening, which was Leicester’s most complete performance of the season. The England World Cup hopeful was left wondering what he had to do to hold the ball up, as countless time his frizzy-haired opponent nicked in front of him to pinch the ball fairly and legally.
If City’s previous four fixtures clean sheets against Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Wolverhampton Wanderers were regarded as lucky, or a flash in the pan, then last weekend’s slow and deliberate dismantling of the Toffees on their own patch was enough to put that theory to bed. This wasn’t a counter-attack strategy, or a contain and pounce system, it was a controlled demolition.
Nearly everything that Brendan Rodgers had planned was executed perfectly. From Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s relentless pressing, to James Maddison‘s seamless shifts in momentum to progress the ball, the result never looked in doubt.
In a way, it was a shame that a Youri Tielemans’ rocket opened the scoring, because the chances City created meant they should’ve been ahead way before, and now the narrative is that it took something special to bring them to life. Ever since Alex Iwobi’s glaring miss early on, the Foxes were in control, if a little wasteful in possession.
And the pragmatism Rodgers has exhibited throughout his career came out to play once more in the second half, as his strategy altered between minutes 60 and 75 when he knew that the hosts would really pile on the pressure. From then on, Everton were spent and City could punish them with their attacking prowess to the end, which Harvey Barnes and Maddison duly did.
Frank Lampard’s time at Goodison has largely been regarded a success, but here he came up against an experienced manager who had the measure of him. Perhaps experienced is doing Rodgers a disservice, perhaps he’s still an elite coach after all, somebody who has it well within him to revitalise and ailing side and rebuild a squad to his specification.
There’s an argument that Brendan Rodgers and Leicester City will not work in a cycle, and that he will depart on his own terms down the line. If you’d have asked me a month ago if the Northern Irishman had the capacity to reform the club from its lowly state, the answer wouldn’t have been positive.
At that time, he was perceived to be too stubborn, and acting under self-interest and brand preservations, all of which would have been adequate criticisms of somebody earning a high seven figure salary at a respected Premier League club. But with stubbornness comes single-mindedness and self-confidence, both traits that are crucial to the success of an authoritative Premier League manager – and Khun Top deserves a heap of praise for not pulling the trigger under immense pressure to do so.