The day has finally come for the Leicester City faithful. Brendan Rodgers has mutually agreed to step down after a four-year stint with the club. While in charge, Rodgers accomplished some things. He won the FA Cup, Community Shield, and multiple seasons of qualifying for Europe. However, the last season and a half have been underwhelming, to say the least.
The last half of the previous season was a stinker and this season has been a total disaster for the foxes. The team currently sits 19th in the Premier League with 25 points. With this relegation race being so tight between a ton of teams, we can’t afford anything to be holding us back. So what are some reasons why Rodgers had to be sacked?
Leicester City too talented for a relegation race
We are going to start with the most obvious reason of them all. This squad is simply too gifted with talented players to be stuck in a relegation battle. This team being in the championship simply should not be a conversation we’re having. Yet, here we are. Let’s just take a broad look at the squad and see all of the talented players we have.
Firstly, we have the best English attacking midfielder in the world with James Maddison. A player of that caliber should be enough to keep us out of a relegation battle. Along with him, we have Harvey Barnes, Youri Tielemans, and Kelechi Iheanacho as attacking options. Our defense includes Ricardo Pereria, Jonny Evans, and Victor Kristansen. We have so many gifted players yet we’re second to last in the league.
You just need to look at the international break to see how many talented players are in the squad. Just read this list of players who had a rating of 7.0 or higher during the international break. The list includes Daniel Amartey, Timothy Castagne, Patson Daka, Wout Faes, James Maddison, Harry Souttar, Çağlar Söyüncü, and Danny Ward. All of these players clearly have the skill to be great but suddenly they stink at Leicester. There’s only one person you can blame. That is Rodgers and his tactics.
Too many choke jobs
There are too many bottle jobs to even begin with for the ex-Liverpool gaffer during his time with the east midlands team. You just need to look at this season alone to see how weak our mentality is and how easily we choke leads. This season we have lost the most points in the Premier League from winning positions. We were the only team where we could not trust a lead and it was truly embarrassing.
This isn’t even the first season of horrendous choking under the helm of Rodgers. I will never forget the 2020-2021 campaign when we spent the most time out of all Premier League teams in a top-four spot. Then on the very last day, we bottled it and fell into fifth place. Or there’s the notorious game against the spurs where Steven Bergwijn scored two goals in the last two minutes to beat us. This team has just bottled too many things with Rodgers in charge. The mentality was too weak.
The players are too defeated
Especially in these past few games, you could see how much the players don’t care. It is like watching 11 zombies on the pitch they’re so defeated. We’ll go 60 plus minutes without getting a shot off, let alone one on target. There was a two-and-a-half-game stretch where we didn’t even get a shot on target. That is simply inexcusable.
Against Crystal Palace, they had 31 shots while we had 3. We were against another team in the relegation race and they were able to embarrass us like that. That has pretty much been the norm of the season. Our players haven’t cared this season and we lost in embarrassing ways. You could make a top 10 list of most embarrassing losses this season. In the past seven games, we’ve lost to Blackburn Rovers, Southampton, and Palace. Where is our shame? We’d lose in embarrassing ways and Rodgers would have nothing but an excuse. That is why he is not with us anymore.