Who’s to blame for Leicester relegation? Part 4: full backs
By Damon Carter
Timothy Castagne – Games (42) Goals (2)
With the most Premier League minutes played at Leicester City this season (3,254) it was nice to see a full-back play lots of minutes this season. With the club reeling from Ricardo’s long-term injury on opening day, Castagne lifted spirits by heading in the opener against Brentford. But the problems were already beginning. The Belgian was asked to play as a right-wing back, as a left-back and as a right-back this season.
The clear utility-man skills are valuable but you get the sense that we are never seeing what the identity of this man should be and as such his positional sense and marking abilities have gone wayward all season. But he’s an ever-present player so what can you do but keep playing him and hope for moments like that exhilarating winner against Wolverhampton Wanderers. His reliability and versatility will surely see him leave the King Power this summer, with him likely to do much better elsewhere.
James Justin – Games (15) Goals (1)
The Luton Cafu started to come into his own as the World Cup break neared, the foxes form had turned and there were even calls for an outside bet of an England call-up to travel to Qatar. Alas, this was not to be, as injury (A ruptured Achilles) seemed to curse a City full-back again. It was only in January 2022 that ‘JJ’ returned from an anterior cruciate injury.
Up until his injury, Justin had started to solidify himself as a very competent left-back who was constantly pressing down the line, like Rodgers prefers his full-backs to. He was starting to get the balance correct as well, along with the whole back line that went on a run of six clean sheets in eight games. This form seemed to help Harvey Barnes ahead of him, who is not known for keeping to his defensive duties consistently.
Although they coped in the last game before the World Cup without him, you could easily point to Justin’s injury as being the turning point to why Leicester City were so poor after Christmas. Just to make matters worse Justin was available before the end of the season for the relegation battle but Brendan Rodgers decided to pip for the invisible Ryan Bertrand, Jannik Vestergaard and Lewis Brunt in his January 25-man squad instead. Another brilliant move Brendan!