3 Things learned as Leicester defeated Huddersfield

It’s been a long time coming, exactly nine months to be precise, but Leicester City have finally picked up that win and clean sheet away from home combination in the league for the first time in 12 attempts. It was far from easy, however, with only Stephy Mavididi‘s second half goal separating the Foxes and a stubborn, Neil Warnock-led Huddersfield Town side.

Their third win of an encouraging start to the season, Enzo Maresca’s men had the travelling support in full voice, all dreaming of an instant return to the Premier League. Here at Foxes of Leicester, we’re outlining three things we learned from Huddersfield Town 0-1 Leicester City.

Expected Leicester City departures

Mads Hermansen missed out on a second competitive performance donning the Leicester City goalkeeper strip through a small injury, with Jakub Stolarczyk keeping a second clean sheet in four days ahead of last season’s two established stoppers. However it was another goalkeeping-related point that raised alarm bells about some big City names, with the manager naming both Danny Ward and Daniel Iversen as two of the nine substitutes in West Yorkshire.

The presence of City’s No. 1 and No. 31, with Timothy Castagne and Patson Daka not in the match day squad likely signifies that the pair are either likely to exit the King Power this summer, or at least not in Maresca’s plans. The same thoughts have been applied for Boubakary Soumare and Harry Souttar, the latter of which has been strongly linked to both Rangers and Celtic.

Likelihood of later goals

The playing style deployed by Enzo Maresca has been described as ‘Brendan-ball with a little more speed’, the latter part of which became the crux of many City supporters’ complaints towards the end of their former manager’s tenure. Huddersfield chased, chased, and chased some more, a game plan that was admirable yet unsustainable throughout an entire ninety minutes.

Whether it be from a goal kick, or higher up the field, the playing out plan is clearly to frustrate opponents, tire them out, and force defensive mistakes due to concentration errors, which most of the time will produce a higher chance of scoring. Of the three times they’ve converted in the league this campaign, Mavididi’s strike has been the earliest, timed at minute 73, and with this patient and deliberate dismantling of opposition sides, Foxes fans should expect many more beyond that point.

Silly yellow cards need coaching out

The directive to deter time wasting passed down from the PGMOL to its referees ahead of the new season has been broadly consistently applied, but that hasn’t stopped there being some dissenting voices around it. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who had a great first half, fell foul of the new way of working, picking up a yellow card for rolling the ball a few yards away from where it should have been at around the quarter-match mark.

While possibly going unpunished last season, this is no excuse for needlessly picking up a caution which ultimately changed the way he could play. There were a few instances in the second half where he could’ve used his *free* booking to take one for the team and put a stop to a Huddersfield counter-attack.

There are plenty who might suggest that such a misdemeanour requires a warning from the match officials, however this is something incumbent on the staff at the club to crack down on, to avoid their players going into the book for no discernible nor advantageous reason. It is not the referee’s job to coach players on how not to receive a card, and as clubs get more used to the new policy, clubs will drill it into their men to avoid such mistakes.