Leicester 2-0 Watford: 3 Foxes positives and negatives

Enzo Maresca’s Leicester City reignite the steam engine with a convincing win over Watford. Here are the positives and negatives from a thrilling victory.

A runaway locomotive that wobbled slightly gets back on its tracks, and in convincing fashion. A 2-0 win against the Hornets which saw very little competition shown by the travellers. The Foxes deserved their win, and there are plenty of points to discuss.

Leicester City’s legendary conductor

A first half glittered with chances mostly missed, and a second half which saw the King Power side close their grip on the match. It was one player who helped Leicester create and take the devastating chances while also leading the game from deeper in the pitch to the final third: Jamie Vardy.

A striker renowned as we know, a forward unrivalled in our history. After being substituted on at the 55th minute, it took until the 76th minute for Vardy to find his first goal and would later – as he does – draw a foul in the penalty box to seal the match in extra time. It was his influence working closely with ‘Dynamo’ Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall which saw over 2.0 in xG generated in the second half versus sub 1.0 in xG during the first.

If the locomotive needs a conductor to keep it on time, then that is Jamie Vardy. Despite being 36 years old, the English forward remains critical to how the Foxes perform and consistently delivers when the times are tough. Interestingly, although the twilight in his career nears, whenever Leicester look rough and their rails become unstable, ‘the conductor’ turns up to keep Maresca’s rush back to the Premier League on progress.

‘Plan A’ domination

In previous articles, we have written about a weakness in Maresca’s plans – that which resulted in the Middlesbrough loss – being the lack of a ‘plan B’ for Leicester City to fall back on in case our revitalised possession system does not work in creating enough chances. I still feel this is correct, but you cannot argue with the results of Plan A.

64% possession, 681 passes, 22 shots. That is versus Watford’s 36%, 380 passes, and nine shots. Utter domination. The match was essentially played in the travellers defensive half, with very little challenge actually posed to the Foxes defence. The plan involves recycling the ball incessantly between midfield and defence until an opportunity becomes available, and goodness did that happen.

Jannik Vestergaard, Wout Faes, Mads Hermansen, Ricardo Pereira, and Hamza Choudhury. That was our top five for touches of the ball throughout the fixture. Just a brief note: how is our goalkeeper third in touches? Maresca’s system does end up skewing the stats considerably in favour of our defenders. A system that seems to work, even when it irritates us, it always comes back with a bang.

Over-reliance on the dynamo

KDH is absolutely integral to how Leicester play. When the homegrown star performs, he is unstoppable, and the Foxes are equally unstoppable. Yet, that is precisely the negative illustrated from the Watford match.

Dewsbury-Hall was responsible for the majority of our progressive carries, the second highest number of progressive passes, are highest expected assists, and our highest shot-creator by far. There is so little that did not involved the Englishman it is hard to imagine how the Foxes did not score before ‘Conductor’ Vardy came on.

You can see the effect of taking off KDH when Yunus Akgun was brought on at the 84th minute. Leicester were still strong, but nowhere near as creative or devastating in attack. Eventually, we relied upon Vardy to draw a penalty to seal the win. That same progressive domination which saw our possession so heavily slated in one area was removed, and the match slowed down. This still benefited Maresca’s high possession system, but you never know when one mistake could have changed everything.

The Italian still needs a ‘Plan B’ for when the system does not crush the opposition, and the recruitment team must look for a real option to compete with the English midfielder. For now though, the locomotive presses onwards.