Andy Hinchcliffe, the Ex-England and Everton defender with a blinding left foot, is bang-on the money with respect to the Leicester City squad! In a scathing indictment of the current malaise permeating King Power Stadium, the storied full back dismantled the facade of top flight pedigree to reveal a core lacking the requisite flintiness for an EFL Championship survival scrap.
The Sky Sports pundit rightly questioned LCFC athletes' collective heart and desire. He suggested that the Portsmouth roster (a group he bullishly tips for survival) may possess a more robust collective character than the fractured remnants of Leicester's so-called elite group.
A bad omen for Leicester City
​There is a chilling pragmatism to Hinchcliffe's forecast: he posits that the Foxes may ultimately succumb to the trapdoor of relegation via the cruel arithmetic of goal difference. Clearly the margins within tier two's basement have become increasingly microscopic.
While the terraces often bay for the blood of the dugout, the pundit maintains that Marti Cifuentes and Gary Rowett are not the primary architects of this decline. The 57-year-old correctly pointed his finger at a playing staff whom appear intellectually and emotionally detached from the gravity of their predicament.
This is a damning assessment of professional inertia where a desperate, lung-bursting defiance should be prevalent. Naturally, the culpability does not end at the touchline.
"Those players at Leicester have been so, so poor. Looking at the quality of their squad and the responsibility that players have in the modern game for driving themselves, the coach can talk to them all they like and set up a formation and a style of play, but it’s up to the players to play with heart and soul and make tackles and care. “I’ve watched a lot of Leicester games and it looks like they’re going through the motions half the time."Hinchcliffe - LCFC Live
The board and ownership have demonstrably failed to insulate the LE2 club against this downward spiral. Overseeing a period of recruitment that feels more like a slow-motion surrender than a strategic rebuild. Yet, as Hinchcliffe astutely notes, once the whistle blows, the executive suite becomes irrelevant.
The onus definitely rests upon a Foxes squad that has, thus far, traded on past reputations while staring down the barrel of a historical catastrophe. If City are to avoid the ignominy of the drop, they must urgently rediscover the visceral hunger that Hinchcliffe finds so conspicuously absent.