How Steve Cooper enhances Leicester's underutilised wingers

What about Stephy Mavididi?

The English winger ought to play a rather different game to the Ghanaian. Sometimes, in any game, you will be in a stalemate, a deadlock where the Foxes are struggling to create chances, and the opposition has the ball and keeps your team under pressure. Leicester City needs a player who can break that pressure, thrive in it, and has the technical excellence and experience to overcome it to create and score. That is where Mavidid comes in.

Under Maresca, we saw a hungry goal-scoring left-winger come to Leicester. He scored 12 times, assisted six, and was essentially our main attacking talent. However, this was largely due to a great partnership Maresca had built between our creative midfielder - Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall - our creative winger - Abdul Fatawu - and our legendary striker Vardy. So, what have we seen under Cooper?

First of all, only two goals, and zero assists. That is quite a drastic decline, even if we take into account the superior opposition we are facing. A big part of that has to be the inconsistency in who has been the supporting midfielder and which winger is played: Jordan Ayew has occasionally been put out instead of Mavididi or alongside Mavididi. Ayew is not the right talent to pair with Mavididi.

Additionally, the instructions given to the left-winger have not taken advantage of their strengths. The King Power side seems incessant on not letting the talent have an opportunity to quickly pass with a midfielder (this ought to be Facundo Buonanotte) to get in behind and get a quick pass into a dangerous position for Vardy. instead, the player often tries to stay in front of the defensive line with aims to take a shot when the chance presents itself: although this looks visually appealing with curling shots, it would be better for him to get into the box.

So, Cooper has worked hard on improving the contributions offered by Fatawu but failed in realising the potential clinical talent of Mavididi. Further, by constantly interrupting that dangerous duo with Ayew or Bobby De-Cordova Reid, we have yet to see a consistently explosive forward line develop an understanding of one another. This has to change.