Finally... A much-needed three points won for the King Power side. In a team which has altered so much during this transfer window, and with more changes still to come, it is heartening to see the Foxes finally get something to show for their determination and evolution. Could this be the start of the Russel Martin era?
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The fixture was not so simple for Leicester, and they relied heavily on last-ditch heroics from Christian McFarlane, Harry Souttar, and inspired goalkeeping from Alex McCarthy to retain their two-goal cushion. However, let's delve into how the match transpired and where new signings could drive performances into results.
Leicester City's ineffective dominance
To pretend that we dominated the match would be to undersell two crucial points: we could have utterly thrashed Plymouth if we had someone who knew where the net was, and we could have lost if the opposition were able to finish their plays off. From massive misses to some inspired goalkeeping, any moment could have turned the match on its head.
However, it was Leicester City that turned the game on its head. In the first half, the game ran broadly as the MK Dons tie did: Martin's squad kept heavy possession of the ball, passed it around a bit, were put under immense pressure in our own half, and barely created any dangerous opportunities. Instead, it was Plymouth Argyle who looked more likely to score, constantly getting chances off of mistakes and rushed passing from Leicester's defence and goalkeeper.
In fact, many of us were calling for McCarthy's head with his insistence on giving the ball to someone with an opponent literally behind them. Luckily, the visitors never made their chances count with flailing balls and misplaced shots. By the end of the first half, the Foxes had fired two into the net in quick succession in added time, with Will Alves and Harry Howell nailing their starting spots.
The King Power hosts ended the game with 66% possession, but the first half was an entire 70% possession. To be honest, it was a bit lucky for Martin that Alves & Howell managed to get past the keeper, because otherwise we would have been talking about the same story as MK Dons: spineless possession.
Spineless possession
Having a lot of the ball is all well and good when you are in the ascendancy in the opposition's half, and constantly recycling possession from side to side until an opening presents itself. It is death by football. However, it is also death by football if you are the one under immense pressure attempting to pass it around at the back with a goalkeeper whose legs are about as sturdy and capable of control as a bent signpost. That is to say, not very.
It is also death by football if your entire game plan revolves around your two wingers cutting inside and playing up high, leaving it to your midfielders and defenders alone to attempt to break the highly congested block. Even if you get a Messi-esque Harry Souttar run, or a direct pass to Admir Bristric breaking the press, by the time your team has got into position to strike, a compact low block of 10 players has formed ahead of you, and you have no wide outlet to attempt to get a cross in.
That was the story of the game, in my opinion. When under pressure, we saw little attempt by forwards to track back and give an outlet for the pressure. Alves and Howell were too high to be that outlet, and Bristric was always marked, so we incessantly lost the ball whenever it was passed to him. We were spineless: we could have the ball, but not effectively transition it. This is something Russell Martin will need to develop and work on with his players.
The key to an effective possession-based system is 'options'. A player needs plenty of options being handed to them by a dynamic and well-instructed team, and they then need multiple ways of creating chances. You do not get that when you have Bobby De Cordova-Reid trying neat one-twos in the penalty box. To be fair, with Bobby, you do not get much if he goes for goal either.
You do not get options when five of your attack-minded players are all narrow and trying to play off the backline; a backline which is narrow, made of at least six players, and mostly not on yellow cards. One thing that could help would be to have fullbacks who overlap rather than - again - cut inside, but our current options come narrow, like both our wingers and our entire attacking midfield. It leaves us congested and with no option but to pass back to Souttar/Luke Thomas and try again.
The two goals and the clean sheet win are massive boons for Leicester City. We shoot up the table and can look to build up confidence. Confidence will breed better and more clinical finishing, but we do need to look at which players are actually being used well, and where giving different options in build-up and the final third could help us transition more effectively into a progressive and creative challenge, rather than a possessive trap in our own half.
The Danish striker Emil Riis has joined the Foxes, so with him we have another fairly tall forward with experience to help us achieve our goals. Although not prolific, he does know how to score, as evidenced by his time with Bristol City. It will be important to see him in the next game to push Bristric to do better, and perhaps starting Alves on one side and Wes Burns on the other to give us different options would also be useful.
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