Beating Tottenham Hotspur last week was terrific but on Sunday Leicester face an even more important test of their top-four credentials. Too often in the last few seasons they have flunked the sort of examination that Newcastle are likely to set them at the King Power Stadium. That is partly why Brendan Rodgers was hired in February. One of the manager’s main duties is to improve the rate of success against visiting teams who defend deep and tight.
Under Claude Puel, Leicester were regularly blunted at home by sides they had been expected to cut open. It became frustrating and costly. Rodgers felt that anguish last season when, two months after his appointment, he suffered his first home defeat as Leicester manager – at the hands of Rafael Benítez’s Newcastle. They won there for the second season in a row by setting up in something akin to the tortoise formation that the Roman army favoured for difficult away assignments, before springing forward like altogether more fearsome beasts and sinking their fangs into the stunned hosts.
Steve Bruce, as many Newcastle fans remain intent on pointing out, is no Benítez, but the Spaniard’s successor can certainly organise a defence, as proven by his team’s 1-0 win at Spurs last month and, indeed, keeping the score to 1-1 after 90 minutes during the home game with Leicester in the Carabao Cup three days later.
“We will learn from this; this is why I am here,” said Rodgers after the 1-0 defeat to Newcastle in April. But how much have Leicester learned? Answer: some, but more progress is needed.
On the opening day of this season they fell short in a familiar way, held to a 0-0 home draw by a cagey Wolves. Leicester managed one shot on target and ended up thankful for a point after VAR intervened to nullify a goal by Leander Dendoncker. Luckily for Leicester, the next visitors could not have been more obliging, as Bournemouth’s commitment to openness made them ideal opponents. “Eddie Howe’s teams are always offensive,” Rodgers noted after his team’s 3-1 win. “Other teams sit on the edge of their 18-yard box so obviously space is limited and it’s very difficult.”
Spurs, though better than Bournemouth, were adventurous enough to leave Leicester at least a little room in which to create. Leicester used it well. Against Newcastle they will probably have to do even better to work openings.
Two ways Leicester have moved forward under Rodgers are that they press the opposition more intensely in an effort to win the ball back when their rival is most vulnerable; and they pass with more speed than they tended to do under Puel, when their play could become pedestrian as they ran out of ideas.
Under the Frenchman it often got to the point where if opponents gave Jamie Vardy nowhere to go, Leicester looked a little lost, which may be why Puel came to regard the striker as dispensable for some games. Under Rodgers his role is not in doubt and Leicester try to free him up with the sheer slickness of their passing and movement. And with each match they have grown slicker.
Another way that Rodgers has strived to improve Leicester’s attacking is to diversify it. His team carry a range of threats, from the gloriously rambunctious runs of Harvey Barnes to the artful mischief-making of James Maddison and, operating from deeper, the precision and ingenuity of Youri Tielemans. If Maddison does not recover from the ankle injury suffered against Spurs, he will be a significant absence on Sunday. And there will be even greater onus on Rodgers’ major summer recruit: Ayoze Pérez, who scored the winning goals for Newcastle in their last two victories at the King Power Stadium.
Pérez has yet to get off the mark for Leicester since joining for £30m and his all-round play has been disappointing. But it is not hard to understand why he was bought, and the chances are he will come good. This would be an ideal time to do so.
So far at Leicester he has operated off the right flank, though not as a conventional winger, partly because he does not have the pace. Instead he is encouraged to wander infield to probe and wriggle, leaving the wing free for Ricardo Pereira to charge forward. Pereira has stuck to his part of the bargain and scored the winning goal against Spurs.
Pérez showed flashes of what he can do during Tuesday’s win at Luton. Deployed as a central striker while Vardy was rested, he did not scare defenders like Vardy can but was dangerous in different ways, able to spin past opponents when receiving the ball with his back to goal and link up with teammates in cramped areas. If he can do that again when Vardy returns, then he could help prise open his former club.
“He can play in tight spaces,” says Rodgers of Pérez. “You need players that are technically efficient in these types of games. For us it is about the speed of our passing and movement.
“It’s going to be totally different to the Tottenham game. There’s going to be lots of moments when you look like breaking them down and then it gets defended well, but you can’t get disappointed, you have to go again.”
