Blog written by ad_wilkin
Published: 24th December 2023 13:48
On Boxing Day, Portman Road will host the runaway leaders of the Championship. A team that have only dropped points on four occasions, have a goal difference of +28 and a squad brimming with Premier League quality talents.
They’ve scored the second most goals (Ipswich are top), had the second most possession (Southampton are top), second most dribbles (Southampton again) and conceded the fewest goals.
They’re a very impressive side and are showing no signs of slowing down. There is some hope though. The three games they have lost (Middlesbrough, Leeds and Hull) are all fellow possession-based teams that play a similar brand of football to Town, whereas by contrast the Blues have dropped points to the more defensive sides who sit in and look to counter.
In Enzo Maresca they have a bright up and coming manager from the school of Pep Guardiola, who despite his relatively short managerial career has been coaching since his retirement from playing the game in 2017.
He was assistant manager at Ascoli, Sevilla and West Ham before joining City to coach their elite development squad. His first venture into management was with Parma, who were in Serie B. That only lasted six months before he was sacked due to the failure to get the club into the top two.
He went back to Manchester City in June 2022 to become one of Pep’s assistant managers before the Leicester job became available. His Leicester team are definitely modelled on Pep’s City in a lot of ways that I'll look at later on, but first let's look at the talent he has at his disposal.
<h1>Goalkeepers</h1>
Such is Leicester's squad depth they have five senior goalkeepers on the books. The two who rotated while they were in the Premier League, Danny Ward and Daniel Iversen, are both still there, although neither has featured in league or cup. Neither has Alex Smithies, who was signed on a free in 2022 and is yet to make an appearance for the club.
The position was definitely a problem for them last season with neither Ward nor Iversen able to replace the departing Kaspar Schmeichel. This was one area that Leicester immediately looked to strengthen following relegation with the addition of fellow Dane Mads Hermansen.
It’s very much looking like Hermansen is a keeper in Schmeichel’s mould and he is arguably the best keeper in the league at this point in time.
He has surpassed Vaclav Hladky on the goals prevented metric and currently sits on 4.99, but is also one of the best keepers in the league at claiming crosses into his box, something that is perhaps a weakness for Town’s Czech keeper given his height.
He’s still only 23 and is yet to be capped by Denmark having appeared for them at all youth levels. This is his first season out of his native Denmark having only ever played for Brondy before his move to the King Power. He started 70 games for them only keeping 14 clean sheets but is already halfway to that number with the Foxes with seven clean sheets in 21 appearances.
Their number two this season is a youth product who is looking to break into the team in 23-year-old Pole Jakub Stolarczyk. He’s played three matches in the Carabao Cup this season and also featured against Huddersfield in the first game of the campaign before Hermansen was brought in and looks to have surpassed both Ward and Iversen as the number two keeper.
He cut his teeth in league football with loan spells at Fleetwood and Hartlepool but is clearly trusted by the coaching team and hasn’t put a foot wrong when he has been asked to deputise so far this season.
<h1>Defenders</h1>
I’m going to start with the right-back position in defence because it is probably the most important position in the way that Maresca sets up his team tactically.
Taking influence from the box midfield that Man City operated with last year, Maresca asks his right full-back to not only defend the right-hand side, but in possession he drifts inside to form that double pivot in midfield.
The man usually tasked with this is Ricardo Pereira. The Portuguese international is the perfect player to fill that role as he possesses excellent technical ability as well as fantastic fitness. His heatmap covers practically the whole pitch and he has played the eighth-most key passes of all defenders whilst also ranking very highly for tackles won.
Where he is underperforming is with his assists with only one so far this season, which is quite a surprise given the role that he plays. That said, his role is more to feed the ball either to the wingers or the two number eights playing further forward. For comparison to Town’s squad, Pereira cost Leicester €22 million and played for both Porto and Nice earlier on in his career.
When Pereira has dipped out of the team it is Hamza Choudhury who has filled in that hybrid role. Choudhury is a more natural defensive midfielder but Maresca clearly sees him as someone who can fill in.
He has been at the club since 2018 when he was signed from Burton Albion and spent all of last season on loan at Watford, becoming a very important part of that Hornets midfield. He’s made 17 appearances this season although only six of those have been starts and is your classic battling defensive midfielder.
To fully break into this Leicester team he needs to improve on his passing and the more creative aspects of his game as at the moment he’s mainly used as a sub coming on when the more defensive aspects of the game are needed.
The other player who could play that right-back position if needed is James Justin. However, Maresca has mainly deployed him as the inverted left-back which is a position he has played for Leicester before under Brendan Rogers.
He was a shrewd £8 million signing from Luton in 2019 having played 144 games for the Hatters and he’s now close to that for the Foxes with 103. He’s played 17 of those this season and nodded in his only goal of the season so far to secure a 1-0 win against Sunderland.
Another player who has filled that left-back spot as well as his more natural centre-back position is Wout Faes. The 25-year-old Belgian was one of the few players that can come out of Leicester’s relegation season with any credit following his €20 million move from Stade Reims.
He’s a full Belgium international with 11 caps and has featured in all seven of Leicester’s clean sheets so far. He’s mainly operated in the centre-back role alongside Jannick Vestergaard but does have that versatility and ability to fill in the inverted left-back role when Justin isn’t available which allows some of Leicester’s other centre-halves to get more game time.
Moving on to Vestergaard, the Dane is the league's top passer having just surpassed the 2,000 pass mark. That’s a sign of how much of the ball Leicester have. The Foxes dominate their aerial duels, ranking first for aerial dual win percentage and Vestergaard is a huge part of that, winning 75% of his aerial duels.
This is also an area of strength for Town, mainly due to Cameron Burgess and they sit third for aerial duels won behind Leicester and West Brom. If Town are going to score from a set piece in this one, they’ll have to get creative.
The depth of the backline was added to even more in the summer with the signing of experienced campaigner Conor Coady for a fee rumoured to rise as high as £8.5 million. Coady possesses a wealth of experience with 176 Premier League appearances and 173 in the Championship.
He’s had to bide his time for starts in the side such has been the form and the stinginess of the current defensive unit with only four starts so far. Much like Axel Tuanzebe for Town, his starts have tended to be when Maresca has rotated his pack with minutes in midweek games against Millwall and Sheffield Wednesday.
Given the Christmas schedule, he’s likely to get more appearances in the December and January period but whether that will be against Town is anyone guess.
Someone who likely won’t start against Town is 19-year-old defender Callum Doyle, who impressed on loan at Coventry last season before also starting this season in impressive form in his second consecutive Championship loan from Manchester City.
The youngster started at left-back in Leicester’s first eight games before suffering a knee injury that was set to keep him out under at least the end of December.
The final member of that defensive unit is giant Aussie Harry Souttar, who was a January signing from Stoke in an attempt to keep the club in the Premier League. He made 12 appearances as the Foxes got relegated but his style does not fit Maresca’s possession-based system and as such he has only made one start so far this season.
He’s played more games for Australia than Leicester scoring in both of the World Cup qualifiers in the last international break.
<h1>Midfielders</h1>
I’ve already covered how Pereira or Choudhury will come in from right-back to form the base of the box midfield. The permanent sitting midfielder in that midfield is Harry Winks, who has started all but one of the 23 games so far this season.
He’s second only to Vestergaard in the number of passes that he’s made and keeps things ticking in the centre of the park. However, he’s not the man who unpicks the lock, with only 11 key passes. Winks is in there to keep the ball moving from side to side until he can find one of the more advanced midfielders in space.
Out of possession, Leicester press from midfield but again that is more the responsibility of the advanced midfielders, although Winks is in there to sweep up as and when he’s needed.
He’s also had the habit of popping up with the winning goals in recent matches with strikes against West Brom and QPR both resulting in 2-1 wins for the Foxes.
Ahead of him is Wilfred Ndidi, a man who is flourishing in a new role. Originally brought into the club as a holding midfielder tasked with replacing the outgoing Ngolo Kante.
Ndidi is now an attacking number eight, with his tackling abilities and energy a crucial part of Maresca’s plan and is now leading the press to win the ball back. He’s also developed his on the ball abilities and the move has definitely paid off with the Nigerian international already sat on seven goal contributions (two goals and five assists)
Next to him is one of the outstanding players in the Championship this season in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. The 25-year-old sits fourth for goal contributions (seven goals and nine assists), third for key passes (55) and isn’t shy when it comes to the other side of the game either winning 4.9 duels per game.
Dewsbury-Hall is one of the few players that didn’t cost Leicester a penny having come through their youth ranks and following loan spells at Blackpool and Luton finally broke into the team in the 2021/22. His influence has grown and grown as big players have left and he is now the star player in a team loaded with talent.
He certainly possesses Premier League quality, and should Leicester somehow not get promoted will no doubt have a string of suitors next summer.
Those three are the main starters with 56 starts between them which leaves most of the rest of the midfielders in the squad vying for time off of the bench.
The player out of those who has played the most is Cesare Casadei with six starts and a total of 17 appearances, averaging out at 37 minutes per game.
Casadei is another Premier League loan from Chelsea, and his time at Leicester comes after a spell with Reading last year where he made 15 appearances scoring one goal.
He’s not majorly experienced but has a lot of raw talent and is growing into his role in this Leicester side with two goals so far including one off the bench against Rotherham in the last match.
At the opposite end of that scale is Marc Albrighton. He doesn’t have any starts so far this season but the 34-year-old, who has made 310 Premier League appearances, still has a vital role to play in the squad as an experienced head.
He has seven appearances off the bench so far mainly coming on to help see out games with all of his nous.
The final man who could come into that midfield three if needed is Dennis Praet. The 29-year-old Belgian international joined from Sampdoria back in 2019 for £18 million. He’s always been a squad player for the Foxes, being tidy enough on the ball and in the tackle without having that much X-factor.
Having 15 caps for Belgium and having scored two goals for his nation, he’s certainly not a bad back-up should anything happen to any of the starting midfielders
<h1>Forwards</h1>
Up the top of the pitch, Leicester play with two pacy wingers off of a central striker and those two positions have been rotated between three players for the majority of the season.
The main man is on the left-hand side in Stephy Mavididi. He’s started 21 of the 23 games so far, scoring seven goals and creating four.
Leicester spent a sizeable amount of money to sign him from Montpellier in the summer and he’s already delivering a good return on that.
It’s not just his goal return, it’s also his all-round play. He ranks seventh for all forwards for successful dribbles, fourth for key passes. He’s also third for tackles and fifth for interceptions which shows how crucial he is to Leicester's pressing from the front.
On the right-hand side, the current occupant in Abdul Fatawu. The 19-year-old Ghanaian is on loan from Sporting Lisbon and was eased into Championship life starting games on the bench before very quickly displacing Kasey McAteer in the side.
His goalscoring numbers aren’t quite as high as Mavididi’s with two goals and five assists but he is in a fine vein of form with four of those five assists coming in his last four games.
Again, like Mavididi, he’s at the top end of the charts for successful dribbles and passes as well as tackles, duels and interceptions. The pair of them are a key factor in Leicester’s ability to hit team on the counter with their pace and ability to play the right pass at the right time.
Because of this, Leicester have a habit of scoring from opposition corners, which has happened on at least a couple of times this season and is something Town will need to be wary of.
The man who Fatawu has displaced, McAteer, can consider himself unlucky as he got his season off to a flyer with four goals in his first five games, including a brace against Rotherham.
He has been less effective since and will be hoping to get more game time as the Foxes rotate their pack over Christmas. He has been at Leicester since 2020 and had two fairly uneventful loan spells away from the club at Forest Green and AFC Wimbledon so his breakthrough this season did come a bit out of the blue.
He’s still a talented player and shares many of the attributes of Mavididi and Fatawu but perhaps lacks quite the same level of decision-making and clinicality.
The final option for Leicester in those wide areas is Turkish international Yunus Akgun, who is on loan from Galatasary. He has found game time limited due to the form of the others and hasn’t overly impressed in his time on the pitch with only one assist to his name.
He’s suffered with a muscle problem since the Swansea game in November but did get some good minutes off of the bench on Saturday against Rotherham so will be in contention for this one.
In the central striker position, Leicester have four options. Three of which have made a claim for the shirt. The other, Tom Cannon, has had to make do with three appearances off of the bench but could have a bigger part to play with both Kelechi Ihenacho and Patson Daka away at the Africa Cup of Nations in January.
Cannon joined Leicester from Everton for a fee of around £6 million this summer following a loan spell at Preston North End where he scored eight goals in 21 appearances. He’s still only 20 years old so is clearly an investment for the future.
Someone who is very much for the here and now is the evergreen Jamie Vardy. In what is probably his last season before retirement, Vardy still has a big impact on this Leicester side.
He’s made 18 appearances this season but only nine of them starts. He is probably the best impact sub in the league with six goals, including a brace off of the bench in the 4-0 win against Watford at the end of November.
He’s clinical, prolific and despite being 36 years old will cause any team at this level problems. He actually scored the last time he faced Town, slotting home the opener in a 3-0 win back in 2014 against Mick McCarthy’s Blues.
Next in the striker rotation is Nigerian international Iheanacho. The former Manchester City striker's five goals (two of which were penalties) this season came in the space of six games which reflects his hot and cold nature.
On some days he’s a world-beater always finding a way to get the ball into the back of the net, others he looks uninterested. Like most of Leicester’s strikers, his touches per 90 are low and clinicality of finishing is the order of the day and this is something he excels at. However, his form has dipped and he has been replaced for the last four games.
The man who has been given his chance in Iheanacho’s place is Daka, who arrived from RB Salzburg in 2021 to much fanfare and for a hefty fee of £23 million.
The hype was understandable given his goalscoring record in Austria of 68 goals in 125 appearances. But he struggled to find his feet in the Premier League, flitting in between starts and sub appearances but never really catching fire.
Despite that, he’s clearly a player with a lot of talent and it’s perhaps a surprise that he didn’t play his first minutes of Championship football until December this season (excluding one minute of football in the 1-0 win against Sunderland).
He’s definitely taken that chance with a goal and an assist in his first start against Plymouth, building on the three goals he scored for Zambia in the November international break. He then added another one against Millwall and put in a good performance against Birmingham and fired in a brace against Rotherham on Saturday.
That form looks to have secured the starting berth for the time being from Iheanacho. Hopefully Town can ensure that doesn’t turn into too much of a scoring run.
<h1>The Teams</h1>
Hladky was the only player in a Town shirt to come out of the game against Leeds with any real credit so will continue in goal.
With fixtures coming thick and fast, you’d imagine rotation was in Kieran McKenna’s mind anyway but after Saturday’s performance it will be even more so.
Both full-backs had a torrid time and Brandon Williams looks fit again from his brief cameo at Elland Road. He’s likely to come back in at right-back with Luke Woolfenden in the middle.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a rare George Edmundson appearance in this one too with Leif Davis at left-back.
Sam Morsy was clearly subbed off early against Leeds to avoid a yellow card that would keep him out of this one and for such a big game I think Massimo Luongo continues to play alongside him.
Town were desperately lacking speed of thought as well as pace and I think that means we could see changes in the front unit as well and I'm going for an almost full rotation of Wes Burns, Omari Hutchinson, Marcus Harness and Kayden Jackson playing as the number nine.
Leicester went largely unchanged against Rotherham albeit they swapped Perreira and Justin around in the full-back positions.
They’re likely to make a couple of changes here which makes this harder to predict. Hermansen will definitely start in goal and I'm going for Pereira moved back to right-back, Vestergaard and a rare appearance for Conor Coady in the middle with Faes playing left-back.
The midfield three of Winks, Ndidi and Dewsbury-Hall will likely continue although Casadei has made a good case for a start with a goal off of the bench against Rotherham.
Up front, Mavididi, Fatawu and Daka are in good form and should continue in this one.
<h1>Action Areas</h1>
This has every chance of playing out exactly like Leeds again, with Leicester possessing equally high-class talent that are incredibly effective on the counter-attack.
They also have better ball players than Leeds in the middle of the park and are excellent at pressing high as well. If Town attempt to go toe-to-toe with them and play the same high line as they did at Elland Road, they could be exposed again.
However, if they do have a weakness, it’s that if Town can break the initial press from the wingers and Ndidi, they should be able to play through the lines and use their own pace to get at the Leicester backline, something they were woefully ineffective at on Saturday.
That's why Jackson could be an important asset to this one and he may even switch around to play on the left with the two tens coming more central.
That leaves Leif Davis deeper so that he can handle the wing threat and also allows him to drift inside if the Blues need to pack the midfield whilst keeping Town’s pace on the counter alive and also allowing them to play through the lines to two more central tens.
Before the Leeds game I saw a lot of people predicting wins for this one, EADT I'm looking at you, and if Town play at their absolute fluid best they can definitely take on this Leicester team and potentially scrape a win. However, anything less than that and it could become another long afternoon.
I’m going for a 3-1 Leicester win. I’m hoping we won’t roll over quite as much as against Leeds, but I think their class will shine through even with a Portman Road crowd backing them. Whatever happens supporting the team for the full 90 minutes is a must.