The Fosse Way

Leicester City were almost a Hollywood story what feels like a lifetime ago, though we still show the footage before every game amidst a circus of a light show and fire boxes.

Wrexham are a Hollywood story now, and sports media darlings to boot, so you’d be forgiven for expecting the circus part to be led by them. As it turned out, Leicester City’s players provided the clown masks and the footballing equivalent of having a custard pie smashed in our faces. 

We haven’t crossed paths with Wrexham very often, just 8 times before tonight and not since 1982, so for several generations this was a new fixture. Wrexham’s rise has been pretty meteoric, while they were just ramping up, our Tuesday or Wednesday nights were for Europe rather than a normal Championship fixture. This plays a part in the narrative and the reactions from both sides of the crowd.

Leicester came into this game off the back of three draws and an ongoing sore point around clinical shots and scoring goals. To date, Marti Cifuentes has enjoyed a lot of optimism and patience from the crowd but both have been running out in the last couple of weeks, replaced by a need to see some actual end product on the pitch and in the results.

Wrexham’s squad boasts no fewer than five former Leicester players. Outside of Matty James though, none could have been expecting rapturous returns. Fans probably aren’t fussed either way where Lewis Brunt and Callum Doyle are concerned but most Foxes fans were all too happy to be rid of Danny Ward and Conor Coady.

Neither of those two played, due to injury and having been found out already, respectively. Was it a blessing or a curse to not have Danny Ward in goal? We’ll never know, though we cynically assume he would have turned into Gigi Buffon just to pile on the frustration further. Only Brunt and James featured, the latter getting a warm reception all around. 

Our first three game week always meant some changes were coming. The likes of Jordan Ayew and Ricardo Pereira aren’t making it through every ninety minutes. Cifuentes attempted to address a couple of the negatives from West Brom too.

Ayew was out, Patson Daka back in the side for redemption attempt number 100. After his deflected pass got us a draw at the Hawthorns, Bobby De Cordova-Reid was in the starting line-up in the #10 role. Jordan James was restored to his best position, alongside Harry Winks, and Hamza Choudhury came in at right-back and as captain. 

While the Foxes started the match full of energy, the warning signs for our own demise were there. Choudhury’s poorly hit back pass was easily intercepted by Lewis O’Brien, who should have scored.

We should probably get the few positives out the way now. Because the negatives need a lot more space unfortunately, but there were some things to get the crowd onside before we went in for half time and set ourselves on fire.

Leicester’s Welshman stands out

File Jordan James firmly in the plus column. While trying to convert him into the 10 at West Brom didn’t work, we looked a worse team as soon as he was off the pitch. Thankfully he was restored to what looks to be his best role against Wrexham and we reaped the rewards for a time.

James is everything we hoped he’d be upon arrival and his goal tonight was beautifully worked. It was a team effort, a move started with Jakub Stolarczyk and which involved nine of our players before Daka’s lovely through ball set up James who was calm and collected to finish.

His celebration was particularly enthusiastic. He’s been talking a lot about how he’d looked at Leicester as a good fit and somewhere he’d like to play. It’s early days and he’s young, but he looks like a missing puzzle piece we didn’t know we needed.

Alongside Winks, he was tireless in the first half. He recovered the ball, kept us moving forward and had some great one-two moves with various players. He fulfilled the box-to-box midfielder role rather effortlessly.

His impact dropped somewhat in the second half but that felt in-keeping with the team overall and he was taken out of that ideal role again. The key to getting this team to tick seems to lie with keeping James in the 8 role and he’s been the most convincing partner alongside Winks so far.

For his part, Winks was excellent in the first half as well, running the game and it felt like a return to the level we came to expect under Enzo Maresca when he was still happy and waving a sign around in Copenhagen wasn’t even a possibility.

Jeremy Monga was the other real positive. We speculated pre-match whether Wrexham’s physicality would have seen Monga on the bench and it was good to see Cifuentes keep the faith. The referee may not have had much time for a sixteen year old (see all the fouls not given) but Wrexham understood the threat.

Monga found himself with two men on him every time and had to be a little more controlled and smarter with his game. His one mistake came when he opted to shoot rather than pass to the waiting options in the box but there’s always a sense of the ‘what if’ when he’s on the ball that lifts the crowd. 

For everything good though, we couldn’t press our advantage. Some teams may feel comfortable going in at the half time break with a slender one goal advantage. As a Leicester fan, that’s definitely not the case. Half time was when every single positive ceased and we set fire to any semblance of getting the job done professionally.

It’s us, hi, we’re the problem, it’s (still) us

It’s hard to reconcile the difference in the two halves we saw from Leicester. The first half had the markings of our best forty five minutes yet. We didn’t capitalise on any clear cut chances outside of the goal but the passing and the pressing was pretty impressive.

The second half was the complete opposite. There was no urgency, players got sloppy with passes and we welcomed Wrexham to join the game and attack us. Victor Kristiansen, whose visibility to see the ball around his chin mask is in doubt, such was his bumbling approach to being on the ball shouldn’t really be anywhere near this side.

Yet he was a necessary substitute given Luke Thomas’s struggles in the first half against Issa Kabore’s pace and following his booking. But with how Kristiansen played, Thomas won’t be worrying about getting that place back.

Cifuentes may lament his side’s efforts but he is culpable too. He has virtually no defence for the kiss of death substitutions that he chose to make in the second half. We’d already started letting Wrexham back into it a little but we still had the control. By bringing on Oliver Skipp and Stephy Mavididi for Jeremy Monga and De Cordova-Reid, we surrendered that control and we surrendered our attacking options. 

The changes pushed James higher into the less comfortable 10 role and gave Wrexham’s right back a break. Where Monga had terrorised him, their job felt easier with Mavididi’s presence. He struggled to impact the game or drive us forward.

Then there’s the Skipp of it all, the £20 million spent on him continues to look like the biggest misuse of millions of pounds since the UK’s PPE debacle.

There’s a square peg, round hole vibe to him and while Thomas may not worry about getting his spot back, Skipp should be one of the last options we deploy in the middle as things stand. Boubakary Soumare(!) or Pereira would have been a preferrable option instead. This was a second half that cried out for a player like Ricardo.

Wrexham deserve some credit for how they mobbed us and their defensive efforts, but this was without doubt two points thrown away by Leicester. We had opportunities to kill the game in the first half and our lack of shots on target that aren’t goals is horrifying. We also man for man, have a team that should be able to close out a game like this.

Familiarity breeds contempt

There’s an argument that Marti Cifuentes is only working with the tools that he’s got and that our recruitment remains the issue. There’s some weight to that argument, early minutes from Julian Carranza alongside his stats fail to paint him as the answer to our all striking issues.

For Aaron Ramsey, hopefully we’ll find out soon whether he’s an answer. JJ is a great addition but a broken clock is still right twice a day, before we send praise the way of our Director of Football.

Recruitment alone isn’t a good enough excuse though. Marti had tough choices to the parts of the team that didn’t work at West Brom and with this being a three game week. It’s regrettable that we’re having to manage Pereira’s minutes because we lacked the calmness and class that he offers. Unfortunately for Marti, tonight was another example that he’s still choosing the easy way out of some decisions. 

The standout disappointment is how our bench shaped up. With Monga playing, the academy presence on the bench was non-existent. The likes of Louis Page and Olabade Aluko have been replaced with some faces we tried to offload in the summer and couldn’t, like Kristiansen and Soumare.

Our defensive line could have several thousand words written just about them but a penny for Ben Nelson’s thoughts when he still can’t oust either of our centre backs. At West Brom, it was primarily Thomas and then Wout Faes who were at fault for the goal. This time it was a combination of Kristiansen and Jannik Vestergaard. 

Having dominated in the slow moving freight train battle against Kieffer Moore, Vestergaard found himself bullied by a man half his size. A match up where he neither put the player into the advertising hoardings or cleared the ball. Wrexham squared it back and Nathan Broadhead was wheeling to the Kop corner faster then Jannik can turn. It all feels so frustratingly avoidable. 

The same players for whom fan patience expired seasons ago are still playing. They’re still making the same mistakes. Others are just trundling around when the opposition are snapping at their feet and pressing them. It’s not good enough and the boos that followed at the final whistle were predictable.

Cifuentes didn’t pull any punches with his post match interview, calling the players arrogant and seeming to be particularly critical of one or two without naming names. But how much talk is going to pacify a less than patient crowd? There are early cries for Cifuentes out from a minority, most just want to see him rectifying his wrongs a little quicker and more consistently. 

The looming problem being shots, still. For the positives from the first half, the James goal was our only shot on target. Certainly in the first half, the BDCR and Daka changes felt like we were creating more but it still didn’t yield the results to kill a game within the first forty five minutes. That’s not to say that both deserve to be dropped but we do need to see something change.

De Cordova-Reid was a good addition in the first half, but clearly isn’t match fit enough to last for ninety minutes. Daka will always struggle to rehabilitate his image to fans but did what he does best. For every good thing he did, some flick-on balls, the assist for the goal, there are the odd headers that don’t feel like a real shot or ridiculous second touches. 

With a tough match away at Swansea at the weekend, there’s a lot to review and improve. Namely that a lot of the squad need some tough love and to find themselves really fighting for their place. That’s without looking at the man at the top who sanctioned our recruitment, or lack thereof over the past few years.