In the 41st minute at the STOK Cae Ras, Leicester City carved out a glorious opportunity to take the lead. Great play from Stephy Mavididi on the edge of the area saw him dink a perfect cross onto Jordan Ayew’s chest, five yards from the Wrexham goal.
Ayew brought it down and then, for reasons unknown, fell to the floor, as if the only button left on his remote is the one that initiates the falling over sequence. The ball trickled to Bobby De Cordova Reid, by which point Arthur Okonkwo had time to rush out and smother his attempted finish, and the chance was gone.
That was the only shot from inside the box in the first half. It was also, more or less, the only opportunity Leicester City had to score a goal between the first minute and the 89th, when Jannik Vestergaard showed infinitely more composure to bury a similar chance that arrived out of nowhere.
Between those two chances, Leicester were outplayed by an in-form Wrexham team. One brilliant pass from Abdul Fatawu to Mavididi to spring a counter attack was the single moment of attacking threat in the entire second half. The rest of the game was a monotonous routine of pointless Leicester possession followed by a red shirt having a shot.
And yet. Somehow, someway, this team is keeping its head above water. For as much as Marti Cifuentes doesn’t seem to offer anything as novel as a tactical plan, he has put together a team that fights until the end. This was the 12th goal Leicester have scored after the 75th minute, and only two of those have come in games where the result was already decided.
In another universe, this would probably be quite a likeable team. If you took away the baggage of “erm, why exactly are we now worse than Wrexham?” and the fact we hate half the players for historical reasons, you could buy into aspects of it. This was not, in any shape or form, a good game of football. But it was a midweek away game in awkward conditions, and Leicester defended reasonably well.
For all Wrexham’s dominance, a lot of their shots came from long range. Caleb Okoli played well in the sort of physical battle he’s made for. The left back slot, usually a position of prime catastrophe three or four times a game, saw none of those shenanigans with Ben Nelson shunted out there in place of Luke Thomas.
Of course, Leicester managed to concede the regularly scheduled shambolic goal, with Ricardo Pereira caught the wrong side of his man, then Jakub Stolarcyzk palming a cross into the path of Lewis O’Brien. Other than that glaring inadequacy, they dealt with crosses into the box well in the wind, and Stolarcyzk made some decent saves.
We also had to deal with the injury bug running amok through midfield. Losing one of Jordan James and Oliver Skipp would’ve been unfortunate, to lose both was something of a disaster. Add their absences to that of Aaron Ramsey and we are on the brink of going aperol spritz in hand back to Harry Winks, such is the dearth of options.
With such disruption to midfield, perhaps it’s not surprising that there was no fluency to Leicester’s play. Although James only departed just before half time, he was carrying his niggle for most of the game, while Skipp had to go off shortly after Wrexham took the lead. Along with the obvious fact that ideally neither of them would have gone off, having to replace them used up two of the three substitution slots, which further limited Cifuentes’ ability to influence the game.
With all those things taken into account, to have scrambled out of this with a point is a decent result. It just doesn’t feel very good, does it?
Taking each game in isolation, there’s usually something to hold onto as a positive. It might be a good half, a fabulous goal, or battling to the end to steal a point or two. Occasionally it’s that we responded well to going 3-0 down.
This would be fine if it ultimately led to some kind of improvement. Bad or underwhelming performances are going to happen, but if every game is a bad or underwhelming performance then that is a bit of a problem. The last time Leicester ‘won’ a game based on the xG (i.e. did we create better chances than the other team) was November 29th, 11 games ago. Ironically, a game we lost.
There’s more to it than that though. Leicester are incredibly boring, in a way that belies the stats. This was the 11th consecutive game in which we’ve scored, but so many of those goals happen at random. There is rarely any concerted pressure, spells to have you on the edge of your seat.
Cifuentes is obviously hamstrung by the injuries and his squad, yet he’s playing scared. The full backs neither go forward nor come into midfield, Jeremy Monga barely gets any minutes despite looking like the most dangerous attacker every time he comes on. He puts senior players on the bench for no reason; if Boubakary Soumare isn’t going to come on in a game where two central midfielders go off injured and you ultimately replace your entire starting trio, why is he there?
In general, it looks like the manager has misdiagnosed the problem. The banner headline is often that Leicester haven’t kept a clean sheet for 20+ games, but that isn’t the real issue. The far bigger one is the total absence of attacking threat. Patterns like we saw in Wales on Tuesday, where the team goes 30 or 40 minutes without a single shot, are a near weekly occurrence.
Those sorts of periods naturally invite pressure at the other end. Wrexham could keep coming at Leicester because there was no danger that we might do something to them. Even with a midfield containing James and Skipp there’s a serious lack of creative passing ability in midfield, when you take them out and put in Hamza Choudhury it’s like tearing up your lottery ticket before they’ve even done the draw.
Then there is the fact Ayew and De Cordova Reid now start every game. Ayew in particular is a massive problem. He gets so much game time that he eventually contributes something so Cifuentes can keep picking him, but at the cost of any kind of real system. The fact that he eventually wins some free kicks is not an attacking strategy.
You cannot do anything with Ayew up front. You can’t go long, you can’t play the ball over the top, you can’t whip crosses in. And he’s simply not good enough on the ball. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of De Cordova Reid. Vestergaard now has as many non-penalty goals as Ayew, and he’s only two behind De Cordova Reid. When you combine their immobility and ineffectiveness with the total lack of support from overlapping full backs, it’s not hard to understand why the wingers look terrible most of the time.
At one point, Mavididi surged forward and Ayew just fell over off the ball so he had no options in front of him. For his chance in the second half on the break, Ayew made just about the worst run a striker could make to take away any option of receiving the ball. Midway through the first half, Skipp won the ball superbly to spring a 3v2 on the edge of the box, only for De Cordova Reid to wildly overhit a simple pass to force Mavididi wide.
This is not to absolve the wingers themselves. Neither have stepped up in the way that James has to carry the goalscoring burden. Once James left this game, Leicester desperately needed Mavididi to score his chance, while this was another game in which Fatawu was anonymous. But they aren’t being put in the best position to succeed.
What makes this frustrating is there is still, incredibly, a realistic chance for Leicester to be in the promotion race. Even two or three good results in a row would make a massive difference, something we haven’t been able to achieve anywhere near often enough.
Cifuentes’ main ability appears to be to keep the team circling the drain rather than falling into it. Ultimately, this was another example of that skill. After a highly fortunate win over West Brom, Leicester took the lead at Coventry and blew it, then put in yet another impotent attacking display only to pull another point out of the fire. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it doesn’t look very good. But, implausibly, the season is still alive.
The Fosse Way 
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