It’s been a busy week at Leicester City, that is unless you were hoping for inbound transfers (more on that later) or a resolution to the point deductions saga. We’d hoped to know our fate this week but all we got were a few more rumours.
Losing to a team below you, and a lot of those teams below also having games in hand, it’s looking even more uncomfortable imagining where a 6, 9 or higher point deduction drops us to.
Andy King being thrust into temporary charge did lift the pre-match mood. There was a resounding attempt to be positive and supportive for him, which did see a reduction in anti-board chants although you could also credit that to the empty seats. And the steady filing out of people from fifteen minutes on who decided it wasn’t too late to do something else with their Saturday.
Few expected the sacking of Marti Cifuentes to suddenly turn everything around. But at least Kingy is a club legend, somebody who knows our club well and perhaps more importantly, loves it. It’s not the way he’d want to get the job, nor is he inheriting a great squad with the gaps and key injuries.
If the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing, over and over, but expecting different results, football fans fit the bill. The want to support Kingy, and some of the younger players who don’t deserve our fury, didn’t quite translate to belief that we could secure some much needed points. But public sentiment for Kingy is high. Which is possibly why the team news didn’t spark as much negativity as it did last week.
The first red flag that this game might be a bust should really have been seeing us stick with Jordan Ayew and Bobby De Cordova-Reid up top while spotting Charlton deploying new recruit, Conor Coady, in the defensive midfield position. Such has Patson Daka’s stock shriveled, an immobile, slow and bumbling Ayew still can’t be ousted.
Maybe seeing the Jenga tower outside the KP again on my walk around to the turnstiles should have been the next red flag. One change hasn’t toppled the many issues and challenges we face and there’s an overarching sense of it’s going to get worse. I don’t think we’re making the playoffs; who wants to tell Aiyawatt?
After suffering ten minutes of ‘football’ which were just a head injury, a delay while the linesman swapped out some of his kit, another head injury and a tiny amount of actual time with the ball in play, it wasn’t a surprise to hear various fans questioning their decision to be in the stadium with just a quarter of the game gone.
Not for the first time this season, Leicester City had effectively lost the game before it even really got started. Rather than giving away the early goals like in other weeks, this week’s mountain to overcome was a straight red card fifteen minutes in for Caleb Okoli.
Just to add to the fun, we didn’t have a centre back on the bench, Jannik Vestergaard not in the match Day squad due to injury.
Collectively as a club from the top down to the match day squad, decision making has been poor for a few years. Caleb Okoli underlined this by absolutely losing his brain quite a way out from goal by pulling, wrestling and generally manhandling Miles Leaburn to the ground. All that stood between Leaburn and a goal was Stolarczyk so the odds were on a goal. It was a definite red card and an utterly brainless decision on the Italian’s part with just 15 minutes played.
King’s options were pretty limited. So early into a game, you have to make a change to try and be more stable for the next 75 (plus the countless minutes of extra time) but with Vestergaard gone, there were no centre backs on the pitch. Rather than opting to put Choudhury back, it was a home debut for Bade Aluko, De Cordova-Reid the player sacrificed.
If you thought this was a pretty hilarious opening quarter, Leicester can always ramp things up. If we do plummet back to League One, is it better to be mildly unlucky having tried to grind out narrow wins or should we just be calamitous? We’re definitely opting for the latter.
If being down to ten men isn’t tough enough, how about watching Coady out muscle or out work most of our midfield and forwards? How about Charlton trying to mirror the Oxford counter attack which led to the red card? Having what seemed a perfectly good goal for Charlton ruled out which would have been yet another set piece conceded? Relying on Luke Thomas long throws with no big men against a team of big men? This first half had it all.
Things didn’t improve when Hamza Choudhury injured himself, forcing a second substitution before thirty minutes was on the clock. He later appeared from the tunnel on crutches. The random injury generator continues to hit us where it hurts.
Because every season must have a redemption arc, Harry Winks coming back into the squad fits the bill. His return to replace Choudhury was met by a mixed crowd reaction. Some ready to see him back in and others hoping he’d join Soumare on the way out. For his part, he looked motivated and relatively match fit.
When Nathan Jones’ men inevitably broke the deadlock, it was another fine example of our defensive issues. Sonny Carey received a lovely ball into the box and it was an easy finish for him. Ricardo appeared to be running the wrong way and Jakub Stolarczyk found himself in the stay or come predicament that just needed a decision. By the time he made one, Carey was already wheeling off to celebrate.
With a prolonged period of extra time before the first half would be over, Charlton doubled their advantage. Lyndon Dykes, no goals since September and linked with us, was the obvious choice pre match to bag one. Luke Chambers delivered an excellent cross into the box and Luke Thomas was never the right side of Dykes.
The boos rang out at half time and even more people left and didn’t return. This is a Leicester team who have struggled to protect leads, much less make convincing comebacks.
To King’s credit, the ten players left did come out with some fight and grit at the start of the second half. But the statistics state the issues, we eventually finished this game with 21 shots but just 1 on target. Neither were any of those shots particularly dangerous or clear cut. Long range, hit and hope.
Even when awarded a penalty in the 56th minute, the crowd were nervously excited. To continue the comedy value of the game, Ayew’s hit after a meandering run up was never convincing and smashed off the post. The signs that nothing was going to get better kept coming.
Ayew bagged possibly the best, worst moment of the game shortly after by blocking Louis Page from goal which surely would have secured a consolation goal. This was Leicester’s best period of the game before the whole affair petered out and slowly came to a dull end. Charlton didn’t need to do much, having won it in the first half and it felt like going through the motions.
Not the first game in charge that King would have hoped for but it’s tough to say how things might have gone with a full compliment of players. If there’s anything to critique King for, it’s the decision to still start Ayew over anybody else. However, his decision to put Aluko into defense was interesting and gave us one of the only real positives to take away.
Bade Aluko did well, it begs the question of why haven’t we seen more of him. Ricardo Pereira has experience but has shown limitations and weaknesses. Not least the fact that he can’t play three games in a week. Shouldn’t we have seen more of Aluko to help settle him? He’s also one of the only players seemingly capable of driving forward.
Forced to play out of position didn’t seem to do him much harm. His pairing with Ben Nelson was one of the few positives to take away from this loss. Nelson won most things aerially and also tried to play us out and get it forward in the vein of what we got used to with Vestergaard. The two of them felt calm in comparison to seeing our full backs panic and lose their men.
To support King, or whoever may be coming in, there does appear to be some movement to address the various holes in the squad. We already knew it would only be loan moves but rumours of Man City’s Divine Mukasa incoming. Plus if you were worried we hadn’t ransacked Southampton lately, there’s also a link to us loaning in Joe Aribo.
This latest loss marks six defeats in nine. Even without the points deduction, you feel we’re playing our way into the relegation battle. The more alarming part is how we’re going to make up any points we do get deducted, we still can’t keep clean sheets so we’ll have to score more but based on today’s shots, from who? Jordan James isn’t back until who knows when and while there’s finally signs of bodies incoming, not one of the rumoured players is a striker.
It’s tough to predict who’ll be in the squad or in charge by the time we play Birmingham away next weekend and whether we can finally have some closure around the PSR debacle.
The Fosse Way 
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