We’d had a glimpse of a renewed, hardened Leicester City who withstood the onslaught at Ipswich and put in a solid 90 minutes against Bristol. It felt like a new Leicester, one Rowett was positively influencing. Even Jordan Ayew didn’t look quite so ineffective midweek. But today looked and felt a hell of a lot like the same old Leicester City.
For those who didn’t join in who left early or stayed to boo the (misguided) players coming to the Kop to clap at full time, hopefully they will consider joining the next inevitable iteration. Because while Gary Rowett managed to paper over some of the cracks for a few days, Leicester City are back. The real ones who’ve been fragile and timid and whose heads drop when the opposition score.
The misleading assumption is that everybody involved in the protest is negative and will ‘ruin’ the atmosphere. A lot of the faces amongst the protest were also front and centre for leading the chants. Back the team, not the regime.
Let’s not pretend that the support for the team wasn’t good for the most part too. Even after conceding the first goal, and the second, the crowd were largely trying to encourage the team. Today was proof that support can only go so far and that there’s still something the players haven’t fully fixed.
It’s also no coincidence that when the noise did cease, it was once QPR were clearly running away with their bow-topped victory. Once the players had resorted to the form of the previous months.
Rowett made just one change from the midweek win. Bobby De Cordova-Reid dropped back to the bench and Divine Mukasa was restored to the starting line-up. It presented a first start alongside Jordan James for the Man City loanee. It also left Oliver Skipp to navigate that double pivot role alone again.
Despite the positive images from Seagrave of a lot of the injured players back in training, none made the bench. But it was still a strong bench, Daka, Aribo, Lascelles and Pereira alongside the academy kids. Plenty of players capable of shaking something up on their day.
Rowett’s decision to prioritise the inclusion of James is entirely understandable. He’s a player who regardless of where we end up, will not be held accountable.
He’s still got a pretty determined quote to live up to about not allowing us to go down and contributed to that again with another impressive solo effort just 14 minutes in. QPR’s goalkeeper, Joe Walsh, will think he could have done better but James has been scoring goals like this for us all season and it was another fine one to add to his list.
Having him back has been a positive, it lifted Abdul Fatawu and there were flashes that he and Mukasa could link up well. The latter struggled to impose as much as he did in other games, but seemed hamstrung by having only Ayew ahead of him.
This was a game that really highlighted the issues and shortcomings of Ayew. Too often he was slow to press, to react and generally to get into the areas you want your striker to be present in. The boos and jeers at his substitution, which took until the 60th minute, felt deserved. Quite what Rowett has seen in him remains unclear.
That it went on to finish 3-1 to the away side is damning when they had just 3 shots on target. Being 4-0 down at half time away to QPR was pretty bad, but today’s loss feels worse. That QPR side outplayed us and looked stronger on paper.
Today’s loss was a different beast. That’s not to say that this QPR side didn’t work, they did, but it’s tough to think of a game where we have been so generous and gifted the opposition two goals while inviting them on for an easy third.
Particularly because we led for the first 43 minutes, the first 30 of which we looked the better team. But we’re Leicester, and it felt like we could both storm on to a 5-0 win and throw a cheap goal away at any moment. We didn’t push on after taking the lead, too passive and often not making good runs for one another.
After being one of the heroes midweek, Ben Nelson had a nightmare game. It had started well enough, he fed the ball to JJ for the goal but his first half booking left him vulnerable. While you could mark him as unlucky for QPR’s first, his movement for the second goal, credited to him as an own goal, looked very poor. He looked pretty distraught after this and a different manager might have pulled him off to protect him.
Jamal Lascelles was on the bench, though Rowett hasn’t been shy in saying that he doesn’t favour coming off the bench because of the time it takes Lascelles to adjust into a game. Whether this has long term impacts to Nelson is unclear, he is still young and learning but this was a tough second half for him.
While Nelson will take the focus, it’s the other midweek hero who also has to be looked at. Jakub Stolarczyk would have taken confidence from the penalty save and the clean sheet, but his problem has been in decision making. Too often he finds himself in no man’s land, unsure whether to come out and claim or stay back.
For QPR’s first, yes Nelson should have had a better grip on Harvey Vale, but Stolarczyk was too far out, leaving an empty net. For the second, you have to assume the communication wasn’t loud enough but it’s generally a mess.
Just eight minutes on from QPR going 2-0 up and the game was dead before Rowett’s substitutes had made it onto the field. A corner on the 58th minute was poorly dealt with and Ronnie Edwards bagged his first goal of the season.
Picking out Nelson and Stolarczyk is also a little unfair when the whole team’s fire felt like it went out pretty early. This wasn’t gritty, there wasn’t as much determination as we’d seen in the last couple of games. Did the game on Tuesday add some false confidence? This performance didn’t have much you’d recognise from what we did well midweek.
A triple substitution saw Daka, Winks and De Cordova-Reid replace Ayew, Skipp and Mukasa. But the damage was already done. The defensive tactics had been questionable, the inability to capitalise on our wingers, which looked like our best chance to get something, it all added up.
Throughout the second half, we’d not created enough, our only shot of the half was another good strike from James before he was substituted for Richards. His introduction saw us shift Mavididi and Fatawu around, none of which seemed to have an impact and the game fizzled out with us looking more ineffective than before.
Outside of the three nicely gift-wrapped goals, the away side hadn’t produced much else. The atmosphere, and the numbers left in the crowd dropped and any hope sparked from Tuesday was well and truly extinguished again.
Whether the club wisely decided the only player that wouldn’t antagonise fans for the post-match interview was James, or whether he put himself forward, it was a frank interview.
Hearing him say it wasn’t good enough and calling out the side for dropping their heads again when adversity struck. You can tell from his face as he was taken off and how frustrated he sounds, that the dressing room will have had some tough conversations again. But will they garner a reaction?
While we started the weekend with things in our hands, our own capitulation and West Brom, Blackburn and Oxford winning leaves us second bottom again. Rowett’s got his work cut out to try and restore some of the basics again and to lift the players who looked dejected.
Next up is Watford away, before the international break. There’s no home game until April 3rd by which point there’s only seven chances left to try and save ourselves.
Have those above Rowett and the players taken stock of where we are and the bigger issues? It seems unlikely. See you at the next protest.
The Fosse Way 