Leicester City 2 Sheffield Wednesday 0: The empire strikes again
Leicester dispatched Sheffield Wednesday, one of the few teams to have stopped them winning this season, at an absolute canter. Are the Foxes too good to be fun?
Last week, a commenter on The Fosse Way lambasted us for being too negative about this Leicester season.
I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot over the last few days. Because, in many ways, he was right. If someone told you nine months ago that we would be on course for a Championship record and miles clear at the top, you would be surprised to learn that the manager also threatened to quit because everyone was complaining so much.
The problem is that a lot of Leicester games are like this one. An opponent so vastly inferior that the match was more or less over after five minutes, a swathe of empty seats, and a juggernaut that barely got out of first gear.
Watching Leicester beat The Likes of Sheffield Wednesday is like watching a boa constrictor slowly suffocate it’s prey over the course of several hours. As much as you can appreciate the feat, it doesn’t get the juices flowing in the same way as seeing a black mamba take someone out with one strike.
It’s ironic, then, that these sorts of performances are also why the Foxes are going to win the league. Leicester have only failed to win two games against bottom half sides, both of which required a late goal to deny them. Where our closest challengers randomly drop points at Bristol City or Preston, that barely happens to Enzo Maresca’s men.
Easy street
One of the most interesting parts of the season has been seeing how other teams choose to play against Leicester. We’ve seen a wide range of different styles, some teams pack the defence and sit in, some press high, others like to play out themselves, occasionally you get someone going extremely direct.
Wednesday’s chosen approach was to essentially surrender before kick off and mope around time wasting, despite being behind for the entire game. Whatever the merits of this plan might originally have been, it may have needed a rethink after it fell apart four minutes in.
Some excellent, co-ordinated work from Jamie Vardy, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, and Dennis Praet led to the latter winning the ball inside the Wednesday area. Dewsbury-Hall then squared to Vardy, who brilliantly dummied to give Abdul Fatawu an open goal.
In the first half Leicester were outrageously dominant. After that early goal, Wednesday barely touched the ball for 20 minutes, and certainly didn’t venture anywhere near the opposition half. Like with many games this season, it felt like this was a five or six goal hammering in the making.
Vardy, who had one of his best games of the campaign, could have been in multiple times but was denied either by the offside flag or a poor final ball. Stephy Mavididi and Harry Winks had long range efforts just over, Wout Faes missed from almost underneath the crossbar after a Praet flick-on.
Just as you were starting to get concerned that the Foxes hadn’t put them away, the second goal arrived. Leicester drew Wednesday out with some quick passing between the ‘keeper and the back four, with just the right amount of “oh God is he about to pass it straight to the striker with Mads Hermansen 40 yards from his own goal?” vibes to convince them to commit to the press.
Faes, whose long range passing was excellent all night, then played a brilliant, pin-point ball over the top to Dewsbury-Hall, whose first touch lay-off to Vardy was reminiscent of Riyad Mahrez’s assist for the same man in the 4-2 win against Manchester City a few years ago.
Vardy, inevitably, buried the second. And Dewsbury-Hall, despite being anonymous for much of the game, had his second assist.
A detailed review of the second half
Leicester had a couple more opportunities after that, but the reality is that the game petered out badly in the second half. The Foxes went into low-power mode and left it to their opponents to try to force something, which they looked singularly incapable of doing.
Those passages of play can be frustrating as a fan. You could see more seats emptying as the game drifted on, but with this Leicester team there’s always the slight danger that they’re about to do something completely wild to make you sweat out the end.
At Watford on Saturday it was Winks shanking a pass inside his own area. This time it was Faes and Hermansen going full ‘After you, Claude’, which almost resulted in the former slotting past his own goalkeeper under no pressure.
That was the only way Wednesday were getting back into this game. And though that didn’t happen, it’s certainly true that Leicester got lazy and sloppy after half time. You can’t criticise a team much for a routine win and preserving energy, but they should have put things completely beyond doubt earlier on.
What a Praet
In the end, the big positives from this game were Vardy’s performance, the most involved and alive he’s been for a while, and Praet, who played the right-sided #8 role very well. Maresca hasn’t found anyone to do that job properly since Wilfred Ndidi got injured, but Praet is clearly the best option for it now.
Ndidi’s biggest skill in that role is the ability to make runs into the right-side channel, creating space for Fatawu to cut inside or Ricardo Pereira to step forward behind him. Praet is the only replacement who does the same thing, and he kept stretching the Wednesday defence by getting in behind them.
He should have created one goal for Vardy from that position, only to overhit the pass, and set up another great chance for Dewsbury-Hall from a similar spot, only for him to have a tame shot blocked.
Praet is a mercurial character, a man who often looks like he hates Leicester, football, or possibly both, but it is strange to watch him sometimes and think how much time he’s spent languishing behind a bunch of pretty mediocre players for that midfield role. He has an important role to play until Ndidi returns in April.
It is plausible that Leicester could have wrapped up the title by the time that happens. The next month includes the two Big Games remaining on the schedule, against Leeds and Southampton. The gap is still 12 points, despite the fact both teams have been winning hearts and minds all over the media.
Those games are important in the sense that we need to improve our record in the biggest games and against the best opposition, but it’s wins like these, on Tuesday nights when no one is watching, that are the real reason for Leicester’s greatness at this level.
