Leicester City 1 Sunderland 0: Just enough
Sunderland were the latest Championship tourists to visit the King Power, and the latest to be dispatched without so much as a point. Adam Hodges reflects on yet another victory.
An assured performance from Leicester City saw them win 1-0 against Sunderland on Tuesday evening. The result saw Enzo Maresca's men notch their eighth win in a row, but the Black Cats proved to be one of the toughest opponents of the season so far.
During a week with three games on the schedule, you can usually pencil one in for a mass of disrespectful changes to the starting XI. It looks like QPR on Saturday will play host to it this time around, as Maresca chose to make just two alterations to the team that beat Swansea at the weekend.
Wilfred Ndidi, left out due to “something more than tiredness”, and Jamie Vardy, incapable of starting back to back games on a short week, were absent and replaced by Cesare Casadei and Kelechi Iheanacho, respectively.
The other, more surprising switch, saw Ricardo swap sides to play his inverted full back role from the left rather than the right in order to allow James Justin to mark Sunderland’s dangerman, Jack Clarke. This was a task he carried off pretty well, but Ricardo’s willingness to drift inside saw Leicester's left wing exposed instead for much of the game.
A shaky start
From the off, Leicester struggled to get real control of this game. Sunderland started much the brighter of the two teams, and had far more possession than we’ve become accustomed to seeing from opposing sides.
Sunderland exploited the gap at left back repeatedly in the early stages and Leicester were lucky to see a cross shot fizz harmlessly across goal. Without being able to defend with the ball, we saw some of the weaknesses of the inverted full back system, as it can leave a lot of space in midfield when Ricardo is dragged back wide out of possession.
While this was one of Casadei’s best games in a blue shirt, the midfield missed Ndidi’s defensive work, which allowed Sunderland to break in between the lines more regularly than most opponents. Mads Hermansen was forced into an early save from Clarke after a lovely move down Leicester’s left, an early example of the lack of composure in front of goal that hurt Sunderland throughout, and which has been a theme of the Championship season so far.
Despite all that, it was Leicester who took the lead after 12 minutes. There have been numerous times already in this division where the unmistakeable stench of Brendan Rodgers hovers over a team’s style of play. This was the latest, when James Justin rose comfortably to head home his first goal for two years from a simple corner and exposed Sunderland's weakness defending set pieces.
Five minutes later, Leicester’s high press could have buried the game. Along with moving Ricardo to the left, another of Maresca’s little tweaks for this game was encouraging his centre backs to be extremely aggressive, pushing up into the Sunderland half at times to win the ball. On one such occasion, Jannik Vestergaard ventured forward to win the ball and released a quick counter-attack. The ball found it’s way to Stephy Mavididi, who promptly hit the post, via the first of many saves from Anthony Patterson.
Holding on
The visitors pressed for an equaliser after that but the Leicester defence played out from the back effortlessly and gradually took more control of the game. It’s still surreal to see a goalkeeper as confident on the ball as Hermansen, who had two Sunderland players bearing down on him at one stage but was still able to comfortably find a player out wide.
A lot of Hermansen’s long range passing looked to find Casadei in midfield, though he could never quite release him. The Italian kept looking to link up with Kelechi Iheanacho, or run in behind him, however, and eventually it was Wout Faes who managed to pick him out. Casadei cushioned a header down for Iheanacho who was unlucky to find the post with his effort on goal, via another touch from the Sunderland ‘keeper.
Into the second half Leicester had two great chances within three minutes of the restart, with Patterson twice denying Casadei. The first, in particular, really should have been a goal but the loan man telegraphed his finish and the goalkeeper was able to get down to foil it.
As the half drifted on, however, Sunderland maintained a foothold in the game and always threatened an equaliser. In the last 10 minutes, Leicester seemed incapable of keeping the ball, and having removed Iheanacho, Mavididi, and Abdul Fatawu by that stage, while also being without Yunus Akgun and the injured Kasey McAteer, the attacking resources were badly stretched and there was no one to perform the usual breakaway heroics we’ve been used to in the last few weeks.
A front three of Vardy, Marc Albrighton, and the lesser-spotted Patson Daka may be many things, but cool, calm possession-merchants they are not, and as a result the ball kept looming dangerously back towards the Leicester goal. Fortunately, the chances that Sunderland created were grasped with a glaring lack of composure, and all the strikes were rushed and way over the bar, a fact which caused Tony Mowbray to bemoan the youth of today and their failure to shoot low in the post-match interview.
Making memories
On a night where the teams and fans celebrated the lives of two people who made a huge impact on the English game with applause for Khun Vichai and Bobby Charlton, it is Enzo Maresca who is making the biggest impact on this Leicester team.
As he - unusually for him - took the applause and pumped up the Kop at the end of the game it was clear to see that he knew Sunderland had posed a stronger challenge to overcome compared to other teams of late.
Next stop, QPR away on Saturday with a team having their own struggles at the bottom of the league. But for now, Leicester are eight points clear of Ipswich in second and a staggering 14 clear of third place. Long may the Maresca March continue.
