Brendan’s given up: Leicester City 0 Manchester United 1 (1 September 2022)
Emptiness.
Watching Leicester City matches used to fill you with a sense that anything was possible. We were the team that did, that had a go – it didn’t always work, but you always appreciated the effort and more often than not there was hope to go with it.
Now? Now, it’s like watching the death of a movie villain: you know it’s coming, it’s just wondering how and when. Brentford, from two goals up; Arsenal, from the very beginning; Southampton, from a goal up; Chelsea, with an extra man for over an hour.
Against Manchester United on Thursday night, it was death by stasis. Because let’s be honest here: United might have been superb against Liverpool a couple of weeks back, but they aren’t a particularly great side with their act together yet.
But not for the first time, this Leicester side is managing to make all-comers look good.
Space men
The start was vaguely promising; a bit of noise around kick-off, some liveliness off the ball… and then a complete disasterclass. Giving 10-man Chelsea acres of space to punish us was unforgivable, but United’s first goal came in depressingly familiar circumstances: from our own attack, with Bruno Fernandes found in what can only have been some kind of contamination zone around him. From there, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were allowed to finish off at walking pace.
Pre-match chat might have highlighted Wilfred Ndidi being preferred to Caglar Soyuncu at centre-back – another dismal situation that’s being handled appallingly by all parties it seems – but the truth is that such quibbling is negligible right now. This is more than about who’s playing and who isn’t – our struggles are team-wide and endemic.
Dream snatchers
We seemed to get worse in the final 15 minutes, when Brendan Rodgers introduced Kelechi Iheanacho for Youri Tielemans – but honestly, I don’t even care about Plan B at this point. What’s Plan A? Because I’m not sure that hoping for James Maddison to pull rabbits out of his backside is a great one to rely on.
Every match we’re faced with the same tired difficulties. The players might as well walk around with question marks over their heads when they’re trying to bring the ball out from the back – a situation that improved when Tielemans or Bouba Soumaré went all the way home to collect the ball and drive forward, but which remains hard viewing. Poor James Justin was asked to fill the gaping void of a right-winger, meanwhile, where dreams seemingly go to die.
To pick out one positive, there were significant improvements after half-time, when we put pressure on our visitors and forced them into a series of niggly fouls around the box. But when full-time came, David de Gea had been forced into two saves all match. Our xG (0.03 at half-time, for crying out loud) finished up at 0.73.
This is a dire state of play that shows no signs of improving. Rodgers might well have given up, if the quotes from another pitiful post-match showing are anything to go by.
Right now, it’s hard to filter some of the fairness in his words with the rest, which can’t be helping anyone right now. Hanging players out to dry always led to Jose Mourinho burning away in a ball of flames. With Brendan, you feel like it’s heading more towards him crawling out the door and into a puddle.
