Before we move on: 14 low points of the Brendan Rodgers era
Brendan Rodgers is an elite coach (citation needed) who was previously manager of Leicester City.
In his time at Leicester, he won the FA Cup and the Community Shield and took the club to its first ever European semi-final. His time in charge also saw Leicester win more Premier League points than any other club outside of the traditional 'big six'.
Alternatively, Leicester were rancid in the FA Cup final and got lucky, Manchester City played a bunch of toddlers in the Community Shield which isn't even a proper trophy and Leicester got knocked out of the consolation prize European competition they shouldn't have been in only to end up in the consolation consolation prize European competition.
Whether you were Rodgers In to the bitter end, tearing down banners in the away end at Selhurst Park while backing Brendan to rediscover the good old days or you've voiced Rodgers Out online so many times you've definitely accidentally typed a T first at least once, there's more than one story to tell about the Rodgers era at Leicester City.
The one we want to tell, while certain sections of the national media concentrate on his qualities, is the story about how it shouldn't have taken this long. We'll always have Wembley, we'll always have European trips, we'll always have annihilations of Manchester City, Arsenal and others. But there hadn't been much of that for a very long time.
In fact, one hallmark of the past few years is that when it’s gone wrong, it’s gone very, very wrong.
David Bevan and James Knight put our heads together and tried to come up with 10 low points of the Rodgers era.
We ended up having to draw the line at 14 - see if we’ve included your (least) favourite.
Nottingham Forest 4 Leicester City 1 (6 February 2022)
On Sunday morning, unaware of what would happen a few hours later, I found myself idly reminiscing about what it feels like when you get the news that an underperforming manager has been sacked. It's disorientating for a split second. Then you get a rush of hope, excitement and that feeling of possibility that the team's fortunes might change.
The first time I found myself begging for that feeling was 24 minutes into our FA Cup Fourth Round tie at the City Ground in February last year when I looked up from ranting about conceding the opening goal to see Forest celebrating their second.
The specific thing about that game is that we went into it as the competition holders away from home against local rivals in a lower division and we knew we would lose. That was 14 months ago, and things haven't got any better since.
DB
Leicester City 1 Blackburn Rovers 2 (4 March 2022)
Somehow Leicester found an even more depressing way to exit the FA Cup this season. This was shambolic on and off the pitch, summing up the club in recent times - massive queues outside to miss chunks of a game you wish you hadn't bothered with at all.
There have been some massive lows over the past couple of years but the period of a few minutes during the second half in which we continually gave the ball away and offered up chance after chance to Blackburn felt among the lowest point.
This game was meant to be an opportunity to give some confidence to players who had suffered a couple of defeats after those infamous wins over Aston Villa and Tottenham. Instead, it was the third winless game of a current stretch of seven.
DB
West Ham United 4 Leicester City 1 (23 August 2021)
We could also feature this in a top ten times either Amartey or Soyuncu gave the ball away in or around our penalty area and we conceded a ridiculous goal as a direct result. This diabolic performance followed the Community Shield win over Manchester City and the opening day 1-0 win over Wolves.
West Ham had 19 shots to our 5 and despite our blue tinted spectacles, it actually felt like an injustice when Youri Tielemans pulled a goal back to make it 2-1. To equalise would have been completely laughable. Instead, we played fair and conceded twice more to make the scoreline a reasonable reflection of our efforts.
Looking back, it should have been possible to put this down to a bad day but instead it felt like 90 minutes that encapsulated this team's mental and physical weaknesses, and it turned out to be a fair indicator of how the following 18 months would go.
DB
Liverpool 3 Leicester City 3 - lost 5-4 on pens (22 December 2021)
There are a few hundred people who will have been at all of these games. They deserve medals, although they won't want to be reminded of this one. I wasn't able to follow this game very closely but I snuck a couple of surreptitious glances at my phone - one when we were 3-1 up against a makeshift Liverpool youth team and another when we'd just lost on penalties. It was no surprise whatsoever.
What was slightly surprising was that Brendan Rodgers thought Ryan Bertrand and Jannik Vestergaard were the right players to come on in a double substitution and see the game out.
DB
Barcode failure: Newcastle United special
Leicester City 2 Newcastle United 4 (7 May 2021)
One of the enduring qualities of Rodgers’ Leicester was their ability to play incredible football until the exact moment adversity hit, at which point they would resemble a bunch of drunks stumbling out the pub at 3am.
Leicester had been stuttering for a while by the time Newcastle visited the King Power in May but were still on course for a top four finish and an FA Cup final. Then Jonny Evans was injured in the warm-up and Rodgers was forced to rejig on the fly.
The Foxes had 68% possession and 25 shots. Steve Bruce’s Newcastle were 4-0 up after 70 minutes. The first three goals came from two hopeless individual mistakes and a set piece. Afterwards, our fearless leader went into full reassurance mode: “We have made it a lot harder for ourselves”, he remarked, “but it’s still in our hands”.
JK
Newcastle United 2 Leicester City 1 (17 April 2022)
This was an alternate version of the Palace away we’ve just endured. Bruno Guimaraes scored in the 95th minute to stamp out any chance of momentum from the joyous scenes in Eindhoven three days earlier.
A couple of focal points here that encapsulate the last two years - we’d taken the lead through Ademola Lookman, whose non-signing had massive ramifications, while the fact we lost it was a precursor to the current season in which we’ve lost more points (22) from a winning position than any other side.
The only other time we’ve dropped as many as that in a single Premier League campaign resulted in a final tally of 28 dropped points in 2003/04, which ended in relegation.
DB
Leicester City 0 Newcastle United 3 (26 December 2022)
We don’t tend to do too well coming out of international breaks. Slap bang in the middle of this season we had to cope with the mother of them all - a winter World Cup.
So we probably all had a sneaking suspicion the intermission had come at an awful time, when Leicester had been winning comfortably at places like Molineux, Goodison and the London Stadium.
Seven minutes into the big restart, we were 2-0 down at home to Newcastle. One of the goals was a catastrophe, one was just a simple case of being outmaneuvered by a team on the up.
DB
Bournemouth 4 Leicester City 1 (12 July 2020)
The canonical Leicester collapse game. This is the earliest entrant onto this list, but it featured all the hits of the late-Rodgers era. A relegation-threatened opponent on a nine-game winless streak, an early defensive injury that saw Ryan Bennett enter the fray, and points in the bag hurled onto the fire at the first sign of pressure.
Infamously, Leicester held a comfy 1-0 lead at the break when Rodgers turned to the Substitution Masterclass page of the coaching manual and replaced Kelechi Iheanacho with Dennis Praet. Bournemouth rattled off four goals without reply in the second half.
After Bournemouth took the lead came a demonstration of the elite mentality that we’ve come to know so well. Caglar Soyuncu’s attempt to retrieve the ball ended with him booting Callum Wilson into the far corner. The resulting suspension ruled Soyuncu out of the remaining three games of the season and forced Leicester to field the immortal Bennett-Morgan-Evans back line against Tottenham and Manchester United, with predictable results.
JK
Leicester City 3 Villarreal 2 (4 August 2021)
For the last two years of the Brodject we’ve seen the escalation of a Blue on Blue civil war. In one corner, the fans analysing press conferences and clapping patterns to pin failure on the manager. In the other, those who believe we’re fortunate to have such an elite figure guiding us to 19th place.
The case for the latter is the injury record. And how many ills can be traced back to Fer Nino’s lunging tackle on Wesley Fofana, the leg break heard around the world? One second, the FA Cup holders were ‘ole’-ing the Spaniards all over the King Power; the next, silence, as the realisation that Daniel Amartey was now our starting centre half dawned on 30,000 people at once.
Fofana was just the latest player to join an absurdly blood-soaked dressing room, alongside Timothy Castagne (fractured eye socket), James Justin (ACL), and Jonny Evans (plantar fasciitis). With thrilling new signings Ryan Bertrand and Jannik Vestergaard also injured, the defence completely collapsed, and arguably never recovered.
JK
Leicester City 2 Tottenham Hotspur 3 (19 January 2022)
A fortnight before this game, Leicester had beaten Liverpool with a centre back pairing of Amartey and Wilfred Ndidi. During the winter break, we destroyed Watford to kick off the cup defence with Hamza Choudhury at centre back. Rodgers, giddy with delight, compared him to Javier Mascherano.
The Foxes had got through the first half of the season. Some of the injury clouds were parting. Harvey Barnes, Patson Daka, and Caglar Soyuncu all returned from injury.
Daka scored the opener, Barnes set up the second within a minute of his introduction off the bench. The stadium was rocking. Leicester led as the clock struck the 94th minute.
Eternal darkness.
JK
Did somebody say 9-0?: Southampton special
Southampton 1 Leicester City 1 (30 April 2021)
Although not a defeat, this game perhaps sums up the decline from a team that would respond to a Southampton red card in the first ten minutes by smashing in nine goals to a team that would labour to a 1-1 draw at a time when only victories would do.
Then the further decline to become the sort of club that doesn’t make sensible decisions in the transfer market, instead choosing to sign both of the Southampton players sent off in those two games.
If we had won this, perhaps through one of the late chances for Timothy Castagne and Jamie Vardy, things would be very different now.
DB
Leicester City 1 Southampton 2 (20 August 2022)
Sometimes fans have far better awareness of how a season can spiral than the players and managers involved. This was only the third game of the season, but the four games after it were Chelsea, Manchester United, Brighton and Spurs.
Having already blown a two-goal lead on the opening day, Leicester led again with 20 minutes to go. Rodgers made a double substitution to remove his wingers and, within seconds, his team collapsed. Kyle Walker-Peters ran riot, and Che Adams had the freedom of the city to score a brace.
Leicester promptly and predictably lost the next four games, conceding 14 goals in the process. It wasn’t until the exact moment he was about to be fired that Rodgers finally registered a win, a pattern that would become depressingly familiar over the course of the season.
JK
Southampton 1 Leicester City 0 (4 March 2023)
Not content with losing once to the worst team in the league, Leicester did it twice. With pressure mounting after defeat to Blackburn and a display of attacking potency against Arsenal that would have made a eunuch blush, the Foxes failed to have a shot on target for the second week in a row.
Far from being concerned by their slump towards the relegation zone, the mood in the squad was bouyant. “Play like that and we’ll be absolutely fine”, cooed Captain Madders, in response to suggestions his side should probably try to pick up some points at some stage.
JK
Crystal Palace 2 Leicester City 1 (1 April 2023)
Finally, we come to Crystal Palace where, as James said in his match report, we played all the hits. You know the stats by now - Palace's first win of 2023; a team that averaged 9 shots per game having 20 in the first half alone and 31 in total; age of opposition manager - 75.
We knew it was coming and it was still even worse than we'd feared, the inevitable last-gasp winner from a player who hadn't scored for 24 games to secure him the Benteke Trophy.
It may be raw, but it deserves to be on this list.
The thing is, we've left out a lot of the European "adventures" that flooded in when we raised this topic on the BSLB Twitter Space last night: a disastrous performance in the 1-0 defeat away to Legia Warsaw, somehow losing to a second-string Napoli team that didn't want to win, exacerbated by the news Legia had missed a 98th-minute penalty that would have put us through anyway; a pair of nightmare performances against Slavia Prague the year before.
If we're going to lose, at least let's do it sensibly from now on.
