Leicester City's leadership vacuum: Why the Foxes must trust new faces to save the season
One of Dean Smith’s first actions as Leicester manager, when he arrived a fortnight ago, was to convene a meeting of the leadership council. What, he asked them, has gone wrong? Why are you, a team of apparently good players, rubbish?
We can speculate about many of the answers they might have given. In public following the meeting, Smith talked about getting the ball forward faster, so that was one piece of feedback. Perhaps the rest of the time was spent wailing about how we’ve been unlucky with injuries, arguing that we’ve played well and had bad breaks.
Presumably, ‘a complete and utter lack of leadership on the pitch’ wasn’t one of their suggestions. Yet that has been glaring in its absence all season. When you take a closer look at who’s on this fabled leadership group, it’s not hard to see why.
It’s like 10,000 captains, when all you need is a leader
The five members of the committee are: Jonny Evans, Jamie Vardy, Wilfred Ndidi, Youri Tielemans, and James Maddison. Earlier in the season, there was a sixth: Marc Albrighton who, as you may recall, is the vice-captain in absentia.
The fortunes of this little armband of brothers tell the story of the season in microcosm. Every one of them has led the team out of the tunnel at some point this term. Yet none have done it with any consistency. Leicester have six captains, which means that we really don’t have any at all.
We made fun of the announcement of Albrighton’s vice-captaincy role all the way back in August, but it spoke to a serious problem. A captain-vice duo where one is permanently injured and the other barely earns a place on the bench guaranteed a void at the top. Leadership is a soft skill that can be quite hard to spot when things are going well but treating it as an optional extra invited the sort of rudderless mess we’ve seen this year.
Kasper Schmeichel, who was the club captain himself until about 48 hours before the season started, was very obviously a leader. The soundtrack to the lockdown was his voice echoing around thousands of empty seats. We couldn’t concede a goal without him sprinting over to the referee to try to get it disallowed. Which, by the end, must have kept him fit at the very least.
He also had the virtue of playing every game. Whereas Evans’ leadership style is that of a First World War general, safely sipping tea in a chateau 50 miles behind the lines while his troops walk slowly towards a machine gun. Albrighton is long gone, although it perhaps speaks to his credit that we’ve been much worse since he left.
The rest of the group resembles a whiny group of teenagers. Which would be manageable, if they led from the front with their performances. Instead, their form has deteriorated as the walls have caved in around them. Most notably Maddison, whose best displays came with a World Cup place on the line.
Ndidi and Vardy, meanwhile, are so bereft of form and confidence that it's hard to imagine them inspiring the troops behind them. They have the air of latter-stage England cricket captains on the brink of that final, tearful press conference.
There’s no obvious organisational skill from any of our leaders, no aggressiveness or bite, and there certainly haven’t been any inspirational performances in months. Even as team after team has wasted time with the lead against us, our leaders have watched on dispassionately as hope ebbed away.
Perhaps one reason for that is there’s a very real chance that none of the six will be at the club come August. Evans and Tielemans are out of contract, the Maddison exit looms large, Ndidi is entering his final year as well, Vardy is on retirement watch, and Albrighton has already been shipped out on loan.
It is no surprise that a group of players with no stake in the outcome have failed to dig the team out of a hole. The few flashes of hope now come from new signings or those outside this group.
The new world order
It is to those faces that we have to turn now. It's time for new leaders to emerge in place of the old. This is the most important week in Leicester's recent history and we have already spent too long trusting the old guard to save us.
Ever since Brendan Rodgers left, we’ve asked this group to step up. Vardy has played every game, Ndidi has been restored to the line-up, Albrighton and Evans sat together in the stands to inspire the troops against Aston Villa. We have got nothing in return. No points, no hope.
The likes of Victor Kristiansen and even mad Wout Faes have shown far more natural leadership ability and an inclination to get stuck into their teammates over this recent run than any of the merry band of captains.
Kelechi Iheanacho may not scream captaincy material, but he has shown before that he can drag a team, kicking and screaming, to glory. When the chips were down in 2021 and we had nowhere else to go, he hauled us towards Wembley and kept us in the top four race almost singlehandedly.
The players on the fringes have had to show far more mental strength than many of our so-called leaders in recent times. Iheanacho has had to force himself back into the side again and again. Praet and Mendy have been written off by the manager, loaned out, or left out of the squad entirely for months on end. Yet they keep coming back. In Mendy's case, to perform far better than any other midfielder.
The same is true, perhaps, of Caglar Soyuncu, ostracised by the Rodgers regime then straight in as Leicester's best defender last weekend. And Daniel Iversen, who has shown that he's made of the stern stuff, despite being stuck behind Danny Ward all season then thrown in at the deep end out of pure desperation by a manager intent on self-preservation.
These fresh faces are the ones who Smith must place his trust in. The leadership group is a sign of how stale things have gotten, and how squad-building mistakes have knock-on effects. Fail to refresh the team, fail to self-analyse properly, fail those players whose hearts are no longer in the fight, and this is the end result.
The last chance of salvation is to ride with those who have a stake in the future. Our leadership group are leaders in name only, it's time to give someone else a chance to step up.
