Snog, Marry, Avoid: Rating Leicester City’s squad through the eyes of Enzo Maresca
After a week drinking the Maresca kool-aid and reading up on the Guardiola coaching tree, James Knight slips into the mind of our new manager to decide the fortunes of the Leicester City squad.
It’s been a little over a week since Enzo Maresca was unveiled as Leicester manager. By Wednesday, he’d finally shaken off enough of the post-Champions League hangover to board a helicopter bound for Seagrave.
After a whistle-stop tour of the best training ground/most overpriced creche in Europe, he must have wandered down the corridor towards his new office. Once he settled there, his gaze will have drifted across the walls, each featuring large faded areas where lifesize portraits of Brendan Rodgers used to hang, before settling on the whiteboard that lists the current Leicester squad.
What must he have thought when he first took in those names?
Perhaps he would have wondered why there was a huge gap where the attacking midfielders should be. Or why there was an entirely separate board simply labelled “injury list”. Or why Jannik Vestergaard’s name was dotted with thousands of suspiciously pin-shaped holes.
After those thoughts frittered from his mind, he’d have started to get down to business. Because, despite the fact that his entire managerial career comprises 14 games in Serie B which literally not a single one of us have watched, we can have a pretty good guess at what he wants his teams to do. And getting there is going to take a lot of work.
We’ve spent months agonising, or fuming, over which players are worth keeping, and who should be first on the scrapheap. For a long time, the squad rebuild felt like the pot of gold on the edge of the rainbow, perennially just out of reach. Then, finally, we were able to reach out and push those players out of contract over the precipice.
And now we have a manager and we know how he wants to play. We can, to entirely dispense with any sort of coherent metaphor, start to move the pieces around and throw even more men overboard.
So we’re going to try to leap inside that handsome little Italian head and predict what he might think of each member of the squad. It’s obvious that Maresca is going to go The Full Guardiola, just as Vincent Kompany and Mikel Arteta have done, so we know what style of play to expect: possession, pressing without the ball, flexibility and speed in attack.
For the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to discount four names who are obviously leaving - Barnes, Castagne, Maddison, and Praet - alongside Jonny Evans because, frankly, that whole episode is faintly embarrassing. Everyone else gets a rating of SNOG, MARRY, or AVOID, depending on whether they’re a short term stop-gap, long term solution, or in danger of being put on the first train to Riyadh.
Goalkeepers
Should be an easy one to start with, here. When we surveyed loyal TFW readers to ask where they expected each player to end up by September, every single one had Daniel Iversen at Leicester, presumably as first choice. He’s nailed on to be the #1 this season, right?
Well, er, wrong.
Goalkeeper is one of the foundational building blocks of any team that wants to play out from the back. Pep Guardiola’s first act at Manchester City was to load Joe Hart into a cannon because his passing wasn’t good enough and replace him with Claudio Bravo.
Other Pep lieutenants have done a similar thing. Arteta binned off Bernd Leno in favour of Aaron Ramsdale, while Kompany bought in Arijanet Muric to offer better distribution from the back. It was the same story with Roberto De Zerbi, one of Maresca’s football BFFs, at Brighton, who dropped Roberto Sanchez for Jason Steele because “he is closer than Robert to my style”.
The goalkeeper has to be able to play short passes to the defenders, but he also has to be capable of playing balls into midfield when the opposition close off the short options. A few training sessions of watching Iversen try to do that should be enough for Maresca to make up his mind. Watching a single clip of Iversen’s drop-kick out of play in the dying stages at St James’ Park might do the trick on its own.
Danny Ward’s distribution is better, but not significantly. It’s possible Maresca might prefer Ward in the same way that Brendan Rodgers did, although the fact he’s absolutely dreadful at stopping footballs from going into the goal might prove too much of a barrier to breach.
We can assume goalkeeper is one of Maresca’s top priorities going into the summer. It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. While Ward and Iversen could both be on the outs, the Guardiola tree’s adoration for third-choice ‘keepers to hover around the place inconsequentially means Alex Smithies should be on for a lifetime contract.
Verdict
Alex Smithies: MARRY
Daniel Iversen: AVOID
Danny Ward: AVOID
Defenders
A feature of the Guardiola tree is an obsession with signing defenders. Guardiola has spent an endless stream of oil money on his back four, while Arteta has a similar predilection at Arsenal. Kompany has signed seven defenders in a single year at Burnley, including two centre backs in January alone.
So we may see a big overhaul here, but on paper defence looks the area of the squad least in need of one. Partly because there are some good options already and partly because of the sheer volume of work that’s needed elsewhere.
Any defender in a Guardiola-style team has to be good on the ball and flexible enough to rotate positions. Pep himself has done all sorts of manic things with his defenders, whether that’s playing four centre backs with one of them in midfield, inverted full backs, or going with no defence and man-marking Barcelona in a Champions League semi-final only to get absolutely hosed.
His coaching tree tend to follow a similar pattern, with less of the gratuitous tactical madness. Right now, it’s the inverted full backs that are properly hip. Kompany has used Connor Roberts in that role at Burnley, going to a sort of 3-2-5 in possession. Arteta uses Ben White and Oleksandr Zinchenko in a similar way.
We’ve already seen some of this at Leicester, as it was Rodgers’ great summer masterplan of action last year. He briefly tried to use Ricardo Pereira as an inverted full back before he succumbed to injury, while James Justin played for a while as a left back who dropped in to offer more security while Castagne offered attacking width on the right.
Those two may not want to stay, but Maresca will probably want them to. Victor Kristiansen is not that sort of player but the fact he’s young and is good going forward should see him a key part of the plan. The jury is out on Luke Thomas, but again his age should count for him and he could be moulded into the right type of full back for Maresca’s system.
Centre back is an area more primed for new signings. Harry Souttar might be a bit slow but he’s the right kind of profile on the ball. Wout Faes, on the other hand, is far too chaotic. Managers who like control don’t like players who are complete wildcards. Combine that with his role in the Belgian clique and he’s a candidate for a sellin’. And there isn’t anybody else.
We aren’t going to acknowledge Vestergaard.
Verdict:
James Justin: MARRY
Victor Kristiansen: MARRY
Ricardo Pereira: MARRY
Harry Souttar: MARRY
Luke Thomas: SNOG
Wout Faes: AVOID
Jannik Vestergaard: AVOID
Midfielders
In midfield, we know exactly what we’re looking for. Technical ability, obviously, but also a bit of bastardry. You’ve got to be able to tackle. Erik ten Hag, who worked with Pep at Bayern, wrote in his book that Guardiola was “uncompromising” on a rule that whenever you lose the ball, you have to win it back within seconds. Our midfield got a lot of practice at part I last season, at least, even if they forgot the second part.
Beyond that, more or less every branch of the Guardiola tree features a midfield that follows the same pattern: a main defensive pivot tasked with bringing the physicality and always being available for a pass (Rodri, Sergio Busquets, Thomas Partey), someone to keep the ball and engage quickly to win it back (Xavi, Gundogan, Xhaka), and someone to create and score goals (de Bruyne, Iniesta, Odegaard).
When you read about Kompany at Burnley, the same things crop up. Josh Cullen was the “heartbeat of the team” who “keeps things ticking over”, Johann Berg Gudmundsson offered “game intelligence, ball retention and composure”, Josh Brownhill featured in a “new attacking role”.
Leicester’s midfield options in a post-Tielemans, post-Maddison world badly lacks the right type of players. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is a decent shout to fit into the Xhaka/Gundogan role on the left of the three at Championship level, though his passing has to become more consistent.
Beyond that, if you squint and down a couple of cans it’s possible to see Bouba Soumare as the pivot, on account of him being large and having a decent range of passing. From Maresca’s point of view, the fact he would offer more defensive solidity if he was made out of papier-mache may count against him longer term.
Hamza Choudhury has the energy to play in a Guardiola midfield, but his creator sadly poured all of the experience points into the ‘charge about like a maniac and threaten to break people’s legs’ ability rather than sprinkling any into the passing stat. Wilfred Ndidi, likewise, has become such an appalling passer that he’s a cert to be sent to Saudi Arabia by first class post.
Verdict:
Hamza Choudhury: SNOG
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall: SNOG
Boubakary Soumare: SNOG
Wilfred Ndidi: AVOID
Forwards
We’re batching wingers and forwards together because anyone who plays either role has to be comfortable playing both. And I’m not writing an entire section for the benefit of Marc Albrighton.
In a Guardiola-style attack, the wingers are almost always inverted, they’ve got to be able to switch positions, and they have to be able to contribute goals. At Arsenal, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli outscored Gabriel Jesus last season. Nathan Tella, primarily a wide player, top scored for Burnley, while two other wingers - Manuel Benson and Anass Zaroury - were next on the list.
There’s more flexibility at #9: ‘proper’ strikers like Erling Haaland, Sergio Aguero, and Robert Lewandowski have done well in a Guardiola side, but for a long time his preference was for false nines, or at least hybrid striker/wingers. He has used Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden, and even Kevin de Bruyne up front at various points. Julian Alvarez is another of that type of player.
Arteta, for his part, quickly got rid of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alex Lacazette and replaced them with Jesus, who can play up front or on the wing and often drifts between the two in the same game.
Leicester’s forward line is in almost as much of a state as the midfield. Ironically, Harvey Barnes would suit this system perfectly, having evolved into a poor-man’s Sterling under Rodgers: the sort of player everyone moans about, who can look terrible, is naturally a dreadful finisher, but whose goalscoring record is hard to argue with.
But Barnes isn’t going to be here, so the winger room consists of Albrighton sitting around sadly on his own, trying to remember where his parking space is. Albrighton’s work rate might earn him a(nother) stay of execution, but we can safely assume he isn’t going to be playing the Grealish role, dancing round defenders with his socks round his ankles, then sinking ten jagerbombs and buying a free kick, any time soon.
Realistically, that means we need to sign at least three wingers over the summer, possibly four. The club has given Tawanda Maswanhise a new contract, and he can play from wide or up front, plus he has a decent goal record. He may very well be in the mix in the early part of the season. Wanya Marcal-Madivadua also signed a new contract and could be involved as well.
Up front is a bit clearer, because Maresca has already come out and said he wants Jamie Vardy to stay. Patson Daka makes sense as a budget Haaland: trained up on Red Bull and a great finisher when given the chance. Daka is surely the favourite to be the main striker. There’s the dizzying prospect he could shred the Championship if this all works out.
Which leaves Kelechi Iheanacho. We’ve seen him do well with wingers around him and he could play up front or from the right. But when you connect all the dots and see the amount of players we need to sign, it’s hard to shake the feeling that he’s both a sellable asset and dispensable enough to justify selling.
Verdict:
Marc Albrighton: SNOG
Jamie Vardy: SNOG
Patson Daka: MARRY
Kelechi Iheanacho: AVOID
That’s a wrap
Totting up the numbers, that leaves us with six players that definitely fit the system (one of whom is Smithies and that was quite literally a joke). Six more who count as maybes, who might surprise us or simply act as stop-gaps until we can replace them. The rest look like goners.
That, it’s fair to say, probably isn’t enough of a squad to be going on with. Particularly not for a manager from a coaching tree as demanding and obsessive as Guardiola’s.
Last summer, starting from a similar situation to where we find ourselves today, Vincent Kompany signed 16 players. He brought in 11 permanently and five on loan, then five more in January.
At a conservative estimate, based on this highly scientific process, we need a new goalkeeper, three new centre backs, an entirely new midfield and four new wingers. And Maresca has surely been given promises to the effect that he’s going to get them.
There’s six weeks until opening day.
Strap in.
Official results:
MARRIAGE MATERIAL: Smithies, Justin, Ricardo, Kristiansen, Souttar, Daka
GIVE ‘EM A SNOG: Thomas, Soumare, Choudhury, Dewsbury-Hall, Albrighton, Vardy
OVER MY DEAD BODY: Iversen, Ward, Faes, Vestergaard, Ndidi, Iheanacho
