How Leicester City failed Harvey Barnes is a lesson for his next club
Leicester City may be losing players that don’t deserve a legacy but David Bevan thinks Harvey Barnes falls into a slightly different category - a local boy failed by the club.
Although many Leicester City fans were resigned to relegation long before it was confirmed, the grim reality hits home for different people at different times. For some, it came when a newspaper article last week claimed West Ham United were leading the race for the signature of Harvey Barnes.
We've known for months that James Maddison would be playing for a bigger club next season, while the first confirmation of one of our players' next club came on Saturday when Aston Villa gathered up Youri Tielemans.
There's something different about Barnes though. Perhaps it's the fact that although he was born in Burnley, he is to all intents and purposes a Leicester boy. Perhaps it's the fact that, like Tielemans, he has been linked to elite clubs for years and may now have to settle for one that we’re still coming to terms with as a step up.
Or perhaps it's the fact that it's always felt like Leicester City was the right level for Harvey Barnes. Until it wasn’t.
Jota to slotter
Barnes made his Leicester debut as a substitute in central midfield in a 5-0 Champions League defeat in Porto in December 2016. He flourished in a succession of loan spells at MK Dons, Barnsley and West Bromwich Albion and a Leicester side crying out for a winger finally saw his integration in the winter of the 2018/19 season. His first Premier League start came in a 4-3 defeat at Molineux.
We had high hopes but our first impressions were that Barnes didn't seem like a natural finisher. He could burst past defenders through the sheer strength of his running but he was raw. Maybe he revisited those games at the Estadio de Dragao and Molineux and took note of Diogo Jota's technique when scoring in both - an oddity that might have fans of his next club cautiously eyeing up their first fixture with Liverpool.
Barnes's first league goal for Leicester came at West Ham, one of only two goals in his first 36 games. The other was a ferocious half-volley at Bramall Lane at the start of the following season. Strangely, these strikes remain two of his career highlights so far, despite four and a half years at a club that has hit the heights with an FA Cup win and multiple European campaigns.
His finishing has improved in that period and there have been highlights - a curling equaliser at Elland Road in November 2021 stands out - but there haven't been too many massively memorable or meaningful goals. He scores very similar goals remarkably regularly, cutting in from the left and curling the ball into the bottom corner.
It’s fair to say Barnes is effective rather than entertaining, very good but not great, and this is what has made him feel like the right type of player for Leicester City. After all, to prevent a constant, draining need for transfer masterclasses, it would have been handy to have some players we could rely on to hang around for a number of years.
If Barnes was going to leave, it seemed one of two things had to happen - either one of the top six would take a punt and overpay for a player with obvious flaws, as Manchester United did with Harry Maguire, or Leicester would have to deteriorate to such an extent that Barnes deserved better.
The numbers man
This may sound like the same bitterness heading the way of Maddison and Tielemans this summer, but it's not meant to be damning with faint praise.
Because there are few better in the entire Premier League at doing the things at which Barnes excels. His signature move - the sharp one-two and finish - had already been spotted by tactical expert Michael Cox way before we saw it for what will probably be one last time on the final day against, of course, West Ham.
One word comes up time and again when discussing Harvey Barnes - numbers.
Since he found his feet in the top flight, he has put them up consistently. As has been well-documented, they're comparable to those of Bukayo Saka. He can also get your whole team up the pitch in seconds through one of his trademark lung-bursting runs.
We’ve already covered his - and Leicester’s - inability or unwillingness to beat a man. But Barnes has proven effective without being particularly skilful. He’s not a flair player. He brings energy and directness.
Some fans would point to his profligacy at the City Ground earlier this year as evidence that he is not a good finisher but it's probably more accurate to say that particular failure reflects his struggles when asked to be the main man. He needs to be a cog in a machine. His one-two finishes are another clear pointer of his need to be surrounded by quality.
That's not just going forward either. Defensively, Barnes is effectively a write-off. He often appears little more than a training cone. That's fine if the rest of your team is functioning as it should because his team-mates will mask his defensive deficiencies. When it isn't, as Leicester's wasn't last season, it starts to feel like a problem.
This is not to single out Barnes - or anyone else - but when you have at least three players like that in one team, you're not going to prosper. And Leicester really didn't.
With the benefit of hindsight it makes the side that included Barnes on one flank and Ayoze Perez on the other look balanced. We may have craved another winger with Barnes's attacking output but Perez worked hard without the ball and it all seemed to fit together nicely, at least for a short while.
Give him what he needs
So he needs a strong left-back and ideally a strong left-sided central midfielder around him. He probably also needs someone to push him for his own position, as Ademola Lookman did on loan in the 2021/22 season.
Even then, it has to be said that when coming up against the best clubs in the division Barnes does present a conundrum. That's why, for example, Trent Alexander-Arnold will miss playing against Leicester City next season.
But neither could you simply remove Barnes from the team when playing against a top team. He was a necessary gamble, not least because there was - for almost the entirety of his stay at the club (so far) - basically nobody else even vaguely reliable on either wing, let alone to replace him on the left. He was our outlet, and when it worked it could be spectacular.
The question of his legacy among Leicester supporters is probably the most interesting of all those who will leave this summer. Particularly because he missed the FA Cup final with an injury that forced Brendan Rodgers to adopt the 3-5-2 that ultimately won us the trophy we’d craved for so long.
Regardless, it’s a shame that some fans won't be disappointed to see him leave, because he was nowhere near the biggest problem that led to relegation. He was just caught in the crossfire in the search for scapegoats. Being dropped for the crucial penultimate game of the season at Newcastle highlighted a weakness, but it wasn't Barnes himself - it was that the rest of the team was so unreliable we were forced to cover for defensive difficulties by playing more defensive players.
That sums up the real failure with Harvey Barnes. There's a sense that he was quite happy playing for his local team in the Premier League.
He was never going to be the kind of player who roared at his team-mates or led from the front. His quiet nature never meant he didn’t care though - his reaction to Aston Villa’s late winner after Wilfred Ndidi failed to find him with a pass showed he does. And yes, he goes missing for periods but not many wingers don’t.
The bottom line is that he’s a youth product that will bring in £40million for the club - that’s a success story.
We probably always wanted more out of him. But while it’s natural to expect the upward curve of a talented young footballer to keep moving in the right direction forever, in Barnes’s case to regular England call-ups, it doesn’t always happen.
Sadly, Leicester's abject recent record in the transfer market failed to surround him with players equally good at their jobs - now we've paid the price and it will be up to someone else to give him the tools to carry out his work elsewhere.
