Hazzetta dello Sport: Leicester City v Birmingham City
Settle down in the back garden of Wygston House, pull out your device and take a gulp of your cappuccino. Look across Jubilee Square. It’s Saturday morning again and it’s time for the Hazzetta preview.
If Leicester City were a character to a week within the world of Greek mythology, we’d spent the day acting as Lazarus in a confidence-resurrecting win over Norwich only to quickly become Icarus FC, the club who came too close to the sun.
The part of the Icarus legend no-one mentions is that his dad warned him not to go near the solar rays but he ignored him. He was also warned don’t go too low towards the sea, but he ignored him. Icarus ends up in the sea. Icarus ends up far too ambitious for his own good. Take your pick of applying any of the available Leicester City analogies there.
Using Greek mythology stories as though a diet version of Guardian journalist Jonathan Liew is where we are in another mad instalment of the craziest footballing soap opera you could wish to be involved in. Therefore, it’s with some comfort that we come back to the football.
Monday started off with dread and the bizarre opening goal just compounded it. At first, City looked to be playing at a high tempo yet not confident enough to launch big diagonal switch balls much to the dissatisfaction of the crowd. We eventually opened up utilising the wings and away from the congested central tippy-tappy football seen at Ashton Gate a few days previous. The beauty of the second half was that Stephy Mavididi’s goal felt inevitable. That’s us at our best. When the style becomes stifling to the opposition and we have them in a submission hold.
However, there was the moment when that pressure stepped off and we allowed Norwich to take control of the possession. We’d seen that before around the seventh minute mark and we’d seen the equaliser before. The difference was the Canaries were as poor and as lazy an opposition as we have played in a long time. The reason those sweeping, switch balls to Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu were so successful was that there were no doubled-up Norwich defenders. Their midfielders didn’t get to grips with the initial press onto our back four and they were bonkers for playing short from their goalkeeper with such notorious hoof merchants as Shane Duffy and Ben Gibson.
As a Birmingham resident, I found Blues fans easy to get on with. This was largely down to three mutual agreements; a dislike of Aston Villa, a love of Club Brugge away and that we had both managed in the modern era to pull off underdog trophy victories. This season was supposed to mark a new era. New American ownership including the very, very, very small percentage ownership of Tom Brady.
The on-field decisions have been baffling; the saga of sacking John Eustace to replace him with Wayne Rooney was met with the same bewilderment from the locals as it was the rest of the footballing public. In terms of winning fan approval, the new owners have pushed ahead with repairing St Andrews back to a full capacity and are rumoured to have bought a massive plot of land at the nearby and former Wheels Motorcycling Park for a new stadium.
Their Easter Monday victory was welcome. They remain two points from the relegation zone and the 1-0 win over Preston stopped them sliding into the depths of the bottom three bog. It was their 4th point from a possible 24. With 6 games to go, a lot rides on their away trips to Rotherham and Huddersfield in late April.
Under Gary Rowett (appointed as interim due to the sad illness suffered by Tony Mowbray), they have prioritised stopping goals and avoiding the basketball battles we enjoyed with them earlier in the season. While in their recent victory, they passed the ball around well, it largely failed to create clear-cut chances. The winning goal was largely down to a massive stroke of luck as a final Preston defender slipped on the halfway line and Jay Stansfield had an open half of the pitch to run into. Jordan James stood out in our December league fixture, scoring twice, and I am reliably informed by Brummie-supporting colleagues that there’s been Leicester interest.
Enzo Maresca doubled down in team selection for the umpteenth time in the game against Norwich. Same again. You’d expect the selection choices come down to two positions; if Callum Doyle continues at left-back after his best performance post-return from injury and who takes the lead striking role. Jamie Vardy had an awful day in Bristol but got another goal on Monday. Patson Daka had an average afternoon and failed to truly impact the game. It’s a largely clean bill of health and no further injuries sustained from last weekend.
The disappointment on Monday was that both Ipswich and Leeds successfully rose to their challenges, and we are back where we were on Monday morning. Their opponents of Southampton and Hull had the chances to take points off them but dramatically failed late on. Southampton appear officially done in their bid for automatic promotion.
Ipswich have their latest test in how to keep scoring late winners: the Old Farm derby at Carrow Road. The Canaries successfully took points off them in the original fixture in a 2-2 draw. That this game will be finished just 30 minutes before the 3pm kick-offs feels important.
Leeds, meanwhile, face our enemies Coventry City away. The Sky Blues have chosen to lower Leeds’s allocation to avoid the ‘Leeds would have taken more’ lines and they badly need points in their playoff qualification attempt. Coventry are one of the few sides to take points away from Leeds at Elland Road this season and the game finished in a shoving match.
Overall, it’s another weekend where the games have sub-plots and their own intentions thrown with them. The key for Leicester is to avoid the noise now and use the position of ‘chasers’ to their advantage. Over the run of the next three games, the Foxes play sides that appear poorer on paper but are motivated themselves to avoid relegation. Head down, foot down, don’t go too near the sun and avoid the waves of the sea.
