Wilfred Ndidi: King of interceptions, recoveries and a few cracking goals along the way
While we await the fate of our manager, there’s still the open question of the players who were out of contract. We’ve written about a few of them already, but it only feels right to heap some praise onto Wilfred Ndidi too.
With so many players' contracts up in the air, we were never going to be able to do a dedicated tribute that did them all justice. The Union FS effort against Blackburn was incredible but rightly had to choose a focal point and understandably, Jamie Vardy and Marc Albrighton took the focus. Still, feels a bit wrong we didn’t do more for Wilfred Ndidi though doesn’t it?
Perhaps most of us just naively assumed that Ndidi was bound to get a new contract and stay so we didn’t think about the need to say goodbye. After all, he’s been such a mainstay of the team for years, not always getting the credit he deserves but a vital component to our engine, regardless of manager or formation.
His future seems a bit more up in the air than anticipated though. It’s not a surprise that other teams would love to secure his services, I just hoped we’d have been the first to sort something out with him. He’s sometimes flown under the radar at Leicester while others have grabbed the headline with goals and assists but he deserves a lot of gratitude for his services.
When asked about his future, he’s been fairly non-committal either way but definitely not ruling out new pastures. Personally, I’d love to see him in next season’s lineups with us, but after seven mostly excellent years, he owes us nothing.
If Wilf’s Leicester legacy were to end with winning the Championship and getting us back into the Premier League, it’s not a bad resume for the Nigerian and he would be missed.
There’s often a player or two that are taken for granted (intentionally or not) and Ndidi is a perfect example for us. He gets credit but we've just got so accustomed to him stealing the opposition ball and doing the hard work in midfield that it is just the expected normal now.
More than filling Kante’s shoes
He may not be the first name that’ll get listed when you think back to our Premier League title in 2015/16 but N’Golo Kante was the engine that helped give us an edge. Often credited with being as good as having an extra player on the pitch, perhaps the signs were always there that he was destined for bigger things than Leicester City.
He was the big player we lost in the following summer, for a £27 million profit. Part of which funded a £17 million transfer the following January to bring in 20-year-old Wilfred Ndidi from Genk.
We’d struggled generally in the first few months of the season, especially missing that combative, ball-winner in midfield. Such was Ndidi’s almost instant impact that my memory on more than one occasion just remembers him having been with us the whole of that season.
In his first month, he showed similarities to Kante despite their physical differences but also showed that he was very much a player in his own right. The comparisons were always going to happen, particularly when we'd signed Ndidi to do that exact role.
While Ndidi managed to win eleven of fourteen tackles against Liverpool in his first few weeks of Leicester life, this feat was topped by Kante, also against Liverpool. Turns out we’d just sold one interception king and picked up a slightly younger but taller one with different skills on top of that.
Kante who? We still love you N’Golo but whereas we felt the absence in the Riyad Mahrez hole for years, we barely had time to miss Kante before Ndidi stormed in and played with a maturity beyond his years. In some ways, the rest is history, which is why it’d be a shame if the story ended without the goodbye he deserves.
It was hard to temper expectations on Ndidi early on, he joined at what was a fairly turbulent time. Brought in while Claudio Ranieri was still at the helm, the Italian was sacked a few weeks later in February that year. Despite the changes, Ndidi was still called up on regularly, not only in midfield either, asked to deputise at centre-back.
We were still learning what the young Nigerian was capable of, but because he’d integrated so well, he wasn’t immune to the criticisms that a lot of the squad attracted later that season. Give the guy a full season at Premier League level and with the improvement that always comes from young players and we'd landed a real gem.
Some players coming in from abroad need time to adjust to life in England and the game, but Ndidi seemed to be a natural. It became obvious even within the first twelve months that Ndidi was the heir to the Kante role but actually offered so much more too. Comparisons to Kante began to feel a little stale.
In his first year at Leicester, he found himself near the top, or top, of many lists for best defensive midfielders with impressive percentages in interceptions, tackles won and recoveries made. Rightly so, he was attracting attention from other clubs fairly early on. Looking back on it now, it’s a surprise that we never really had to entertain real competition for his services given his skillset and a gap in the market for younger players of that quality (for a few years anyway).
Versatile and Reliable
I don’t remember how much research Foxes fans did when we signed Ndidi, but it was clear we were mainly signing him for his midfield attributes and to plug a Kante shaped hole for a midfielder with a bit of bite.
However at Genk, Ndidi had initially joined as a centre back (where he’d played prior to the Belgian club securing his services) before switching to full back before moving forward again and largely staying in midfield, performing more of the defensive duties.
Needless to say, we capitalised on his past duties. From pretty much 2018 until fairly recently, we seemed to have a revolving door to the physio room for our defenders, always left short. Using Ndidi much like a swiss army knife, he did whatever we needed wherever we needed it on the pitch for a while. He had a run at centre back and was actually pretty impressive there, though we undoubtedly missed his presence in the midfield.
Perhaps we all overestimated the goals Ndidi would get for us and his shooting ability in general. He got off to a flyer with his first goal, a stunner, against Derby in the FA Cup in February, 2017. What better way to endear yourself to your new club than helping put their rivals to bed?
He’s scored 11 goals in total but despite the early signs that this guy had a great shot on, we’ve occasionally had to rein in his long-range efforts that didn’t quite have the conversion rate we hoped for. For a while he averaged a brilliant goal a season and this year saw him enter new territory.
The early shooting promise was perhaps a bit of a red herring. It’s never what we truly needed from him, others picked up the slack there. What he consistently delivered was in the stats we most associate him with. In the 2019/20 season he topped the list for midfielders with the most tackles, averaging 4.4 a game.
His overall tackles won percentage across all Premier League games sits at a healthy 62% and that’s even with the rogue inclusion of our horrific 2022/23 season in there.
You’d regularly see charts across Europe’s top 5 leagues with his name in them and he topped the tackles chart for his first couple of full seasons too. His dominance in our midfield was a key to the early success that Brendan Rodgers enjoyed and key in our European campaigns.
While his role in the team has changed and grown over time, he’s been another member of the dependables. The ones who ran themselves into the ground and whose effort you could never fault (a theme when we talked about Marc Albrighton and Jamie Vardy).
Like most of the Leicester City squad that were relegated, 2022/23 had been tough. Ndidi particularly had struggled in the later Brendan Rodgers months. He looked a shadow of his former self, not that he was the only player whose progression appeared to be regressing.
Injury and fitness didn’t help, he seemed to struggle to shrug off a couple of knocks and certainly didn’t look as aggressive or as attentive as before.
While there was generally zero fun to be had watching Leicester in the 2022/23 season, seeing the decline of Ndidi felt particularly tragic. He’s always been such a likeable player and person on top of that dogged, hard-working approach.
The Reinvention, redemption year
Cue Enzo Maresca’s arrival. The Italian had a different vision for the role that Ndidi could play in this Leicester side and it’s been quite the reinvention. Not least for just restoring his confidence and making him look like he enjoys football again. After his stints covering more defensive positions, this season largely saw him in a more creative, attacking role. With much success too.
Perhaps it helps that he has effectively stepped into that number 8 role, previously held by Youri Tielemans for whom we all saw clearly that fitness was a problem for a while. Ndidi was left trying to do the stuff Tielemans wasn’t doing, a lot of tracking back, running to try and recover lost passes and provide some bridge and protection between our midfield and defence. It was generally shambolic to watch.
Alongside Harry Winks and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, he spearheaded our attack, cutting into the box more than ever and being a more integral part of our build-up play. All while still being the leggy, rangy runner that we all know and love, getting stuck in where required. It’s shown in his output, he’s never been a prolific goalscorer for us, more the occasional worldie.
This campaign he got 6 goals and 6 assists. His highest ever yield at Leicester City on both counts, last season was 0 and 0 for context. Ok, we as a team got an impressive 103 goals this year but there’s no denying that he flourished in this more free, attacking role.
If you ever needed proof of how important he was in that space, and don’t mind self-torture, go back to the Millwall away game in April. For reasons unknown, Ndidi and Dewsbury-Hall switched sides, which felt akin to a scenario of basically not having either of them playing. It was a mess and we looked all over the place.
We don’t know Ndidi’s future. In interviews, he’s been understandably vague and hasn’t ruled out a fresh start elsewhere. Add in our financial position and the possibility of Maresca (a manager he and his team mates clearly loved) exiting and this may well be where our paths divert.
It’s been a pleasure to have had a player like Ndidi in our side for 7 years. An engine, a rock at the back and then this season’s creativity, he’s been dependable on the pitch and entertaining off it.
If one of the last things he did was to issue a tweet congratulating himself first and foremost for our promotion, it’s brilliant. Thank you Wilf, it’s been emotional and if this is the end, every Foxes fan will wish you luck and be keeping an eye out for what you do next.
