Leicester City’s decision to ‘re-organise’ the coaching staff of the women’s team this week won’t be seen as a huge shock given the club’s start to the season.

Six games. Six defeats. Just two goals scored, and one of those was a bullet header from an opposition player.

However, the departure of Lydia Bedford does seem a shame - her achievement in keeping Leicester in the WSL last season aside, the numbers from this campaign don’t tell the story of the games. Leicester have been competitive in five of the six games, losing four of them by a single goal.

The story so far

In the press conference the club bizarrely let Bedford take before dismissing her hours later, she said: "I think in every game bar one this season I've walked off the pitch thinking there was not a lot more I could have done to change the result."

While this doesn’t seem to send a great message to the players, it is probably true. Leicester don’t have great options in attack, but the team has largely looked well-organised out of possession.

It took two long-range strikes for Tottenham to win on Filbert Way. This is a Spurs side that beat Brighton 8-0 last weekend. Aston Villa needed a penalty and a late second, and came under real pressure throughout the game.

So far this season, Leicester have conceded 6 goals from open play from 4.22 xG - the xG given up being the joint 7th best record in the division. In contrast, Brighton have conceded 16 from 9.82 xG. Set pieces and long-range goals have set fire to Leicester’s chances this season, and cost Bedford her job.

The timing of the goals has often been horrendous too. The real killers have been the injury-time defeats at Everton and Reading. In these two games, three goals were conceded during added time - an own goal by the goalkeeper, a corner that went straight in and a shot from long range. If Bedford’s team had held onto parity at Everton or the lead they’d fought so hard to protect at Reading, they might still be Bedford’s team going into this weekend’s visit from Arsenal.

Instead, Willie Kirk has the headache of how to compete this Sunday as Leicester face a second successive home game against a team with a 100% record.

Fine margins

There’s a huge gulf between the top and bottom of the WSL but performances haven’t shown such a vast chasm between Leicester and some of the other sides in the league. Just three points separate the bottom four.

Of course Bedford was always going to face scrutiny over the mentality instilled at the club after the manner of the defeat at Reading. Brendan Rodgers has had to deal with the same questions. The difference is not only that Rodgers has built up credit with the club’s owners and has more of a track record to support him through bad times - it’s also that the WSL is a lot more unforgiving.

When it comes to sacking a manager, the accepted wisdom is that it shouldn’t come down to fine margins. In the WSL, there isn’t much choice. It kind of has to.

With so few games - just 22, compared with the Premier League’s 38 - and even fewer genuinely winnable ones, a result like the Reading one is immediately catastrophic. The nature of that defeat just made it even more so, regardless of how well Bedford had set up the team for the 89 preceding minutes.

The new man

So we move on to Kirk, who has previously managed in women’s football at Hibernian, Bristol City and Everton, along with a spell as assistant manager at Manchester United.

An unforgiving fixture list awaits, with two of the next three games at home to Arsenal and Chelsea. Leicester lost the corresponding fixtures last season 5-0 and 9-0 - and both of those results came in the latter half of the campaign during the otherwise impressive upturn in fortunes under Bedford.

It may be a case of damage limitation and hoping to snatch something on the road at West Ham and Liverpool before a crunch mid-January clash with fellow strugglers Brighton, who also saw their manager Hope Powell depart this week.

Kirk’s main job is to get the team scoring. Natasha Flint’s fine strike at Reading last weekend was, in addition to being the first goal scored by a Leicester player this season, one of just six shots on target in the side’s three away games so far.

If Leicester are to be competitive, surely attacking reinforcements are needed in January. Kirk and his players have a few games to prove otherwise, starting with a mammoth task on Sunday.