Is Leicester City a good football club?

The season wasn’t good at the start. The defense was the worst in the top four flights of English football. We had amassed a grand total of 1 point from the first 7 matches, Somehow, Brendan Rodgers wasn’t sacked, but there was no lack of voices calling for it.

As you are probably aware, things turned around in a hurry. I cannot emphasize how curious this is, given that we have the same manager, (mostly) the same players, the same pretty much everything. We’ve become a completely different team over the last 8 matches. How does this happen?

Even though it looks as though nothing changed, there have been adjustments, both large and small, that have led to a change in style and identity for the Foxes. There’s also one huge external factor, but let’s save that for the end.

looking at the tactics When we were shipping goals like never before, the Foxes were playing a 4-1-4-1 shape with a single-holding midfielder screening the back line. At the start of the season, this was Wilfred Ndidi, who wasn’t in the best form. He got hurt, and Boubakary Soumare took over and the initial results weren’t encouraging.

You won’t see it in the recaps, which still list the same 4-1-4-1 shape, but Rodgers tweaked the tactics and had Youri Tielemans playing deeper to help Soumare. This bolstered the defense and provided an additional outlet for the defenders trying to play the ball out of the back.

In addition to lacking cover, the back line was struggling to be a line. It was more a scattering of four or more players all over the pitch and their movement seemed entirely independent of each other or even where the ball was at the time.