Leicester 0-1 Fulham (Mitrovic 17′)
Praise be to those Fulham supporters who made the trip. Life is good for those who call Craven Cottage home, but their journey could not have been. With the UK Government failing to find common ground with train workers striking over working conditions and pay, the usual public transport routes to the Midlands were unavailable. They would walk it to watch this team in this form.
There were a few gaps in the King Power’s home ends too. The same explanation is possible, but unlikely given the clusters. Instead, Leicester City’s supporters are in a funk that their team is unwilling or incapable of curing. They arrived back after the World Cup break desperate to continue a welcome surge of good form and have rediscovered bad habits. The pressure is building, the discontent too.
Leicester supporters booed short passes that they deemed superfluous and long balls that they deemed aimless. They groaned at obvious failures in communication and technique. They were vaguely apoplectic when Ayoze Perez leant back and shot over from six yards and emphatically miserable when Wout Faes misjudged a 40-yard pass into the area and allowed Aleksandar Mitrovic to score.
That last trick is nothing new. Watch Leicester at their worst and you immediately notice that they can be cut open by one – or, at a push, two – quick passes that expose gaps and flaws. Brendan Rodgers will not appreciate the conclusion, but it is a characteristic that most struggling clubs share.
Leicester are not desperately poor – far from it. Perhaps this would be easier to stomach if they were. It is not the lack of talent that is most frustrating but its misapplication. They attacked mercilessly for the final 30 minutes, but too rarely before that. How can a team that won four of their last five matches before the break suddenly submerge themselves back into comparative incompetence?
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Fulham were better than Leicester because everyone knew their job and did it. That is no back-handed compliment. They are supremely organised by Marco Silva, a manager who was forced to recuperate after reputational damage suffered by slings and arrows and sackings. For all Mitrovic’s goals demand respect, Tosin Adarabioyo mixed his commanding height with a presence of mind that put him a chapter ahead of any Leicester forward.
Who best epitomises this latest vulpine malaise? Is it Faes, who started well but in the last three games has contracted that most debilitating condition, the Leicester yips. Is it Tielemans, whose new contract has been left unsigned for two years and yet who wears the captain’s armband. Is it Ayoze Perez, somehow still in the team after all this time and all this waste. All make their unwanted cases.
Or is it, despite all of the talk of poor defending, Jamie Vardy? In recent years, Vardy would have dragged Leicester out of mediocrity so that everyone left discussing the result rather than the performance. He has 15 or more Premier League goals in each of the last five seasons. But Vardy has scored one this season, the fourth in a 4-0 win. The list of vanquished opponents: Wolves, MK Dons, Newport County.
There were moments on Tuesday night, crosses that flashed across the face of goal and runs made in vain. There was even the golden chance of which Vardy usually feasts, running onto a ball on the right edge of the penalty area. Bernd Leno 1, Vardy 0. It’s just not happening and Vardy has reached the age where we must ask if it ever will in the same way again. Age does not drag you down at speed; it tortures your soul by making everything a fraction more difficult. Plenty in Leicester feel the same about watching this team toil.
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