Injuries, a rotating defence and stale tactics: Here’s how Leicester City went from European football to relegation in one season – scout report

Leicester Citys relegation from the Premier League in the 2022/23 season has left football fans scratching their heads. How did a team that won the league just a few years ago, and finished eighth in the previous season, fall so far so quickly?

‘Our objective this season is to get to 40 points.  Brendan Rodgers.

A quote that at the beginning of the season shocked Leicester fans, confirmed the dire reality at the King Power at the end. Ironically, 40 points would have been enough to keep Leicester in the Premier League and perhaps Rodgers was right.

There are multiple factors behind Leicester’s sharp decline in form this season, none more so than their dreadful start to the season. But what caused it? Simply put, the lack of transfer activity in the summer, losing key players to injury, and of course, selling their captain and long-term goalkeeper caused instability and a lack of confidence in the squad. Heading towards the second half of the season, Rodgers was unable to steer the ship back out of the relegation bottom three.

The sacking of Rodgers back in April, and the arrival of Dean Smith as manager did bring about a visible change in the teams tactics and playing style and an immediate accumulation of points, however, it was not enough to keep the Foxes afloat.

This article will be a tactical analysis, in the form of a team scout report, of Leicester Citys disappointing 2022/23 Premier League season and the causes behind it. This analysis also looks at Leicester’s standout players this season who have put in performances that might be worthy of a stay in the Premier League.

Transfers

“With the greatest respect, we have not had the help in the market this team needed.”  Rodgers in September following defeat to Manchester United.

Leicester had the least spending of any Premier League side last summer. The lack of transfer activity this year was undoubtedly impacted by the Chairman’s decision to spend 100 million pounds on a state-of-the-art training facility back in 2018-2019, right before the COVID-19 pandemic that affected teams all around the world. But to fully understand how Leicester found themselves cash-strapped, we must look at how they have handled their transfers over the past few seasons.

Having finished in consecutive Europa League qualifying places in 2020 and 2021, Leicester earned a sizeable pay bump in their revenue due to their domestic success and could attract players of a higher calibre to the club with the promise of European football. At the end of the 2020/21 season, they even narrowly missed out on a Champions League campaign by finishing one point behind Chelsea.

Naturally, with such support and faith from Chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha in their manager, during the summer of 2021, Leicester spent almost 60 million pounds on incoming transfers for the likes of Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumaré, Jannik Vestergaard, and Ryan Bertrand to bolster the squad. At first glance, this may not seem like a big deal having spent significant amounts on incoming transfers from previous summers for the likes of Wesley Fofana, Timothy Castagne, and Youri Tielemans. However, it is the change in nature of Leicester’s transfer policies that seemed to have impacted their campaign this season significantly.

Prior to its 2021 summer spending spree, the club had a history of selling big players to fund transfers for young and exciting players. Riyad Mahrez’s big money transfer to Manchester City back in 2018 funded the arrivals of James Maddison, Caglar Söyüncü, and Ricardo Pereira. In the following season, Harry Maguire was sold to the other side of Manchester for a record transfer, and in came Tielemans, Ayoze Pérez, and Dennis Praet. Then in the next summer, Ben Chilwell made way for Fofana and Castagne’s arrival. Most of the incoming signings have been impactful and directly contributed to Leicester’s successes in the following years.

The 2021-2022 season was different. Leicester City kept hold of all of their star players and did not let go of any players to fund incoming transfers. This led to a bloated squad and a huge wage bill increase (more than doubled from 68 million pounds in 2016 to 158 million in 2022), and the Foxes had to try to slim down their wage bill before they could bring anyone in this summer. As a result, Leicester City’s inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to let go of valuable assets in 2021/22, had severe implications on their ability this season to tap into the transfer markets. The departure of star centre-back Fofana and captain Kasper Schmeichel aimed to help alleviate some of this problem, but ultimately Leicester was unable to balance the books, with the latter heading to Ligue 1 for just 1 million euros.

A poor start and untimely World Cup break

Starting the season without replacing two vitally important members of the team in Fofana and Schmeichel was a recipe for disaster. With Söyüncü frozen out of the squad almost entirely this season, only making two appearances in the Premier League across the entire campaign under Rodgers, the Foxes started with 35-year-old Jonny Evans and pushed defensive midfielder Daniel Amartey into the heart of the defence.

Losing Ricardo Pereira early on to injury as well meant that four of the regular back five from last season (including the goalkeeper) were not present for the start of the season.

In the first seven games this season, Leicester conceded an astonishing 22 goals, losing all but one in a 2-2 draw against Brentford. This was likely the first time in Rodgers four-year tenure at the King Power that his job was under any real threat. The playing style and tactics hadn’t changed too much since his side’s top-10 finish last season either. Leicester still played out from the back, drawing teams in and looked towards the creativity of Tielemans and Maddison to unlock defences, whilst pressing immediately upon losing the ball.

One notable change Rodgers attempted to implement at the beginning of the season was inverting the fullbacks into midfield, a common sight in the Premier League this season. There are many reasons behind this, as Rodgers explains in an interview during pre-season. However, losing Periera to a rupture Achilles put an early end to this change.