Leicester City pulled off a fairytale Premier League title win back in the 2015/16 season, with that Foxes team going down in not just English football history, but world football history as one of the unlikeliest champions ever. Since then, as expected, the regular contenders have wrested back the title, with Leicester finishing in 12th, 9th, 9th and 5th place up until the 2019/20 season. Two things become quite clear hear one, that the Foxes have managed to become an established Premier League team, which is no mean feat, given that they only regained promotion to the Premier League in 2014, surviving relegation with a stirring run in the last few games of the 2014/15 campaign, which would be the prelude for their title win the next season. Secondly, we can immediately see the improvement from 9th to 5th place over the last two seasons, and the credit for this is largely due to Brendan Rodgers.
Rodgers arrived at the King Power Stadium in February 2019, after the removal of Claude Puel, and thus last season was his first full campaign in charge of the Foxes. He had them in the Champions League spots when the season was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and only a poor run of form upon the resumption of the season led to Leicester falling to fifth. However, it seems as though the team have picked up where they left off in 2019 this time around, as Leicester are in third place at the time of writing, just three points off the top of the table, with just around half the season having been played. Rodgers has managed to turn Leicester into a serious contender for the European spots, and even possibly for the title, and what is even more impressive is that he has done this with a considerable list of absentees for the majority of the campaign due to injury.
This tactical analysis piece will look at Leicesters tactics so far this season, and how Rodgers strategies have allowed them to climb up the table in what will hopefully be a sustained assault on the Premier League title.
Statistical performance
Before looking at Leicester Citys tactics and set-up this season, it will be instructive to look at their statistical performance as well, to gain an understanding of what they are doing well, and where they need to improve.
This chart looks at the defensive and offensive performance of Premier League sides so far this season, by looking at expected goals scored and conceded, against actual goals scored and conceded. We have calculated the % over or underperformance for each team, by looking at the difference between the expected and actual goal numbers. Looking at the chart, we can straightaway see that Leicester are among a handful of teams who are outperforming both their defensive and offensive xG numbers at the moment. Their defensive outperformance i.e the difference between goals conceded and xGA, is 8%, while their offensive outperformance is 14%. This is extremely favourable when compared to the likes of Manchester City, who are topping the table despite an offensive underperformance of 12%, and Liverpool, who are underperforming defensively and offensively by 5% and 1% respectively. The fact that City are at the top of the table despite their supposed goalscoring struggles is an ominous sign for the rest of the league, but this chart does show the excellent job that Rodgers has done in squeezing every last drop of performance from this squad. The Foxes may drop off a little as the season progresses, but they should be in the Champions League places at the very least if they manage to keep this level of performance till the end of the season.
However, there is one caveat to this. Leicester City may be outperforming on both defensive and offensive numbers, as far as expected goals are concerned, but there are some concerns around their creativity. The Foxes are eighth in the league for xG/game (1.61), but this includes the fact that they have received as many as 10 penalties this season, the highest in the league. Removing penalties from the equation to arrive at non-penalty xG (npxG) is a better way to gauge teams creativity and offensive output. Upon doing so, we see that Leicester actually fall to 13th for npxG/game (1.21), or, to put it the other way, they are the eighth-worst team in the league for creativity from open play, at least when measured through expected goals. This will be a concern for Rodgers, as it indicates that the Foxes could potentially have goalscoring problems as the season progresses, since they are not creating a high volume of quality opportunities. They are also not taking too many shots Leicester have taken 10.43 shots/90 in the league this season, which is only the 11th-highest. However, their xG value per shot is at 0.144, while the average for the Premier League is around 0.13, suggesting that Leicester are taking shots from better positions than the average Premier League side, even if they arent taking too many of them. Of course, this does include their 10 penalties, which will each have an xG value of 0.76 associated with it, and this could be inflating their xG/shot numbers as well. Nevertheless, these numbers show that Leicester have been extremely efficient and clinical this season, and they will need to keep this up if they are to stay in the hunt for the Champions League, or even the title. One surprising aspect of this is the fact that while Leicester as a team are outperforming their xG, that is not the case for Jamie Vardy. The 34-year-old striker has scored 11 goals in the league thus far, against an xG of 12.79, and he does take penalties for Leicester when on the pitch, meaning that he has actually spurned a few chances this season. The likes of Harvey Barnes (6 goals from 4.85 xG), Youri Tielemans (4 goals from 3.10 xG), and most significantly, James Maddison (6 goals from 1.75 xG) are all doing much better than their xG, which would explain Leicesters overall outperformance.
Defensively, it is a better story for the Fo
