5-4-1: Brendan Rodgers' Tactical Masterclass

[StriderHiryu]

On Sunday 27th September, Leicester City travelled to the Etihad to play Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, a manager Rodgers had never beaten in his management tenure thus far. Both teams went into the game with several injuries, but I think it’s safe to say that no one saw the eye-opening result of 5-2 to the Foxes taking place. So how did Rodgers best one of the best coaches in world football so convincingly? I’m going to try and break that down for FoxesTalk today.

 

Introduction

 

To start things off, let’s take a look back at the last 3 fixtures between the two clubs. 

 

Matchweek 37, 2018/19 season. Man City 1 - 0 Leicester City. Vincent Kompany hits a worldie to essentially win Man City the title.

Matchweek 18, Man City 3 - 1 Leicester City. Leicester are riding high in the table and this match is part of a double header against the best two teams in the land to see if Leicester can keep pace. Vardy scores first, but Man City turn it on to ultimately run out comfortable winners.

Matchweek 27, Leicester City 0 - Man City 1. Leicester look to be heading for a 0-0 after Aguero misses a penalty, but Gabriel Jesus strikes late on to give Pep’s men all 3 points.

 

On paper these games seem relatively close fought affairs, but in reality all 3 games had a similar feel to them. Man City dominated the game and Leicester offered very little threat in any of the games, rarely troubling Ederson. Now Man City have one of the most expensively assembled teams in Europe so it’s always going to be hard to beat them, but other clubs that have the sort of team budgets and personnel as we do have beaten them, specifically Wolverhampton Wanderers, who have beaten them twice:

 

 

This implies that the best tactic against Man City is to replicate the setup that Wolves used - play a deep defensive block and hit Man City on the counter. But the problem with that is it goes against Rodgers own footballing philosophy:

 

“The football philosophy is very much about positive football. If you want to define it: we like to play attacking creative football but always with a tactical discipline. The template for all of our work is our organisation.”

“It is about defending the principles of our play: which is football. I would much rather do that, than play another way,” 

(https://www.thefa.com/bootroom/resources/interviews/brendan-rodgers/my-football-philosophy)

 

Rodgers is a footballing purist who has been heavily influenced by Barcelona teams of the past, including Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona team of 2006-2010. Would he be able to swallow his own ego to try and do something different in this match?

 

Man City’s Style of Play

 

After a tough first season, Guardiola turned English football on it’s head by creating one of the best league teams we’ve ever seen in the country securing 100 and 98 point seasons consecutively. At their best they are a force of nature that is very hard to stop with a style of play that gets on top of games early and ends encounters in no time at all, Watford’s 6-0 thumping in the 2019 FA Cup Final showing how ruthless they can be.

 

At Man City, Guardiola has his team set up to:

 

• Dominate possession to control the game
• Win the ball high up the pitch to stop the opposition getting out, breaking up turnovers with niggly tackles if needed.
• Shift opposition defences from left to right to make spaces down the channels.
• Overload with wingers and attacking midfielders to get to the byline and cut the ball back with a low cross to score from. Attacking players can be the striker, wide forwards or attacking midfielders.

^ Man City typically look to isolate fullbacks 2v1 to allow their wide forwards to get in behind. Additionally, their attacking players make forward run between the lines to receive passes and low crosses cut back to them, giving defenders little to no time to react.

 

So going into Sunday’s game, the question was if Rodgers would continue with his philosophy of taking the game to the opposition and trying to out football them, or to be pragmatic and try a different approach?

 

Formations and Setup

 

It therefore came as quite the surprise to see the team lineups at 15:30. Leicester named 3 centre backs with Daniel Amartey coming in to replace wide forward Ayoze Perez. But it was evident from the get go that this wasn’t a 3412 or attacking 343 that several teams across Europe, but a very defensively minded 541:

 

 

Man City themselves had numerous injuries so went for a less familiar 4231 as opposed to their usual 343 / 433 with a midfield double pivot of Rodri and Fernandinho, with Sterling playing as a false 9 with Aguero out of the team. The Premier League’s reigning player of the season Kevin DeBruyne played as a number 10 in behind Sterling, operating in a central position.

 

Tactical Detail

 

So let’s get into the nuts and bolts of what happened on the day, and why it resulted in such a stunning success for Leicester.

 

Leicester’s Deep Block

 

From kick-off Leicester immediately retreated into a super deep and compressed deep block. Usually Leicester play a high line, with Evans and Soyuncu being sometimes as high as Vardy in the above picture. But in this game the back 5 are almost all in a straight line and even Jamie Vardy has retreated back to add an extra body to the defence. This block was reminiscent of many a game under the legendary Claudio Ranieri, but the block was arguably even deeper and notably even Vardy was stationed in the Leicester half.

 

Also notice how central the entire team is. Both Castagne and Justin are very narrow, with the idea here to congest the central parts of the pitch to deny Man City space there. Against other teams this would be a crazy idea, but Man City aren’t the sort of team that go wide and cross it, as we know they rely on quick passing and interchange to create 2v1 situations.

 

^ This shot shows you just how deep our block was and why Man City were restricted to so few opportunities. We can see 10 of Leicester’s 11 men in shot here and Vardy is only slightly out of the shot. This by the way is despite at the time being one-nil down. The objective is to remain disciplined and frustrate the sky blues, giving them nowhere to go, so they keep pushing up to give them more chances to finish the game, but also creating more space behind Maan City's own high line.

 

Vardy on Rodri

 

 

^Very early on Jamie Vardy becomes Rodri's shadow.

 

 

Also immediately noticeable in this game was that Jamie Vardy was told to sit on Rodri to prevent the passing lanes to and from him. This wasn’t quite a man-marking job but it was very deliberate and intentional from Rodgers to do so. This achieved two main objectives: 

1). Man City’s defenders didn’t have an easy pass to make to help them build the play.

2). Man City had to be more accurate with their passes to forward players. They didn’t have a player to recycle the ball if their possession didn’t work out, the sort of role that Mendy has performed for us in the first few games this season.

 

 

^ Rather than pressing one of Man City's centre backs like he did in 15/16, Vardy has dropped deep again and is shadowing Rodri to block the passing lane into him.

 

 

The end result was that Man City for all of their possession spent massive amounts of time passing the ball back and forth between their own centre backs, something we all know is extremely frustrating to watch!

 

Nullifying Kevin DeBruyne

 

In Leicester we are quickly becoming BIG fans of Belgium. But despite having 3 class acts that start for us, I think we would all admit that there is an even better Belgian player playing in the Premier League. Sorry Christian Benteke fans, it's not him but rather possibly the best attacking midfielder / playmaker currently playing in world football Kevin DeBruyne. So much of Man City's best moments go through him that dealing with him is an essential part to any team trying to beat the Sky Blues.

 

 

^Despite starting centrally, KDB has drifted out to the left here where both Castagne and Amartey have to keep an eye out for him.

 

 

^ A classic Man City move. One of the wide forwards looks to play a reverse pass into space so that DeBruyne can attempt a cutback to a striker or forward.

 

 

^ Leicester are ready for this and Evans reads the danger to prevent KDB from getting a meaningful shot away.

 

 

^ Kyle Walker plays in KDB on an overload down the right hand side and DeBruyne gets a good cross away. Amartey deals with the danger, but this is a warning for Leicester as a more natural forward like Aguero may have gotten onto the end of the pass and tested the goalkeeper.

 

Kasper’s Kicking - Going Long

 

 

^ What year is this? 2015? Schmeichel pumps the ball long looking to play in a pacy wide forward 1v1.

 

^ Daniel Amartey justifies his place in the team. Schmiechel can hit him from kick off and Amartey's flick plays in Castagne who can fashion an attacking opportunity. (Thanks @kingfox and @dimmerchant !)

 

In a typical match under Rodgers, Leicester looked to build from the back and play the ball between defenders, goalkeeper and the defensive shielding midfielder. But against Man City we did nothing of the kind, instead we often kicked the ball long and went for 50/50’s down the field. This is almost sacrilegious for a Rodgers team to do, yet we did it time and time again. Why? It’s a response and mark of respect to Man City to recognise that their high press is such that we run the risk of overplaying the ball trying to get out and end up turning over the ball and conceding a goal of our own making. It was also used at times as a way to allow the team to get out and assume our tactical shape again, as well as sometimes giving us a 50/50 that if won allowed us to create a counter attacking opportunity. This also allowed Daniel Amartey to contribute more effectively to the team - not one usually known for his technical on the floor game, he’s very effective at winning aerial duels and this led to one of our goals we scored in the second half.

 

 

^ Despite being pressed by 4(!) separate players, Mendy and Tielemans combine brilliantly and operate within tight spaces to play their way out of trouble and buy some respite for Leicester.

 

In saying this it’s important to note the difference between the way we used goal kicks in 15/16 and this match. In 15/16 we looked to get the ball over the top on the break as fast as possible, often bypassing the midfield altogether. Under Rodgers we were far cuter than that - when we got the ball in midfield we played football. Tielemans, Praet and Mendy all capable of playing their way out of trouble and buying us time. This is crucial against Man City who look to win the ball back as fast as possible to knock the opposition out of their stride and we should take pride that we are one of the few teams in the division to possess such intelligent players to avoid this trap altogether.

 

Breaking with Pace

 

^Early into the game James Justin finds himself in a position to play Harvey Barnes in where he will have a clear run through to goal. Justin's pass is a little too late and Barnes strays offside, but this would be a warning toll to Man City that they did not rectify as the game developed.

 

It’s all well and good putting 10 men behind the ball, but at some point you’ve got to cause the opposition problems, and this was very much part of the plan, and displayed right from the off. Jamie Vardy is a player every team in the league knows about, but not so many teams are as wise to the emerging Harvey Barnes, whose pace, power and willingness to travel with the ball at speed is raising eyebrows up and down the country. Barnes was told to break forwards at every opportunity to support a counter attack and did so with great aplomb.

 

 

^ As a team Leicester also looked to quickly play round the corner when receiving the ball near our wingbacks who used their boundless energy to turn the game back to front, with Justin and Castagne doing a superb job on either side of both defending and supporting our attacks. In fact, minutes before Vardy won his penalty, Justin should have played in Barnes for 1-1 but got caught in two minds.

 

Beating the First Press and Making Possession Count

 

^ Papy Mendy skilfully turns to get out of the way of Fernandinho and completely open up Man City. He quickly plays in Barnes, and the resulting move leads to a penalty to Leicester.

 

Despite scoring 5 goals we only had 28% possession, a throwback to the halcyon days of 2015/16 when victories were often achieved without having much of the ball at all. But why this worked for us against Man City was that rather than getting caught in an endless cycle of losing possession and seeing the ball coming back at us time and time again - the pattern of previous encounters between the two teams, this time round we managed to beat Man Cit’ys first press leaving huge gaps in behind them for us to exploit. Unsung hero Papy Mendy deserves huge praise for the part he played in the match by performing a brilliant Sergio Busquets impression in keeping the ball moving and playing his way out of trouble time and time again. In fact comparing him and Tielemans to Rodri and Fernandinho shows how despite the latter being on the team that dominated possession, it was the former two that created dangerous situations for Leicester to capitalise on. Mendy’s brilliant turn and quick release led to Vardy getting goalside of Walker for the first penalty and helping us to turn the game on it’s head.

 

Major Moment 1: Mahrez Magic

 

 

^He might not be our player any more, but you have to appreciate a goal like this. A fantastic hit with his weaker foot from Mahrez.

 

In what feels like perennial groundhog day for Leicester fans, you count on Riyad Mahrez showing up when he plays his old club, and in the early stages at least, this game was no different. Leicester defended a Man City corner decently with Justin heading away, but the ball goes straight to Mahrez who with his weaker right foot hits an absolute wonder goal. If you’re Rodgers what goes through your head? You’ve practiced and drilled your team all week to setup to be hard to break down and you’re already behind after 4 minutes! Time to throw out the plan and switch tactics right? Wrong! This was the most impressive thing about the entire match in my opinion. Rather than panicking, we kept our discipline, maintained our composure, stuck to the plan and played our way back into the match. The math thread here on FoxesTalk was toxic with irate fans wondering what we were doing, but this was a mature display from a team with many young players in it and bodes extremely well for the future. Our first shot on goal was our penalty and came past the half hour mark, and yet we still went on to score 5. All because we kept our heads and stuck to the plan.

 

Major Moment 2: Fernandinho is Substituted

 

Probably the defining moment in this game was the  decision by Guardiola early in the second half when he substituted newcomer Liam Delap on for Man City stalwart Fernandinho. The thinking here was that the double pivot for Man City was not working. Leicester started the second half as the better team and Man City were too slow and cumbersome in their build-up. Fernandinho was playing better than Rodri, but the 34 year old was unlikely to last the whole match anyway, so was withdrawn early. Sterling was ineffective as the false 9 up front, so the idea here was to put a focal point up front, allow KDB to come deeper and for Sterling to go back out onto the wing. But this backfired spectacularly as the game progressed.

 

Leicester perhaps sensing the game was there to be taken, or perhaps from instruction by Rodgers started to press at opportune times and this led to a spectacular goal shortly after the substitution:

 

 

^ This is a phenomenal team goal. James Justin presses from left back all the way to inside right forward, causing Man City to uncharacteristically kick the ball long. The ball is won back by Daniel Amartey who was put in the team to do exactly this job, who plays a lovely cushioned header to Youri Tielemans. From this point on our Belgian superstars take over the show, Praet holds his man off to allow Castagne and Tielemans to work a slick interchange before Tielemans with his weaker foot play in Castagne who needs no invitation to get forwards. The Belgian has arguably been the signing of the summer so far and puts in a brilliant low first time cross to Vardy who pulls off an absolutely incredible finish for 2-1. I feel like this goal was the perfect microcosm for the entire game - Leicester were clinical and decisive in their play, with Man City rather aimless with theirs.

 

^ A terrific strike, but don't downplay the team play from Justin and Mendy to fashion the chance for Maddison in the first place.

 

From this point on Man City lose all control of the game and despite remaining on top possession wise have a clear gap between their midfield and defence which is ruthlessly exploited by Leicester for the rest of the game. The hapless Eric Garcia concedes a terrible penalty minutes later and is guilty of ball watching as James Maddison hits a pearler for 4-1. Nathan Ake gets a consolation to make it 4-2 only for Benjamin Mendy to carelessly get caught out of position and foul Maddison for yet another penalty and 5-2 to Leicester. Incredibly every penalty Man City gave away was the same mistake - defenders caught out of possession and trying to haul their man down to prevent the getaway attempt. 

 

Summary

 

This game represents a watershed moment for Brendan Rodgers. He’s always been renowned for creating teams that play attractive and exciting football, but has also been guilty of being too proud with his team setup and ending up on the receiving end of heavy thumpings from the top teams around Europe. By showing a willingness to adapt his tactics, he’s found a way to beat a team that finished above Leicester last season and this bodes well for games against Liverpool and away in European ties later in the year. With the technical ability of our midfield 3 and the added explosiveness of Harvey Barnes, dare I say that the 2020 version of the Leicester City counter attack could be even more deadly than 15/16? Time will tell.

 

The only shame is the game may have come at a price with Praet, Vardy and Evans all hobbling off. How bad these injuries are remains to be seen, but with Ricardo and Wilfred Ndidi already on the sidelines, Leicester are a team that can’t afford to lose too many more key players in order to remain competitive. But with a few more decent additions to the squad and a bit of luck with injuries, it looks like the doom and gloom of the end of season collapse of last time round has once again been replaced with a sense of optimism and enthusiasm. What a difference a few weeks can make eh? I had us down for 9th this season before it started!

 

As for Man City, Rodgers has just created the blueprint for every team in the league to follow when playing them and it wouldn’t surprise me to see teams with pace up front also able to spring a few surprise results against Man City, in similar fashion to last season. With Guardiola in the last year of his contract and the glaring omission of suitable replacements for Vincent Kompany and David Silva, plus the decline of ageing stalwarts in Aguero and Fernandinho, it suggests that Man City are reaching the end of a cycle and that potentially the gap between them and the teams below them is there to be caught.

 

 

 

Edited 30 September 2020 by StriderHiryu

[Bob Farley]

Don’t think anyone’s reading all that mate. 

[LCFC BEAST]

8 minutes ago, Bob Farley said:

Don’t think anyone’s reading all that mate. 

You'd be massively wrong.

 

Great post Strider!

[urban.spaceman]

Brilliant read as always. More of this please @StriderHiryu

[StriderHiryu]

13 minutes ago, Bob Farley said:

Don’t think anyone’s reading all that mate. 

 

[FoyleFox]

Excellent read, thanks

[Deeg67]

Should’ve just put that in a tweet, Strider...

[Collymore]

19 minutes ago, Bob Farley said:

Don’t think anyone’s reading all that mate. 

I did..... And it's a brilliant read. 

[Aus Fox]

18 minutes ago, Bob Farley said:

Don’t think anyone’s reading all that mate. 

Word for word, a brilliant summary of what happened, for those who want to better understand game plans or talk about getting lucky in games this sort of post is a must read.

[Mickyblueeyes]

Mate, you need to send some of these reports as dossiers to football managers around the country. You could be the next Andre Villas Boas/Sir Bobby Robson story. Excellent analysis. 

[Bob Farley]

1 minute ago, Collymore said:

I did..... And it's a brilliant read. 

Haha, I’ve since read it and it was very good 👏🏻

[Collymore]

5 minutes ago, Bob Farley said:

Haha, I’ve since read it and it was very good 👏🏻

Well maybe I skim read a bit of it 😂

[StriderHiryu]

1 minute ago, Collymore said:

Well maybe I skim read a bit of it 😂

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

Brilliant post, top bananas. 

[kingfox]

Here we go again, the best poster on Foxestalk @StriderHiryu dishing out his tactical analysis.

 

However I’m disappointed that you left out the game plan of Kasper aiming for Amartey to win headers in the second half, that was a clear tactical change.

 

But I can’t be too disappointed, you’ve posted gifs of Youri’s sexy pass to Timmy and James Maddison’s unbelievable strike.

 

I’ll have to get the lube out now...

[HankMarvin]

Delete thread after a few days, too much insight for opposition spies

 

 

 

[StriderHiryu]

Just now, kingfox said:

Here we go again, the best poster on Foxestalk @StriderHiryu dishing out his tactical analysis.

 

However I’m disappointed that you left out the game plan of Kasper aiming for Amartey to win headers in the second half, that was a clear tactical change.

 

But I can’t be too disappointed, you’ve posted gifs of Youri’s sexy pass to Timmy and James Maddison’s unbelievable strike.

 

I’ll have to get the lube out now...

I did mention that in the part about kicking it long and Amartey winning the ball back via aerial duels, but this is a very good point. Quite simply I couldn't find a good point in the match where that happened to make a GIF from to put into the post. But @kingfox is entirely correct here. In deciding to kick the ball long, it meant we needed some physical presence to win the ball from Man City. With Vardy, Barnes, Mendy and co, we don't have physical players and Ndidi was injured. Thus Amartey would often leave his station as RCB and push up into midfield when Kasper kicked it long. 

 

If anyone knows a timestamp during the match when it happened, please let me know! This is definitely one of the nuances that helped us win on the day, so well spotted!

[Fox in the North]

Excellent write up my man, 10/10 

[kingfox]

2 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

I did mention that in the part about kicking it long and Amartey winning the ball back via aerial duels, but this is a very good point. Quite simply I couldn't find a good point in the match where that happened to make a GIF from to put into the post. But @kingfox is entirely correct here. In deciding to kick the ball long, it meant we needed some physical presence to win the ball from Man City. With Vardy, Barnes, Mendy and co, we don't have physical players and Ndidi was injured. Thus Amartey would often leave his station as RCB and push up into midfield when Kasper kicked it long. 

 

If anyone knows a timestamp during the match when it happened, please let me know! This is definitely one of the nuances that helped us win on the day, so well spotted!

It was a highly astute tactical change from tactical genius Brendan, it deserved it’s own section 

 

More praise for Big Dan the better, as it may lead to Col finally realising that he is actually decent  

[urban.spaceman]

PS if anyone's got a link to the full 90 mins can you PM me? Ta. x

[casablancas]

Gd read man

[StriderHiryu]

1 minute ago, urban.spaceman said:

PS if anyone's got a link to the full 90 mins can you PM me? Ta. x

https://eplfootballmatch.com/manchester-city-vs-leicester-city-full-match-premier-league-27-september-2020/

 

These tend to go down quick, but try this one. Good match !

 

[dimmerchant]

14 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

If anyone knows a timestamp during the match when it happened, please let me know! This is definitely one of the nuances that helped us win on the day, so well spotted!

A couple of examples at 47.10 and 49.50 (the latter the better). Great post! 

[Aus Fox]

Anyone else think @StriderHiryu has a better understanding of the game than any manager we had between the O’Neil era and Pearson (excluding Micky Adams).

[Mehrez]

32 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

I did mention that in the part about kicking it long and Amartey winning the ball back via aerial duels, but this is a very good point. Quite simply I couldn't find a good point in the match where that happened to make a GIF from to put into the post. But @kingfox is entirely correct here. In deciding to kick the ball long, it meant we needed some physical presence to win the ball from Man City. With Vardy, Barnes, Mendy and co, we don't have physical players and Ndidi was injured. Thus Amartey would often leave his station as RCB and push up into midfield when Kasper kicked it long. 

 

If anyone knows a timestamp during the match when it happened, please let me know! This is definitely one of the nuances that helped us win on the day, so well spotted!

The very start of our second goal came from a Kasper kick and an Amartey flick on in the Man City half @52:25.

 

Awseome post by the way 👏🏼!