A blue and white Leicester City blueprint in a black and white defeat
To sit through one Leicester City Under 21s defeat in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy may be regarded as misfortune. To sit through two in the space of a week sounds like carelessness.
But this young Leicester side, for all their inability to dispatch lower league second or third string sides, are more interesting to watch than a first team that has managed to cobble together a couple of fortunate victories and not a lot else.
Tuesday night’s competition-ending 1-0 defeat to Notts County at Meadow Lane had echoes of the previous Thursday's 3-0 loss against Northampton, certainly in the first half anyway. Domination of possession - check. Lack of clear-cut chances - check. Conceding the opening goal bang on the half hour mark - check.
This time it was not a header from a corner but a fine shot from the edge of the box by Notts' first-team striker Cedwyn Scott, who recently took time out to deal with mental health issues.
From a Leicester perspective, Henry Cartwright should probably have done more to close Scott down but it was an impressive finish beyond the dive of Harry French in the visitors' goal.
French had come in for Stevie Bausor following last week's trip to Sixfields, with the seemingly versatile and extremely rapid Jayden Joseph moving from the right wing to a hybrid left-back/central midfield position. Joe Wormleighton, Tom Wilson-Brown and captain Harvey Godsmark-Ford retained their places at the back, with Oli Ewing again lining up alongside Cartwright in midfield. The front four was made up of Michael Golding on the left, Jeremy Monga on the right, Will Alves in the number ten position and Jake Evans up front.
In fact, Leicester look infinitely more dangerous when they do what they did for the final half hour, switching Monga to the left and playing Evans on the right so both can cut in onto their dominant feet.
But while Evans struggled to get into the game as the centre-forward, Monga impressed for the full 90 with his unstoppable acceleration taking him past defenders on a regular basis. Golding was more lively than last week but his decision-making was again poor, meaning several promising positions came to nothing.
Leicester dominated the second half both in possession and chances, and would have finally had a deserved injury time equaliser if Alves hadn't been adjudged to have overrun the ball out of play before crossing for Evans to dispatch a sharp finish past the experienced Sam Slocombe in the Notts goal.
Substitute Josh King also had a couple of good opportunities and his lively off-the-ball running shows real promise. In the past two games, when King (17), Evans (16) and Monga (15) have been on the pitch at the same time, Leicester have looked at their most energetic, creative and dangerous. Even though it didn't end in a goal in either game.
And weirdly, despite this being a dead rubber, to see Leicester lose was disappointing. It's a bit of an affliction but I'm used to it by now. I've felt this way watching Academy sides before in the days of Andy King or Ben Chilwell or Lathaniel Rowe-Turner.
Some players make it, some don't, and it's interesting to watch their development, and the result should be immaterial - but if I walk past a couple of people playing table football in a pub I'll want the blue team to win. I want our men's team to win, our women's team to win, our Academy team to win - if we had an All-Priests Over 75 five-a-side team I'd want them to win as well.
The problem is that none of our teams are winning at the moment. In the past week across our three main teams it’s been four defeats without scoring. It's probably a good job we don't have an All-Priests side.
Something isn’t quite clicking across the club. This may be a coincidence - it’s tempting to try to find a common theme across the three sides that isn’t actually there. But at the moment, there’s certainly a lack of presence up front across all three teams.
The men were missing Jamie Vardy and the women have lost Noemie Mouchon to long-term injury but even when they were both playing, neither held the consistent threat that worries defenders over long periods and gets your team on top (against eleven players, at least).
It’s a similar story for the Academy side, and when you look at our last three opponents at men’s senior level and the kind of robust targetman they can field (Rasmus Hojlund, Liam Delap, Chris Wood) - in addition to the league’s best striker, Erling Haaland - you can’t help pondering whether there’s a disconnect between what the modern game demands at the top level and what Leicester City’s youth and transfer policies produce.
Some of these players are the result of decisions made to build elite sides. In the case of our senior men’s side, it might be more that an effective holdup player would help relieve the pressure of a team that isn’t functioning properly. You could say the same of the women’s side, although injuries are a huge factor there.
Of course, Hojlund wasn’t particularly impressive at all. But for all the talk of the current Manchester United Premier League side being one of the poorest versions in living memory, we were still never going to get anything at Old Trafford. Anyone saying they fancied us to get a result hasn't been paying attention since they started supporting Leicester City.
The women's team should have offered more at West Ham but have only scored two goals in the first seven games of the season so a 1-0 defeat wasn't entirely unpredictable.
All hopes rested on the Academy boys to show a glimpse of a bright future. The fact is that although they lost, many Leicester fans watching would have come away feeling optimistic about what's to come - and again with the eternal hope that we see some of these players at first team level sooner rather than later.
