Leicester City Predicted Lineup vs Birmingham City for Championship Clash
How Leicester City Have Lined Up Recently
During Saturday’s win, Cifuentes made several alterations from his eleven that lost at Deepdale. After a tough day against Preston, Jakub Stolarczyk remained in between the sticks and provided one of his best performances for the club. Meanwhile, the centre-back partnership of Caleb Okoli and Jannik Vestergaard continued their run of starts and played well in the second half. Academy graduates Luke Thomas and Hamza Choudhury rounded off the backline, whilst Ricardo Pereira made his first appearance of the season.
Read More: How Marti Cifuentes Has Developed A Clear Identity After Just Three Friendlies
Boubakary Soumaré remained in the regista, having registered four starts and 360 minutes. There are doubts over Harry Winks’ future in Leicester, so fellow Spurs academy graduate Oliver Skipp took his place. With Stephy Mavididi and Bilal El Khannouss absent, teenage duo Louis Page and Jeremy Monga started for their first time in league action. Ghanaian duo Jordan Ayew and Abdul Fatawu also featured, with the winger proving his quality with a wonder goal.
Leicester City’s Recent Form And Tactics
Despite City taking six points from a possible nine, the performances have been underwhelming. It has been evident throughout all of the games that they are struggling to break down teams and create high-quality chances. Just take their Expected Goal Difference of -0.78, which supports the idea that chance creation has been lacking and that individual brilliance is often relied upon. Fatawu’s strike, two set-piece goals against Wednesday and Monga’s finish at Preston further suggest this.
Although there have been difficulties, the adjustments made by Marti Cifuentes are encouraging. The Spaniard has been active during games and has regularly made tactical tweaks. One example is how Winks has changed the game every time he replaces Skipp. Despite questions over his commitment, he is always willing to get on the ball and break lines. In his 16-minute cameo against Charlton, he tallied 11 complete passes, one chance created, and two passes into the final third. Conversely, Skipp, who played 74 minutes, completed just one more pass with no chances created or passes into the final third.
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Another tweak that helped the Foxes was the use of a deeper line. The high line against Preston was one of the reasons for the loss, as the home side constantly targeted balls into the channel, where James Justin, Thomas and Vestergaard struggled to deal with the attacker’s pace. As a result against Nathan Jones’ side, City kept their first clean sheet of the campaign, and mostly defended resolutely.
Whilst some of the problems, like build-up and even defending, are still prominent, it is positive to see a manager take action. Even more so considering he is yet to have any new outfield additions to his squad, and has been forced to utilise inexperienced youngsters.
