Foxes still top of the pile but there’s no pleasing some fans
BY anyone’s standards, Leicester City are enjoying an outstanding season. They remain on course to return to the Premier League and have an FA Cup quarter-final at Chelsea to look forward to later this month. But even before Saturday’s out-of-sorts display against Queens Park Rangers — their third consecutive league defeat in a rare blip this season — a section of Leicester fans had not warmed to manager Enzo Maresca.
A disciple of Pep Guardiola from their time working together at Manchester City, Maresca demands his Leicester team dominate the ball and patiently probe away at opponents. Most visiting teams, arriving more in hope than expectation given the strength of Leicester’s side, choose to sit deep and frustrate.
That can mean Leicester enjoy 75 per cent possession but the bulk of their passes are sideways and backwards. The days of lumping it forward for Jamie Vardy to chase in behind have gone and some Foxes fans find it a little, well, boring.
The criticism, which manifests itself mainly online but sometimes in the stadium when Leicester need 70 or 80 minutes to unlock a defence, has even led to Maresca threatening to quit.
After the 3-1 win against Swansea on January 30, he said: ‘Probably when you win, win, win at home, and you continue to win, people think it’s easy. But it’s not easy. I arrived in this club to play with this idea. The moment there is some doubt about the idea, the day after I will leave.’
His team have led the Championship since late September but as early as November, Maresca said: ‘If you want to see a transition game, don’t come to see Leicester.’
Fortunately for the manager, his players have bought wholeheartedly into ‘the idea’ and it has been wildly successful.
Leicester have won 25 of 35 Championship games and outscored everybody. They could even replicate their 2021 FA Cup triumph.
Jamie Thorpe, a writer for Leicester fan website The Fosse
Way, said: ‘I’m 100 per cent in the pro-Maresca camp but there are a minority that are spoiling it for the rest of us and are, dare I say it, a bit entitled.
‘Maresca is a victim of his own success. No one expected him to do the job he has done. Given the state we were in, you have seen teams come down and keep plummeting. We hit the ground running and people got used to winning.
‘These conversations have come up quite a few times and you get comments like, “Well, it’s only Rotherham”. That’s not how this league works — it’s a nightmare of a league! His style is patient but they expect you to be all-out attack. People call them the get-it-forward brigade.
‘Teams come to the King Power and set out to frustrate. I am amazed there are any detractors, there is no case for it at all.’
On the approach to the King Power, long-standing Leicester fan Brian spoke along similar lines. ‘It may be slow, patient build-up — but it works. When it goes, it bloody well goes with some very swift, slick play,’ he said. ‘We’re lucky to have an innovative, exciting and young manager who any other team — including in the Premier League — would love to have.
‘Yes, it’s a different style of play. But boring? Come on!’
QPR achieved the perfect blend between frustrating Leicester and counter-punching to achieve a result that will have the Foxes fanbase feeling jittery. Leicester enjoyed 74 per cent possession and had 18 shots on goal, but a full house stuck with them as they tried to salvage something from 2-0 down after Ilias Chair and Sinclair Armstrong scored.
Young defender Ben Nelson replied but it was a third straight league loss after defeats by Leeds and Middlesbrough, with Ipswich now three points behind.
It was left to the unflustered Maresca to calm things down. ‘It’s already been a long time we have been there (at the top) and everyone is chasing us,’ he said. ‘When you drop points and the rest win, you see they are coming but we need balance. You cannot be so happy or so sad, you just have to win games.’
But even doing that doesn’t please everybody.