Relief for Maddison as City break their duck on set-pieces
TRAINING GROUND ROUTINE SET UP VICTORY OVER CHELSEA
JAMES Maddison can finally stop pulling his hair out after Leicester City’s training ground routine helped them score their first set-piece goal of the Premier League season.
Maddison revealed after City’s 2-0 victory over Chelsea that, as the corner and free-kick taker, it has been frustrating to see his team at the bottom of the table whenever the setpiece infographics pop up on screen.
But after analysing Chelsea and putting together a short corner routine at the training ground, City are finally off the mark, even if not in the circumstances they intended, with Wilfred Ndidi finishing off the move rather than intended target Harvey Barnes.
“We worked on it, we looked at short corners and being creative,” Maddison told Sky Sports. “They switch off sometimes from set-pieces and we knew that was something we could pick up.
“We haven’t scored enough goals from set-pieces, I’m pulling my hair out sometimes as the corner taker when you’re putting it in there, and you look at the stats that come up in the games and for goals scored from set-pieces, it’s Leicester City at the bottom of the table with zero. So it’s nice to see one come off, a bit of a relief, actually.
“It’s always nice when you work on one and it comes off. We didn’t quite have the mis-hit shot from Harvey Barnes to set up Wilfred Ndidi to slice it in, but we’ll take it.”
After Ndidi opened the scoring, Maddison coolly tucked away the second before half-time, sealing a victory that takes City to the top of the table, at least until Wednesday night, when they may be displaced by Manchester City.
However, the attacking midfielder believes it would be detrimental to the team’s form if they started thinking about a title challenge.
We haven’t scored enough goals from setpieces, I’m pulling my hair out sometimes
He said: “You can get sidetracked, we’re top of the table at the minute because we don’t think like that (about the title race).
“As boring as it is, the most important game is the next game. It was Southampton last week, it was Chelsea this week, and now it’s Brentford in the FA Cup. That’s how we’ve got to work and that’s why we’re top of the table, because we have that mentality.
“That’s where we want to be. We’re not up there by fluke. We’re up there because we work hard.
“People might talk about United, and Liverpool, and Tottenham, but let’s let them talk, we’ll do our business in the background, and come the end of the season hopefully that will give us a chance of being right up there.
“It’s a good one psychologically because we’ve worked really hard and halfway through the season now to be sitting top is a great achievement for us and one we can build upon.
“I don’t think you’ve seen a more complete team performance from us this season so far. It had a bit of everything, a bit of tactical nous, a bit of quality when needed.
“We work hard every time on stifling the opposition’s threats, and I thought we did that brilliantly. I thought the lads out there dealt with the threat and I thought we thoroughly deserved the three points.”
He added: “You don’t play for Brendan Rodgers if you don’t do the dirty work, it’s as simple as that. He always reiterates to us that it’s a running game. You can’t have passengers, you can’t carry anyone in this league, especially for a team like us.
“If we want to stay up there for the long run, there might be teams that are able to spend more money than us and bring in quality from abroad and pay big wages for big players, but that team spirit and togetherness here at Leicester City for all to see will continue to try to keep us up there.”
James Maddison, pictured