Late equaliser but second half was City at their best
TALKING POINTS FROM 2-2 DRAW AGAINST WEST HAM
WHILE the temptation is to focus on the moment that denied Leicester City their first victory of 2022 and saw them equal their longest winless run under Brendan Rodgers, that would be overlooking one of the best halves of football they have produced of late.
After half-time, City gave the type of performance that fans want to see, and that Rodgers wants to see.
There was intensity, creativity, and variety in the attacking play, while the defenders marshalled the half-way line and penned West Ham in, the visitors unable to escape. City were in total control.
The crowd responded to that, cheering on their team and raising the pressure on West Ham. City broke through with a brilliant goal for Ricardo Pereira.
Harvey Barnes was causing all sorts of nightmares for Vladimir Coufal and with a little better decision-making in the box – he tried a few times to shoot through a sea of bodies – City would have had more clear-cut chances to show for their dominance.
Where their control is shown is in the defensive statistics. While it may not seem like it because they conceded two goals once again, it was arguably their best defensive display of the season.
They gave up only eight shots, the fewest tally in a Premier League match this term. An expected goals figure of 0.7 was the lowest they have restricted an opponent to all season.
There were plenty of fine individual performances for supporters to get excited about too, including Ricardo and his surges forward to spark memories of life before his ACL injury, Barnes and his frighteningly quick and direct wing play, Youri Tielemans and his terrific cross-field balls, and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and another all-action showing.
There is no doubt that Rodgers is under pressure. In the past five games they have given up seven points in the Premier League and suffered a dismal end to their FA Cup defence.
And there is a narrative that once a manager is deemed ‘under pressure,’ they have reached the point of no return, and that performances will get incrementally worse until the hierarchy bite the bullet and sack them.
But teams can improve, and that performance was far better than some of the displays City have produced during periods of good form.
Of course, there is more for Rodgers to do pull City and himself out of this current situation, where his future his being discussed by supporters and pundits up and down the country, but it would not be fair to dismiss the very good aspects of the display against West Ham because of one moment, albeit an infuriating one, in injury time.
A good performance with one bad moment is more promising for the future than the other way around.
Before that injury-time goal – which still does deserve scrutiny – there was a substitution that has caused as much fury as the goal itself.
Jannik Vestergaard was brought on for Youri Tielemans and within two minutes West Ham had equalised. For many, that was not a coincidence.
That is understandable given City have not won a Premier League in which Vestergaard has started this season.
It is clear that his style does not suit City and, overall, it has been a bust of a transfer. But this was not
Rodgers making a change for the sake of it. There was plenty of sound reasoning behind Vestergaard’s introduction.
West Ham pushed Craig Dawson up front, just like City used to do with Matt Elliott in the Martin O’Neill days. It was clear what they were going to do: lump balls up the pitch.
Those launches into the penalty box would bypass the midfield by and large, so it made sense to take off the midfielder with the least energy, which was Tielemans, and replace him with someone who can defend the box from an aerial bombardment.
As much as he doesn’t fit in at City, this is what Vestergaard can do, and has done well in a couple of his substitute appearances.
When balls are put into the box, and he doesn’t have to chase it, he can read it and win his headers.
Vestergaard’s introduction was not the sole reason for City conceding the last-minute equaliser.
This was not Rodgers needlessly tinkering, it was a manager responding to an opposition’s tactic and trying to counteract it. That seems preferable to a manager standing idle and doing nothing. ■ So with the set-piece itself, who was at fault? City kept Daniel Amartey and Wilfred Ndidi on the runners and Vestergaard went and stood in the six-yard box, protecting Kasper Schmeichel from Michail Antonio.
The first error was Amartey’s in that he got tied up in keeping track of Dawson, and did little to halt his progress, allowing him a clear enough run at the ball to leap at it.
Schmeichel may also be partly culpable in that he half-attempted to come for the ball, but then changed his mind, the goalkeeper caught in no man’s land and unable to make an attempt to keep out Dawson’s effort.
He was partly impeded by Vestergaard, who in his attempt to outmuscle Antonio got in his own goalkeeper’s way.
The problem then was that Schmeichel tried to push his centreback out of the picture to allow him to go for the ball, stopping him from jumping to head it. Between the three of them, there were a few mistakes.
But Rodgers can’t give up on finding a solution just yet. It would be too costly to do that. This will make or break City’s season.