I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers a Happy New Year!
Both teams have had magical seasons to remember. Leicester won the title, despite being underdogs at 5000/1, and we finished 7th. Oh, and Millwall are still in League 1. Whilst we didn’t get the end-of-the-year finish we wanted with a place in the top half, both teams will see this year as a turning point in their clubs’ respective histories. The duo have witnessed sporting spectacles with Premier League football finally back on the cards for the Foxes, and a new vision of the club for us with the move to the London Stadium.
Last season, Gary Lineker said that he would present the first episode of the new series of MOTD in his undies. As his disciplinary record on the pitch suggests, he was true to his word. That said, he may struggle to keep his new promise if Leicester end up retaining the title. He has delved into politics on Twitter, but this may be the most questionable thing he has ever tweeted: Lineker vowed he would do the first episode of next season naked, standing on his head, while Shearer and Wright beat him with a stick! If Leicester somehow end up winning the title again, it will definitely be another 1990 moment for the presenter.
Both managers know that in order to continually improve on their teams’ successes, they need to finish well within the top half. Like players, managers learn from experience. Bilic made the severe mistake of not signing a proper striker; Ranieri sold Kanté to Chelsea, and did not get a midfield replacement. They’ve had to learn the hard way that they can’t put too much pressure on just a single aspect of play.
By contrast, Southampton and Everton have done a better job with their transition periods. They have sold players they can afford to sell. Both of them have a good balance of youth, and know that you have to finish in the top 7 if you are to challenge the top teams. Stoke have finished 9th for the past three seasons, yet are currently below us in 14th. You simply can’t rely on a win at the end of the season in order to narrowly finish in the top half. Southampton didn’t make a good start to the previous season lagging behind in 16th after their first six games, but they turned it around finishing in 6th. Even this season, they had to wait until the fifth match to get their first win – the Saints are currently 9th. That is the sort of resilience both we and Leicester need to develop going into the new year.
With four goals scored in our previous match against Swansea, you would be forgiven for thinking that we were going to score again. We had scored in our last eight matches, whilst Leicester had failed to keep a clean sheet in their last 11 matches. They sound like stats a bookie would use to convince you to bet on West Ham scoring. To be fair, I certainly would have taken a punt on that. The likelihood of the Foxes keeping a clean sheet were as likely as Leicester’s favourite son Gary Lineker keeping one! Joking aside, whatever view you may have of Gary, he is still an influential ex-footballer with a lot of passion. His interview with the FT is definitely worth a read.
Last season, we failed to win four consecutive league matches, so if we were to do so with a win against Leicester, it would have been huge. Something that I feel we are going to have to try and replicate this season is to play counter-attacking football. Our defence is rock solid with Reid at the heart of it, but we need to be able to absorb some pressure from the opponents and then exert it back on them by creating opportunities for each other. Our creative outlets are good with Payet and Lanzini, with the latter getting an inch-perfect lofted ball for Carroll only a few minutes after being subbed on. However, in spite of more urgency going forward, we are too stagnant in defence at times, failing to clear our lines.
Leicester had far too much time and space on the ball in the first half. Slimani hit the post in the fourth minute with a header – that was a huge let-off. Four of Leicester’s last five league goals on home soil have come in the 20th minute or earlier. Soon after, we should have been defending with much improved marking. Unfortunately, Payet didn’t mark Albrighton whatsoever, who got the assist. It shouldn’t have been particularly difficult either. There was nothing sly about the Foxes’ goal. Slimani hit the post earlier, so it would’ve made sense if we were marking him. The Algerian striker got a second heading chance, and he took it with a massive thumping header that Randolph couldn’t deal with. 15 of his last 33 league goals have now come from headers.
The post was the MOTM against Hull City, however it didn’t look upon us too favourably this time round. Sure, it stopped Slimani once, but Antonio should have got yet another headed goal in this match. Him and Tim Cahill now both hold the record for the most amount of headed goals in a calendar year with 11. Shame his effort wasn’t helped on by the post.
We had a whopping 25 shots, and only had five on target. By comparison, Leicester had a dozen shots with four on target. In the second half, we were pressing well, but we didn’t get into areas where we could have scored often enough. Leicester blocked 10 of our shots, as well as making several clearances. This is evocative of some of our most recent wins. The teams that we beat had no cutting edge, and as such, were easier to defend against. In our match against Swansea, both sides had 14 shots and seven on target, yet we won 4-1. That is partly down to Swansea failing to create enough clear-cut chances relative to their shots. We couldn’t even create a single clear-cut chance, despite dominating possession and having more than double the number of shots of Leicester City.
Today we got beat, sometimes you don't get what you deserve today was one of those days. The players and fans kept going to the very end. dg
— David Gold (@davidgold) December 31, 2016
This season, we desperately need to spend big bucks on a new striker. The January transfer window is renown for being over-priced, but that is the risk the board took when they allowed the signing of Ayew. In fact, they had a heavy influence on it. We can’t play hoofball with Carroll as our only attacking style. At the moment, most of our strikers are either very inexperienced or unfit. If we don’t improve our current attacking options, we could end the season in mid-table.