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What Nottingham Forest had that Leicester City don't as Steve Cooper smokescreen wears thin
When it’s said that a team can’t get out of their own half, it’s not usually meant literally. But for Leicester City, it was very nearly the truth. In the first 25 minutes of their 2-1 defeat to Chelsea, they had just one touch of the ball beyond the halfway line.
The moment Chelsea kicked off, City settled into a shape with all 11 players deep. Playing that way can be effective – Steve Cooper managed Nottingham Forest to wins over Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea with that approach.
But you have to be able to protect your box and you have to be able to connect play in attack so as to pose a threat too, force the opposition back and limit the time spent defending. And you have to be able to do it from the moment the first whistle is blown, because if you don’t and you find yourself a goal down, the gameplan is undone.
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Go behind and the opposition don’t have to take so many risks. You then have to force the issue and that means coming away from the tactic.
City are yet to prove they can play that way. They’re giving the ball away far too cheaply – launching it forward in the vain hope Jamie Vardy will win a one-on-three – they’re putting themselves under too much pressure and buckling under it. That’s now 10 times in 12 games they have let in the first goal, twice more than Wolves and at least three times more than every other side in the division.
And their powers of recovery are waning. It has been perhaps their strongest characteristic this season - their determination, persistence, composure, and ability to raise the levels of quality and earn a result in the second half.
But in the past two games, both of which they have been trailing at half-time, they have had a combined three second-half shots. That’s not going to win them games. It will rarely earn them draws.
Producing those comebacks is a fine quality to have, but it does not seem sustainable. And so there are two options. City either have to learn to play this way more effectively, or they have to be more adventurous, pressing higher up the pitch from the off. They have to be able to get out of their own half before they go one goal down.
Faes not inspiring confidence
The focus of that first Chelsea goal, from a City perspective, will be on Wout Faes. Three times he had opportunities to clear, and three times he only put himself in more danger until Nicolas Jackson was picking up the ball in the box and finishing past Mads Hermansen.
Because of that, it may be overlooked that Faes was put in trouble with a poorly-executed and ill-advised goal-kick routine. City feigned to play it short but then went long, looking for runners over the top. But because Faes and Caleb Okoli were standing in their own box to create the illusion of a short goal kick, the team were then stretched.
When Chelsea won the first header, Faes and Okoli were too deep to deal with it, meaning City had to let the ball bounce in their own half. Jackson made himself a nuisance enough to put Faes under pressure, and from there City didn’t recover.
It was naive and ill-thought-out, and didn’t seem to fit with the approach City were playing. Invention at goal kicks should be applauded, but it has to be far better than that.
Still, it’s not enough for Faes to be relieved of responsibility. Being a centre-back in a team that concedes so much territory and possession is unforgiving, because there’s so much work to do. But Faes, an excellent centre-back at his best, cannot be having poor games as often as he is at the moment.
He’s one of only two City outfield players to have started every Premier League fixture this season. That record should stand him out as a reliable presence, but that description doesn’t fit the Belgian right now.
For a team to play well on the front foot, they need to have faith in those behind them. Faes isn’t inspiring that at the moment.
El Khannouss must start again
Cooper issued a rallying cry to his attackers in the wake of Abdul Fatawu's season-ending injury. He wanted someone to step up and “own the shirt, own the badge”.
Two players were given an immediate opportunity to do so in Kasey McAteer and Bilal El Khannouss, and while it was positive to see an academy graduate make their first Premier League start, it was the £20m Moroccan who made the greater impact. Now Cooper needs to pick him again.
Because right now, the deficiencies in El Khannouss’s game are all related to his lack of minutes. Sometimes, his audacious through balls won’t quite find their mark because he’s not yet totally on the same wavelength as his team-mates. He wanes in the second half too, but he’s not had the minutes to build himself to peak match fitness. With consistent game-time, both of those factors will improve.
Beyond that, there’s lots to be excited by. He moves very smoothly with the ball, gliding around defenders and through small gaps to get City heading in the right direction. His weight of pass is really good, while on Saturday there were a few offloads under pressure to Boubakary Soumare and Oli Skipp where he took a Chelsea player out of the game, creating overloads.
This was also proof that he can play off the left wing as well as in the number 10 position. He has to now get the chance to back up this performance. He must start at Brentford.
Supporters tiring of Cooper 'smokescreen'
The performance of the officials was Cooper’s focus post-match and he came close to accusing referee Andy Madley of having an agenda against City. His main point of contention was Wesley Fofana’s challenge on Stephy Mavididi inside the box, which would have given City a chance to reduce the deficit 10 minutes earlier than they did. It wasn’t clear-cut either way, and so it wasn’t a decision VAR would have overturned no matter what Madley initially decided.
But City didn’t lose because of that decision. They lost because Chelsea were by far the better team. In any case, City were also arguably fortunate in the first half that Wilfred Ndidi wasn’t sent off. Again, had Madley produced a red card, VAR may not have overturned it.
It’s hard to know what Cooper’s persistent pelting of referees hopes to achieve. Is it just a distraction technique, pivoting the focus onto the officials so less is said about his players, shielding them from the limelight and therefore not damaging their confidence?
Does he genuinely believe that the way to improve refereeing standards is to lambaste the officials every week? Maybe it’s to create a sense of injustice in the hope decisions will go his side’s way in the future. They have already benefitted from calls at Southampton and Ipswich.
Whichever it is, it’s becoming tiresome for supporters. Because one of Cooper’s other tasks is to get fans onside so that his team gets a stronger backing from the stands. Right now, supporters aren’t buying it.
They’re seeing Cooper’s focus on referees as a lack of ownership over the team’s performances. They want to know what Cooper is going to do to make the team better, not what he hopes the referees would have done better.
Cooper spoke really well earlier in the season when fans were airing their grievances from the stands. It showed awareness and showed he wasn’t looking to hide. But the constant refereeing appraisals are now starting to feel like a smokescreen.
City don't have Forest weapon
Without the fans’ full backing, it feels like Cooper loses one of the weapons that made his Forest team so effective. The atmosphere at the City Ground in 2022/23 was electric, as painful as it may be to admit from those of a City persuasion. It definitely played a part in their survival.
Forest had the 10th best home record that season, averaging 1.58 points per game. A third of the way through this season’s home matches and City are averaging 0.83 points per game. That’s the difference between 30 home points and 16 home points over a full season.
The unthreatening atmosphere can be explained by a few factors. The novelty of being in the Premier League has worn off at City. Expectations are, rightly or wrongly, higher than they are for a typical newly-promoted club. There are off-field issues that have seen fans lose a little love for their club. The chilly weather certainly didn’t help on Saturday.
When there’s a stadium that’s bouncing and is going to roar their team on no matter what, the tactics Cooper is deploying can work. But at City, the 11-men-behind-the-ball set-up can be viewed as an inferiority complex, and it’s not going to get supporters shouting until their lungs give out.
Cooper has been given a difficult hand as far as generating a good home atmosphere goes. But right now, unless something changes with the style of play or level of performance, it does not feel like it will improve to the point of making the King Power Stadium a fortress.
