Player Ratings: Leicester City vs Fulham

Leicester City 1 Fulham 2

That was surely the worst performance from Leicester City I’ve seen since the unbuckling against Bournemouth that sealed our fate in Europe’s second best club competition. I bet Brendan Rodgers has a poster of Albert Einstein hanging up in his office with his famous quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results,” not realizing he never actually said it, but rather one Jane Fulton, a character in a book by Rita Mae Brown, whilst simultaneously not stopping to think about how he has continuously done that at the worst times in his short Leicester career. I’ll highlight my point by a quote from his post match interview: “Evenings like this show the youthfulness of the team and we’ve still got work to do.” It was very plainly your most senior players that were the problem today and incredibly shocking that wasn’t made apparent to you.

Kasper Schmeichel: 4/10

While he kept them in the game with a fine save at 2-1, he was let down again by inept defensive setup that hasn’t been working for some time now. There are players in the Premier League that are too fast to be covered by a manger who sets his fastest CB virtually at RB and ask two aged Premier League winners to keep up 23 year olds. Kasper also dove the correct way for the not so surprising penalty called after consulting VAR.

Wesley Fofana: 3/10

Missed a wide open net that would’ve given his side a 1-0 win. Was at ¹⁄₃ fault for the Lookman goal, Jonny Evans is ²⁄₃ at fault for not keeping up with the line that would’ve made him offside. He’s being asked to do too much at the moment. Once they finally went to a back 4, he wasn’t guarding the winger and was allowed to play more centrally and not be beaten in behind. He missed several tackles and has not been the same since he dyed his hair.

Jonny Evans: -10/10

He was worse today than when he decided to play for Liverpool the week before. I know he’s racked up a lot of miles so far this season, and is not healthy by any stretch of the imagination, but the lack of focus by the one who is supposed the be the rock at core the of defense, has left Leicester leakier than a Cauldron in Diagon Alley. Perhaps if we had our on Hermoine on retainer, she’d fix the mess that is currently this defense.

Christian Fuchs: 0/10

His stats look good, but he was terrible today. There was zero need for him to go after the ball on the “foul” that gifted Fulham their 2-0 lead. They were all most at the touchline. If he brings it down and beats you 1v1, you applaud that man for channeling Messi somehow, and move on. You don’t whack at it like it’s a mole in an arcade! 99% of the time you shield that ball and let it go out of bounds. Hell, he even could’ve tried to head it clear. He stayed on after Luke Thomas was subbed, but that was clearly to hold onto his height and long throw.

James Justin: 2/10

His poor performance was another byproduct of this stupid formation that everyone has worked out. I counted 5 times JJ and Dennis Praet were standing basically in the same position on the right flank about 10 yards from the opponents box. That says to me that neither of them know what to do when the ball is moving up field. If Praet is the wide man, why is Justin wider and further up the field? If JJ is the wide man, why is Praet standing in his position? WTF did they work on in training all week?

Youri Tielemans: 3/10

He is too young to be playing a Pirlo role with this team. All that energy he is using as the deep playmaker, is desperately needed up field. His talent is being wasted so that he can complete more passes to Papy Mendy or a CB, with the occasional ball through the defense. I get the idea behind Mendy being deployed ahead of him, with the end goal of him making a tackle on the press and re-starting the attack, but if the past few weeks have shown anything, Youri is a mother-flippin’ beast at tackling and is 100x a better passer than Mendy. What does Brendan have to lose? Other than his stupid pride and a game to bottom of the table Sheffield United next time out.

Namplays Mendy: 0/10

I can’t think of a single thing he did in this match. Can you?

Luke Thomas: 0/10

Completing 7 passes and making 1 interception is not a great contribution. But, to his credit, neither is playing a formation built to whip a ball into the mixer, with the mixer being as successful as finding “the one” on Tinder.

Dennis Praet: 1/10

What’s worse than playing one winger and James Maddison as the other? Playing both Madison and Praet as the wingers. Remember all that early success had when Maddison was hurt? A lot of that is because he was able to roam as our 10 and link up with an overlapping RB or LB. So why essentially mark him out of the game by sending out wide? He also should’ve fouled Fulham when the counter started for their first goal, but he couldn’t quite reach his man, probably because he was near the corner flag.

James Maddison: 0/10

If you want to pretend like you’re one of “The Avengers” you should probably perform for more like Thor, than The Deep from The Boys.

Jamie Vardy: 5/10

Even he was shit today. I’ve never seen him run a ball out of bounds doing his best Ben Chilwell impression. But even at Vardy’s worst (still Brendan’s fault btw) he still managed to set up Harvey Barnes to give his team a glimmer of hope.

It’s pretty plain to see this isn’t currently working, and while I know injuries are very much a problem, when you get it wrong tactically over and over again, you need to wake the **** up and smell what The Rock is cooking.