What have we learned from this match?
I think we’re moving in the right direction, but we’re not there yet. The team is still gelling and there were a lot of young men out there tonight who are still maturing too. That showed and we let the game slip where a maturer side may have gotten something out of it and points matter, any type of points, obviously.
We can beat and blast good teams out of sight who are not in form, but we’ve still yet to really topple a side that’s burning as much fire as we are. And we had a good chance here because we got our noses in front, but we didn’t have the authority to control the game and dictate the play to keep The Foxes off our back.
I really enjoyed the first-half and I thought both teams played pretty well. There was good football on show and both teams attacked with intent. You couldn’t really argue with whoever scored and it was great that we struck first, but no surprise that Leicester equalised soon after.
Defensively we weren’t really at the races, but we’ve not been under the cosh much lately either due to how well we’ve been playing.
They matched us all over the park and bettered us in certain areas and passages of play and were extremely well disciplined and carried out a tactical game plan to near perfection on the day. They had the right amount of dynamic attacking fluidity to allow their creative players freedom whenever they won the ball and countered.
When they didn’t have the ball however, was where they excelled. Their positional play off the ball was fabulous. They congested the space and kept close to our key players in order to put them under serious pressure. I was impressed with how they allowed Alejandro Faurlin to have time on the ball, but shut off all his regular supply lines. They pounced and anticipated his passes, causing him to give the ball away plenty. It was well worked and although you could argue that Faurlin had a bad game, he was made to make errors by a side that was well prepared. You’d hope the alarm bells were ringing after the first couple of passes though, but sometimes it just goes like that.
I even saw times when the Argentine was on the ball and someone moved in to close off the likes of Gary Borrowdale. It’s that sort of tactical nous that impressed me, because he is often a quick 5 yard pass back to start a passing move off again or to help us hold possession until something develops. Once these avenues are closed off, it changes the whole dynamics of the attacking play you want to develop.
I thought our shape caused us problems as well. When you come up against a team who is capable of being so organised, sometimes you need to go like-for-like positionally and try to win your individual battles as a starting point. Instead we were lopsided and a bit naïve, because we needed to spread the play in order to pull them out of position, but we kept falling for the trick of trying to play the ball inside against a couple of pros who’ve been around the blocks for a while in Matthew Oakley and Richie Wellens and they made it look all too easy in there.
Still, we lost to a freak goal in the end. For whatever anybody says about Radek Cerny’s mistake, we can’t help but accept that even though it was an unpopular and somewhat unfair decision to remove Lee Camp from the number one jersey, it has turned out to be the right one. Cerny has really grown into his role and has been a fine keeper for us, so hopefully he won’t be too down about his mistake as he’s saved our bacon on more than enough occasions.
We looked like we missed a leader in the midfield, perhaps a Gavin Mahon or Ben Watson figure would have made this a different game for us, but it’s still a good experience for the ones who featured and we’re going to need them to go through that sometimes to keep their feet on the floor and their eyes focused.
The fans are sometimes getting carried away as well and chanting that we’re going up, but we need to strive for more consistency before we can think about that. We’re not close to being promotion contenders until we develop that resolve and grind out results, even if it’s a point here or there rather than all three. It’s about racking them up and doing so against the teams that are in form and the ones sitting at the top end of the table. That’s how you develop consistency and that’s what makes other teams fear you.
Leicester on the other hand look the most complete side to have visited Loftus Road this season. They had many top notch performances all over the park and played with the right blend of individual craft and great team work.
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