Lineups

Leicester lined up in a 4-4-2 shape, with Okazaki often dropping into the hole whenever necessary. Mahrez was the most advanced of the midfielders causing UTD problems all afternoon.

UTD played in a 3-5-2 formation with Mcnair coming in at the back. Darmian and Young provided the width and Martial led the line with Rooney dropping off a little more.

The contrast between the two formations was clear, with 3 UTD defenders often times up against only Vardy, allowing Mahrez and Okazaki to roam around. While at the other end, UTD’s strikers were 2V2 with Leicester’s CB’s regularly. This occasionally caused problems for Leicester as one of the center backs sometimes got sucked out leaving the other isolated. One example was in the 13th Minute, when Huth (Circled in black, gets drawn out of position by Martial. The ball is played into Rooney who’s 1V1 with Morgan. Had he been able to find Juan Mata UTD would have been clear through on goal.

Compactness

However Leicester managed to stay relatively organised throughout the game and UTD very rarely threatened. Much of this was down to Leicester’s compactness and solid organisation. Here we can see a good example of organised they are, the spacing and positioning of each player is perfect, there isn’t a single pass on and UTD are forced to go backwards.

This is another example of Leicester’s compactness, with almost all of their players in the left half of the field. It’s interesting to note that Mahrez is so far to the right of the pitch that he isn’t actually in shot. This was a common theme throughout the game, as Mahrez often stayed wide to deal with the width provided by Ashley Young.

Leicester looked to force UTD to play in the wider areas and then use the touchline to narrow down the angles. They looked to set up pressing traps against the full backs, often using Okazaki or Vardy, or with a winger, FB and CM all shifting across. Here we have one example of many where this happened, with the CM arcing his run around to attempt to block off the passing lane into Martial’s feet, Young had little time or options and ended up giving the ball away.

This was far from an isolated example, and was an extremely effective tactic for Leicester, which can be seen when looking at Leicester’s tackle map. The vast majority of their successful tackles were made in the wide areas.

Impotent UTD

UTD have struggled to score this year, and it really isn’t hard to see why, it was strange to watch at times, as UTD’s attackers were so heavily outnumbered. They rarely committed many players forward, and none of the players that they had had the ability to beat a man (except perhaps Martial, who was constantly surrounded by about 4 defenders) making for a fairly impotent performance. Here are some examples of this hesitancy to commit players forward.

As you can see they are often heavily outnumbered in attack, with only 1 or 2 players ever in the box. They at times lacked a central presence and struggled to penetrate the Leicester block, resulting in lots of passive passing without ever threatening. For example here when Smalling was taking the ball out from the back there was a ridiculous gap in front of him.

Because of Leicester’s compactness, UTD really struggled to find any kind space between the lines, resulting in very little threat from UTD on the Leicester goal. This is obvious when looking at some of the statistics. For example if we look at UTD’s shots on target during the game, we see that they were only two, both Bastien Schweinsteiger headers from a few yards out.

Their problems are also obvious when looking at their successful pass map, which features an almost total blank zone in the opposition box.

The Goals

It’s interesting to briefly look at the goals and how they came about, Leicester were defending a corner when they broke away on the counter. Fuchs had the ball and with little pressure on him was able to play a ball in behind, while Young and Mcnair tried to hold an offside line far too high up the pitch. With no pressure on the ball they really should be dropping off here, but instead tried to hold the line 40 yards from their own goal and got caught out by a good run in behind from Vardy.

UTD’s goal was a lot simpler, though equally worthy of analysis. From the corner we can see that Schweinsteiger is being picked up by Okazaki, a complete mismatch. To make matters worse, Okazaki gets involved in a wrestling match with Schweinsteiger, before being out muscled, allowing Schweinsteiger to break free and score.

Conclusion

UTD’s problems in front of goal show no sings of going away, as they rarely managed to threaten Schmeichel’s goal. They managed only 2 shots on target, and struggled to penetrate the Leicester block, mainly due to their unwillingness to commit players forward. Leicester looked defensively solid aside from a few hairy moments here and there, and posed a reasonable threat on goal. They’ll need to improve their defense of set pieces however, as it has proved a problem all year.