There was a rumour this past week that Brendan Rodgers had been sacked as manager of Leicester City. It turned out not to be true, but the fact it seemed so believable was telling. The improved performance against West Ham – when they were denied victory only by a late equaliser that prompted one of football’s increasingly frequent epistemological debates: what is a hand? – has perhaps calmed the situation before Sunday’s game against Wolves, but the pressure is real enough.
Rodgers may have twice taken Leicester to fifth in the Premier League (with the ninth-highest wage bill) and won the FA Cup only last season, but the discontent at the King Power has been palpable. It was this week five years ago that Leicester sacked Claudio Ranieri, who had led them to the title the season before. Then perhaps a change could be justified as a sad necessity to head off the threat of relegation. But that is not a realistic possibility this season, even if Leicester’s run without a domestic win now extends to five games, including that humiliating FA Cup defeat by Nottingham Forest.
This is modern football. One season’s achievement becomes the next season’s expectation. Credit in the bank is burned so quickly as to be largely notional. There are no second chances: as soon as anything goes wrong the automatic call is for the dismissal of the manager; one bad month can obliterate years of development and achievement.
Yet it’s an open secret that Rodgers has been under consideration by Manchester City to succeed Pep Guardiola when he finally leaves the club, and that his interest in that position was one of the reasons he wasn’t offered the Tottenham job in the summer.
Rodgers plays the right sort of football. He is one of only four managers ever to win silverware with Leicester (and only two if you exclude the League Cup). He won every possible domestic trophy with Celtic. He took Liverpool closer to the league title than they had been in 24 years. He took Swansea to promotion. He has a record of developing young players. But that presents a paradox: how can Rodgers have last year been a candidate to take over the serial league champions and yet now be apparently on the brink at Leicester?
There is a theory that Rodgers is peculiarly susceptible to Bela Guttmann’s dictum that the third year is fatal, that after two seasons players begin to tire of his methods. And it probably is true that there is a natural shelf-life to some of the guru-gimmicks that were exposed in the Being Liverpool TV documentary.
But evidence to back that up is slim to nonexistent. Rodgers was at Swansea for only two seasons. It’s true his third season at Liverpool saw a drop-off from 2.21 points per game to 1.63. But then that may simply have been the result of the sale of Luis Suárez to Barcelona coupled with regression to the mean after an exceptional season and a sense of emotional exhaustion having come so close to winning the Premier League. When Rodgers left Celtic in the February of his third season, they were picking up 2.33 points per game, as opposed to 2.15 in his second.
Still, the idea that managers have a natural cycle of about three years is one that has been persistent for at least half a century. When Jack Charlton took the Middlesbrough job in 1973, he was warned by Jock Stein about the need to alleviate staleness at all costs, either by moving on himself or shaking up the team. But then, as Rodgers himself acknowledged this week, at a club of Leicester’s stature, that process of renewal is built in as better players look to move on: in recent years no English side has been so successful at identifying relatively inexpensive young talent, nurturing it and selling it on. Youri Tielemans, who has been linked with Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United, looks likely to be the next Leicester star to be sold.
But, more fundamentally, it’s impossible to assess Leicester this season without taking into account the players they have been without. Wesley Fofana has missed 23 league games with injury, James Justin 19, Nampalys Mendy 14, Jonny Evans 13, Ricardo Pereira 10, Timothy Castagne six and Jamie Vardy and Tielemans each four. Kelechi Iheanacho, Wilfred Ndidi and Mendy were all away at the Africa Cup of Nations. It’s not just that that’s a lot of players missing a lot of games, it’s that so many of them are concentrated at the back, where they have coincided with (and possibly contributed to) Caglar Soyuncu suffering a post-Euros loss of form.
That may explain in part, although only in part, why they have let in 11 goals from corners this season, more than any other Premier League side and a remarkable 27% of their total goals conceded. But Leicester also let in 11 from corners last season, which was the joint worst in the division; this is a continuing problem.
Rodgers switched to a man-marking system from set plays after the win over Liverpool before New Year but without obvious improvement. Rodgers has come dangerously close to blaming his players, saying: “You can go zonal, you can block, you can go man to man, but in defending a corner you have to have that will to head it.” To an extent he’s right, and when better defenders return and confidence improves, Leicester probably will be more decisive. But that doesn’t explain why this is such a long-term issue.
So that is an obvious concern, a problem that requires a solution. It may be that Rodgers is unable to find it, that some form of third (full) season syndrome has afflicted him and that the situation is irrecoverable. But the injuries offer just as reasonable an explanation.
There are times when a manager is clearly stagnating and change is necessary but, even with all the absences, Leicester went into the weekend only two places below where their wage bill suggests they should be (with two games in hand). Football is an impatient sport, but this surely is a time for Leicester to hold their nerve.
