A weird performance to analyse in some way. There was still plenty of things that could have been improved on and yet we were in control for basically the whole game and defended really well against the league leaders.
Apart from the win, that was actually the biggest positive for me - the work rate and defensive unity. There were still errors obviously but I felt comfortable with how that line-up operated in terms of recovery and work rate. It can't be underestimated how much a hard working side like the one we put out yesterday helps you get a platform in a game. Henderson and Can are both hard workers, Lallana obviously is, Coutinho puts in a shift, same with Firmino and Origi. The recovery pace of Moreno and Clyne is also very good, which helps the defensive transition. All that allowed us to control the Leicester attack comfortably; their attack was heavily right-orientated for a majority of the match so it was largely down to Mahrez and Vardy to create something on that side (they didn't have much between the lines so Henderson and Can comfortably controlled that area) and apart from a couple of occasions when Mahrez skipped free of a couple of players and Vardy got free in the box, we dealt with them comfortably - Can was good on that side helping Moreno with Mahrez, Sakho won a lot in the air and Lovren swept up and covered well from RCB.
The attack was probably the biggest issue yesterday. We clearly wanted to target the flanks and the 'half spaces' - a lot of switching play, a lot of playing to the FBs and looking for combinations in these wide areas, trying to take advantage of Leicester's passive, narrow block. The downside was that while it pushed them back, it didn't lead to a lot of genuinely good chances. Our associative play in these wide areas - the passing, relationship of movement, quickness of combinations - wasn't good at all. On the right, Lallana gave it away cheaply a few times early on and was generally too slow on the ball, which left Clyne a bit isolated in trying to penetrate on that side. We were a bit better on the left in this regard as Moreno and Coutinho have built up a bit more of a relationship but it wasn't all that great there either and whilst Firmino, playing off the front, made some good diagonal runs at points to both sides, him and Origi sometimes took up each other's space when Origi looked to move laterally. When you try and play in a precise way like we did in this game, the interaction of movement and passing has to be good and it wasn't up to scratch here as a lot of the relationships haven't been built up and worked upon over time. One of the reasons a team like Barcelona are so good is that the positional play, movement and combinations across the pitch develop over time, so they know how to operate together and combine all across the attack in order to break the opposition down. For various reasons - injuries, inconsistencies, signings, change of manager etc - we haven't built up these relationships across the pitch so our link-up play in each area of attack isn't particularly good on a consistent basis. It may take a while, probably a more consistent team selection and more work done on the positional attack for our combination play to become second nature to the players.
It did improve a bit in the second half. Henderson started making more runs towards the right and his link up play with Clyne gave us better fluidity on that side, which allowed Lallana to play more centrally. Firmino's diagonal movement started to pay off as Leicester switched off at times and Benteke's static play probably inadvertently helped in this regard as Firmino had more space to move into than he had with Origi. Firmino didn't have a particularly good game, especially in the first half, but I thought his work rate was fine and he got a nice assist. I do think once we get that connection and balance right in attack, he has the potential to be a very good player for us, as poor as he has been in the last few weeks.
I thought Origi was quite good before he went off. He's still a very raw player but the attributes are most definitely there and he looks a lot more confident now, albeit he was bit selfish at times yesterday. What he did give us was the option to play the immediate ball behind on the counter attack, which led to a couple of decent opportunities. Henderson and Can were both very good, I thought - some of the diagonals from Henderson especially were brilliant and his work rate, mobility and underrated creativity are really key for this side. We're a lesser team without him. Lovren was, by and large, very solid and he covered and swept up well. Sakho wasn't as good and had some sloppy moments but was also fairly dominant for most of the game defensively, I thought. I've said elsewhere this weekend that, for various reasons, I don't think this is a particularly promising long term partnership, but given the predicament we're in with CBs, especially with how poor Skrtel's been and with Gomez's injury, I'm not entirely averse to Lovren and Sakho short term. I still thought Lovren made some errors (a couple of poor passes into midfield, one or two completely needless fouls, losing Dyer in the box which led to his chance) but he deals with direct play fairly well most of the time and when he's got support around him, he's definitely aerially dominant. A very solid 7/10 performance (I thought Sakho was probably a 6/10).
Overall, a solid if flawed performance but one we'd definitely have taken before the game. Controlled their attacks comfortably, recovered well when we lost the ball, worked hard as a team, pushed them back in their own half and kept plugging away. A sizeable improvement on the match against Watford.