Losing a 2 goal lead was a disaster and lets be honest we were gifted those two goals. One an outright reffing error and the other a penalty that on another day may not have been given so we most definitely got the rub of the green. I think the contrast between this game and the Swansea game should be a harsh lesson for Rodgers with most of the blame I think lying squarely with his team selection. Every change to the team sheet I thought was a bad one made worse by his subs.
Mignolet
Can Toure Sakho
Henderson Gerrard Lucas Moreno
Lallana Coutinho
Sterling
I think all of those changes in red weakened us. Skrtel did a fantastic job sweeping against Swansea but Toure looked slightly ropey (a forced change). Manquillo completely controlled his wing defensively and made Can's job defensively a lot easier but against Leicester Henderson was exploited. Compare Henderson's impact to that that against Swansea where he was central. In the Swansea game Hendeson did a power of work pushing forward and creating an overlap where his support was crucial in getting us on the score sheet. But he also defended from the front putting considerable pressure on Swansea in conjunction with Sterling, Coutinho and Lallana. That pressing is what makes us work, Swansea struggle to play the ball and we were gifted two goals from that pressure. This was in stark contract to with Gerrard who naturally sat deeper and looked to dictate from a deeper role. He was not in a position to press from the front and doesn't have capacity to match Henderson which therefore made us less effective.
IMO it was the position of Gerrard which caused most of the problems. It wasn't that he was bad himself but it marginalized Lucas and Can's role as ball players, he provided less support higher up the pitch than Henderson and it allowed Leicester to press more aggressively. I think we would have been so much better off if we'd kept the same team as Swansea and used Gerrard as either a super sub for Lallana or just swapped him out for Lucas.
I'm hoping Rodgers has learnt something from this game. We played poorly but I am not without hope on us turning it around and getting back to how we played against Swansea. I think it just requires Rodgers to get the team sheet right.
