Talking points from Leicester City’s 2-1 defeat to Oxford United, looking at the chants directed at the manager, the inability to create chances, Louis Page, and more
Marti Cifuentes with Jakub Stolarczyk after Leicester City’s 2-1 defeat to Oxford(Image: Mike Egerton/PA Wire)
It would be a monumental turnaround for Marti Cifuentes to achieve what he believes he can.
Back in November, when a smattering of Leicester City fans joined in with Sheffield United chants teasing Cifuentes that he would be sacked in the morning, the Spaniard said he’d been subjected to such taunts at previous clubs but had won through.
On Saturday, this was not a smattering. This was not City supporters joining in. Fans in the Kop started up the sack chants, first singing “sacked in the morning” before moving on to “we want Marti out”.
Even with jubilant Oxford fans making plenty of noise, the disgruntlement from the Kop was clear. Many have had enough of the manager.
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Still, Cifuentes is keeping to the same line. The chants were “sad” to hear but he remains convinced he can win fans back.
It must be said that in his post-match press conference Cifuentes didn’t cut the figure of a man on the brink like, say, Liam Manning did when City won at Norwich and delivered the final nail in his Carrow Road coffin.
The last words of Cifuentes’ press conference – “let’s work better, let’s work smarter, let’s work harder, let’s commit more” – were accompanied by his fist banging on the desk. He didn’t sound like he’s giving up.
But winning back the supporters whose faith he has lost feels like a tall order now. His presence in the dugout means there will be a toxicity to the King Power Stadium. When mistakes are made on the pitch, negative reactions will swiftly follow. Patience won’t be shown.
Cifuentes himself suggested the noises made by the supporters – the moans, the groans and the boos – following the opening Oxford goal led his team to lose confidence, and then find it more difficult to play forward effectively.
But those noises aren’t going away any time soon. If he wants to win fans back, he has to get the team to block out the negativity and produce performances while the atmosphere is so toxic.
City chairman Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha was present for the first time in two months on Saturday and so witnessed the atmosphere first hand. It has been a factor in managerial decisions previously.
But if he is mulling over Cifuentes’ future, there’s plenty to consider. Firstly, there are the financial implications. The club’s transfer business, or lack thereof, suggests they are already close to the wire on Profit and Sustainability Rules for this season.
Secondly, there’s the playing squad. Would a different manager be able to get a better tune out of this team, one that has not been refreshed enough and one where the best-performing player is injured?
Thirdly, there’s still so much anger towards the board that changing the manager may not eradicate any of the toxicity anyway. It wouldn’t turn the tide.
For Cifuentes and the City board, this is an almighty predicament.
‘Pressure from stands’ a convenient excuse or genuine problem?
That’s now 23 Championship games in a row that City have conceded. Half a season of consecutively letting in at least one goal.
Oxford arrived having failed to score in either of their first two games under Matt Bloomfield and with only two teams in the whole division having scored fewer this campaign.
Yet City conceded inside four minutes. And then, as Cifuentes said: “There was a lack of confidence after this.” He added: “Emotionally it was a big hit.”
Oxford United’s Sam Long (right) scores their side’s first goal during the Sky Bet Championship match at the King Power Stadium(Image: )
You would think that a team that is so accustomed to conceding would have learned to not let it affect them when they do let a goal in, that they would acknowledge it’s a regular occurrence and not let their confidence be knocked.
“Sure,” said Cifuentes. “But the pressure to play for Leicester and the expectations at this club doesn’t help. After four minutes there is pressure from the stands. All of this affects the players.”
Is this a convenient excuse or a genuine problem? Is the atmosphere created by the City crowd making them less able to play well?
Perhaps it does bring a nervous energy to performances. When players feel like mistakes will be met negatively, they’re more likely to worry about making them, and therefore more likely to make them.
But equally, many of these players are experienced professionals. They should be hardened enough to fan sentiment not to let it bother them.
In any case, if the atmosphere is an issue, then, like most issues, it goes to the very top. City fans’ bad mood goes way beyond the performances on the pitch to the way the club is being run.
City devoid of ideas as possession wasted
Conceding from a long throw was bad, and conceding from their own corner was worse. Still, the most dire aspect of the performance was how little creativity City showed.
At 77 per cent, this was the highest share of possession City have had in any game this season. Oxford did put plenty of men behind the ball, and those men looked organised and defended strongly.
But having that much possession gives City so many opportunities to build attacks. Unfortunately, they looked clueless as to how to break Oxford down.
Despite that gulf in possession, they only managed 16 touches in the Oxford box, five more than the visitors managed at the other end.
The chances they mustered added up to an expected goals tally of 0.6, paling in comparison to the 1.9 Oxford created at set-pieces and on the counter attack.
Stephy Mavididi of Leicester City with Jamie McDonnell of Oxford United during the Sky Bet Championship match between Leicester City and Oxford United at King Power Stadium(Image: )
Cifuentes is not a manager who values possession at all costs, but he does see it as a tool. So, it feels like, with the amount of the ball they had, that City should have been able to put into practice what they presumably work on in training. But there were no clear ideas on display.
Oxford average the second-lowest share of the ball in the division. It should have been known that City could have a large chunk of possession, and working on that should have been the priority over the past few days of training. If it was, it didn’t show on the pitch.
It’s especially dispiriting because, for all their recent woes, City have perhaps scored their best two team goals of the season this month, against West Brom and Coventry.
But on Saturday, any semblance that they knew what to do with the ball deserted them.
Page is making strides but still showing naivety
It was not the game Louis Page would have wanted for his long-awaited return to the starting line-up.
The best aspect of his game was how regularly he showed for the ball, moving here, there, left, right, deep and forward to provide an option for a team-mate. In possession, he was reasonable, if lacking penetration like the rest of the City players.
When he played in August, it felt a little like he’d been thrown in at the deep end, and the opposition sensed that.
His confidence has now grown and while Oxford still targeted him more aggressively for pressing, the more he develops the less likely teams will single him out.
The lessons to take forward are in defending set-pieces, as he lost Sam Long for the opening goal, and in keeping his head when he loses the ball so as not to give away naive free-kicks.
Relegation battle more likely than play-off push
The gap from City to the automatic promotion places is now 17 points, almost double the nine-point cushion they have to the relegation spots.
If Southampton get at least a point against Portsmouth on Sunday, then City will be in the bottom three of the eight-game form table.
There is a points deduction expected at some point this season. It’s getting harder and harder to consider the play-offs as a possibility. Relegation, meanwhile, still feels like a potential outcome.
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