7th August 2022: Premier League: King Power Stadium: Leicester City vs Brentford
Having finished a comfortable 13th in the League last season, with a plump cushion of 11 points between themselves and the relegation zone, it was time for Brentford to get their second Premier League season underway. The big disappointment for the fans who made their way to Leicester for the Bee’s opener is that the team would have to face their second season without the services of the incredible Christian Eriksen, lured away by Manchester United in the summer window. The loss of his creative guile in midfield will be a huge hole for the Bees to fill this season, but there is a speck of hope for the away fans to cling onto in the return to fitness of game-changing genius Josh DaSilva.
DaSilva had only managed to make intermittent appearances for Brentford in the previous 18 months as he recovered from a hip injury that threatened to force him into early retirement. Thankfully he is now injury-free and how he adjusts to playing regularly at Premier League level will be critical for the Londoner’s hopes of avoiding the dreaded ‘second season syndrome’.
Their hosts for the first game of their second season were a Leicester City team that have struggled in the summer transfer market as they scramble to balance the books. They finished a creditable 8th place last season, but after back-to-back 5th place finishes in previous seasons this was seen as a disappointment. Any hopes of even finishing that high this season may be pie-in-the-sky though as they have been unable to bring in a single player over the summer.
In-fact, whilst Brentford have brought in Ben Mee, Aaron Hickey, Thomas Strakosha and Kane Lewis-Potter (with Mikkel Damsgaard reported to be incoming too) for just the one notable loss in Eriksen, Leicester have made just the one modification to their squad in losing long-time Number. 1 Kasper Schmeichel to Nice for just £1m. This leaves Leicester with Welsh international Danny Ward as their new first choice keeper and a disturbing lack of experienced back-up. The trail of departures could yet grow longer, with James Maddison and Wesley Fofana both being targets for their Premier League competitors, who are circling like vultures over a carcass.
This lack of strategic squad depth could leave Leicester in dire straights in the event of injuries to any of Brendan Rodger’s starting 11. If that does happen Rodgers could do far worse than consulting his opposite number today in how to deal with them. Thomas Frank has injuries to central defensive duo Ethan Pinnock (Knee) and Kristoffer Ajer (Hamstring) to deal with, not to mention Sergi Canos also being side-lined with a hamstring injury. His best bet though may be to fall back upon the incredible team-spirit of the group, it powered many of them to the 2015-16 Premier League title after-all.
Whilst the respective managers grappled with how to make their new squads work I had to work out how to reach the King Power Stadium. I should have just walked with the fans that I met on the train link from Nuneaton to Leicester as there were both away and home fans on it and the home fans would certainly know the way. Instead I decided to trust my reading of the route on Google maps and headed off at 270 degrees from the crowd. This was a mistake and by the time I’d realised it 10 minutes had been added to my journey.
For those looking for the shortest route from station to stadium, you head across the road and then just follow the road all the way to the Leicester Tigers (rugby union) Stadium. From there you cross the stadium to the other corner and then it’s back on the straight roads to the King Power.
I reached the stadium just as the Bee’s players coaches were arriving so I shouted a happy birthday to Bryan Mbuemo before doubling back on myself to explore the concourse around the ground, which is festooned with programme sellers. Other than the statue (above) to their late chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, and the fanstore where I picked up my traditional keyring the only notable thing was a stage set up opposite the statue that was hosting local singers and bands in an attempt to fuel the fans fire for the upcoming match.
A far better way to fuel that fire was found under a gazebo further round the stadium, free beer. Leicester were celebrating the opening game of the season by providing one free beer for every home fan attending the match. This is a great celebration idea and I hope other clubs jump onto it for the first and last matches of future seasons. In case the free beer hadn’t worked though the hosts had one final trick up their sleeves. On this blazing hot midland’s day they decided to employ vertical flame-throwers down either side of the pitch as the teams were announced. Global warming may thank Leicester City for their help but as a fan sitting just a few rows away from the flames I felt that it was already more than hot enough thanks.
Having sorted out my route to the stadium I had a look at the team sheets to see how the managers had sorted their problems. On Rodger’s side of things he had gone with a normal Leicester team that home fans will be extremely familiar with from last season; whilst Thomas Frank went with Jensen, Janelt and Norgaard in midfield and filled the injury gaps in defence by handing debuts to new arrivals Ben Mee and Aaron Hickey.
From kick-off it was Frank who had made the smartest calls in his team selection as the Bees went straight on the attack. Within the first minute they were able to advance on the right flank and flash a shot into the hands of Ward. This was just a deceiving flash in the pan though as Leicester wrested control of possession within a minute of that chance and would not relinquish it for the rest of the half. There first attempt to put their possession to good use, in the 5th minute, came to nothing though as a raking pass through to Vardy in the left channel was rendered moot by a brilliant covering tackle by Ben Mee.
They did manage a shot from 35yards a minute later though, which skimmed the bar on the way behind, but it was some time before Leicester were able to credibly threaten the Bees goal again though. Leicester were able to keep possession in midfield without breaking sweat, as Brentford stubbornly refused to close them down, but were then unable to create an opening in the opposition back line that they could exploit. Brentford were just a few yards slower than their hosts to every first and second ball. The visitors looked like a team that had never met before.
Leicester only failed to take a deserved lead in the first 22 minutes of the match due to some seriously profligate finishing. First Fofana fired harmlessly over the bar from 25 yards, then a Castagne cross from the left picked out Dewsbury-Hall with the freedom of the 18 yard box to fire home but instead the ball was once again sent sailing handsomely high over the bar. This time there was a deflection on the shot though and Leicester had a corner on the left that was whipped straight into the hands of Raya in the 6 yard box.
Tielemans did drop a gorgeous cross onto a sixpence for Maddison to meet it with a free header in the 20th minute though which should have been buried deep in the net. To the audible frustration of the home fans, even with a chance begging so much to be finished off Maddison was unable to oblige as he sent his diving header to strip the paint off the left post on it’s way out for a goal kick.
Despite their abysmal lack of ability to break up Leicester’s monopoly on possession Brentford were able to create a smattering of chances during the first half hour. The most presentable of these chances came from a ball out to Jensen on the left flank that allowed him to turn the Leicester defenders around and run them towards their own goal. Momentum now on the visitors side for once all Jensen needed to do was flick in a cross to the on-rushing Ivan Toney or Bryan Mbuemo in the centre and Brentford could have taken the lead so dramatically against the run of play that it would have been like reversing the flow of the Amazon river by dropping a pebble at it’s mouth. Instead Jensen decided to chop back inside and look to cut the ball back to the non-existent runners from midfield, thus sapping the break of all of it’s momentum.
As the match trundled past the half hour mark it appeared to have fallen into a pattern of Leicester winning the ball, like nicking candy from a baby, in midfield before failing to do anything useful with it in the final third. The hosts only idea on how to break through the red granite wall blocking their way to goal appeared to be to go round it on the wings then delivers crosses in behind it for their attackers to head home. Unfortunately they had forgotten the cardinal rule of defensive walls in football, they can move, and so whenever they tried to deliver a cross into the centre for Vardy to finish off they found him beaten to it by the twin towers of Jansson and Mee.
Preventing goals from crosses is meat and drink for Jansson and Mee. This approach was sucking the entertainment out of the match and failing to provide results, so why Leicester stuck to this plan instead of laying on scything through balls from midfield that would have allowed Vardy to exploit his cheetah like pace, against the relative statuesque pace of Jansson and Mee, to break through the wall and get himself one-on-one with Raya is beyond my comprehension.
Even further beyond my comprehension though is that this plan actually bore fruit in the 34th minute as Leicester took the lead their possession deserved them. Granted the goal came from a corner rather than a cross, but it was still a ball from the wings that was met by a thundering header from Timothy Castagne to give Leicester the lead. The corner was swung into the near post of the 6 yard box where Castagne met it at speed, rising above a statue that resembled a zone marking Ivan Toney, to steer it home past Raya who was rooted to his spot in the centre of the goal.
Taking the lead sent the home fans into raptures as their relief at finally having something to show for the 70% possession they had acquired to this point flowed from their every pore. Going behind also seemed to wake the Brentford players up too as they attacked with speed through Rico Henry on the left wing. The speed of their attack could not be matched by the quality of the finish as Ward was able to palm it behind at his near post for the first of two wasted corners in a row.
This was another flash in the pan to show what the Bee’s were capable of before reverting to type. In the final 5 minutes of the half James Justin was able to leave the ball behind as he surged down the right wing under the close attentions of Aaron Hickey, then recover his feet and make up the ground to recover possession before Hickey had released the ball was unattended and up for grabs. Then Leicester were able to smuggle the ball out of what looked like a hopeless 2-on-1 situation before Tielemans is given the freedom of the King Power to unleash a piledriver from the edge of the box that cannons off the left-hand post.
There was not a single defender within 5 yards of Tielemans when he let that shot fly and this was symptomatic of the abysmal lack of effort and motivation shown by the visitors throughout the first half. If Leicester had been able to formulate a few more openings in the final third or their internal radars had been goalmouth-calibrated the half time scored would have been embarrassing for Brentford, but instead the visitors were able to limp down the tunnel trailing their hosts by just a single goal. The quickest minute of stoppage-time known to man helped too in this regard.
You would not have known anything was missing from either team’s first half performance though from the tumbleweed that flew off the benches at half-time. Both manager’s were happy to let things continue as they were going for the time being and, in line with their team’s first half performances, it was Mr. Frank who would come to regret this approach almost immediately.
It took all of 25 seconds for Leicester to double their lead as they were given freedom to bomb down the left before Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall was picked out in acres of space on the edge of the D. He stroked the ball home past Raya’s despairing leftward dive. Many home fans were still making their way back to their seats as the ball crashed into the net and as such there was merely a murmur of approval in the home stands as their team doubled it’s lead.
For their part Brentford emerged from the tunnel like the sting had been smoked out of them over the half-time break, and it’s not like they’d had much sting in the first half to begin with. It appeared that nothing had been said in the break to change their game plan and put a stop to the defensive negligence that had permeated their play in the first half.
The visitors were once again struggling to impose themselves on play at all and it took just 2 more minutes for the Foxes to create another gilt-edged chance. The visitors Tielemans was given all the time he could have wished for to advance to the edge of the area, but he then reverted to Leicester’s first-half plan by slipping his ball through to Vardy straight into Raya’s hands.
The visitor’s plan of making the worst decision possible when they finally managed to fashion a break upfield continued too as Mbuemo had the home defence backpedalling on the left wing. He had Wissa running free in the box and ready for the tap-in, as Toney wheeled away to the back post, but decided to go for it himself and could only manage to fire his shot into the side-netting. This was the final straw for Mr. Frank as he saw his team struggle to provide anything of note to the match in-front of him, including not managing a single shot on target since the first minute.
His solution was to make a double substitution and a tactical change of formation to boot. He was going nuclear in a desperate attempt to allow his team the chance to show their opposition and the travelling fans that they would not simply be the relegation cannon-fodder they had appeared to be in the first hour of this match. Taking off both the debutant Ben Mee and the most ineffectual of the midfield trio, Mathias Jensen, he bought on another debutant in striker Kane Lewis-Potter and the returning legend that is Josh DaSilva.
Jensen for DaSilva was a straight swap in midfield, albeit one of a more attacking mentality but it was the removal of Mee for Lewis-Potter that was far more revolutionary to the teams formation and revealing about the managers state of mind. Switching a central defender for a forward was a clear sign to everyone in the stadium that Mr. Frank believed the game was not over yet and his team could still get something from it. Brentford’s formation went from a flat back 4 to a 3 at the back, with Janelt dropping in alongside Jansson and Hickey, giving Rico Henry license to move into midfield and rampage forward on his trademark attacking runs. This show of faith in a team that had been abysmal thus far in the match did the trick as, in the 62nd minute, just 4 minutes after this double substitution the Bees had a goal back.
This goal out of nowhere and completely against the run of play came from an incisive pass into the area from Mbuemo down the right. When the ball reached Toney on the edge of the 6 yard box he was able to spin and slice the ball across the body of Danny Ward and into the net, just kissing the inside of the left post on its way in. Given the shock of seeing the visitors get a goal so soon after such a long period in the match where they could barely escape their own half it was surprising just how ballistic the away end around me went. I was too shocked at the turnaround I’d just witnessed to celebrate.
Getting that first goal back flipped the momentum of the match and shoved it firmly into the arms of the visitors. Brentford were now attacking at pace every time they got the ball and they were getting the ball with incredible regularly as they must have read ‘how to close people down’ and ‘how to work as a team’ leaflets during the celebrations. The performance of the visitors after that goal was night and day compared to the dross they had served up in the first hour. Now it was Leicester who were on the ropes and looking like a spent force.
Josh Da Silva was the first to test just how spent the hosts were and he did so with a spectacular defence-splitter that found Lewis-Potter in the right channel. The debutant advanced all the way to the by-line before attempting to cut the ball back to Toney, lurking with intent, on the edge of the six-yard box. Luckily for the home fans though Daniel Amartey was on hand to nip in and hoof the cut-back upfield before Toney could provide the simplest of tap-ins and wipe out Leicester’s original 2 goal advantage entirely.
This scare and the utter dominance that the visitors had now secured over proceeding was finally enough though to force Rogers to dip into his limited reinforcements, in the 73rd minute. He made just the one change at this time, it proved to be his only substitution of the match, and the player he took off was a surprising one to say the least. Dewsbury-Hall, scorer of Leicester’s second goal and the creative midfield powerhouse who underpinned much of their first half display, was the man sacrificed with Patson Daka sent on in his place to help the foxes see out the final 17 minutes.
Mr. Frank also took this opportunity to make a change that he hoped would further cement his team’s iron grip on the match. Shandon Baptiste was sent on to provide the fresh legs in a rampant midfield, in place of Christian Norgaard who had run himself into the ground. The changes seemed to give Leicester momentary impetus as Madison was able to find acres of space in the Bees half to advance to the edge of the box. Here was where he reverted to Leicester type by shanking his shot so badly that it ended up making touchdown in Nottinghamshire, or very close to it at any rate.
Kane Lewis-Potter and Josh DaSilva were determined to make this chance a flash in the pan though and put this into action by harrying Jonny Evans into coughing up the ball high up the pitch. Granted this brilliant display of midfield play only resulted in a corner that went nowhere but it showed the belief that was now surging through the veins of the Brentford players. That incredible self belief helped them come millimetres away from the equaliser in the 77th minute. Rico Henry made the most of his newfound license to attack to force Amartey and James Justin to give him the ball on the left. He flicked the ball across the box where a diving Ivan Toney headed it back where it came from. The ball was travelling with such speed and power that it must’ve stripped the top layer of paint off the left post as it flew agonisingly wide.
As the match snuck into it’s closing 10 DaSilva had a freekick just outside the box that had Bees players lining up on the edge of the box ready to capitalise on the great ball that was expected. The ball was indeed excellent, with just the right level of fade to trick the defenders into misjudging the flight of the ball. Toney was all set to nod it home for the equaliser when Ward showed up to ruin the party and grab it right off his forehead. It was a brilliant piece of keeping from Ward to read the flight of the ball and beat Toney too it, but as an away fan who had sit through 60 minutes of his team being run ragged it was not how I wanted the freekick to end.
The lack of equaliser and the need for further fresh legs to crack open the creaking home defence were perhaps contributing factors in Mr. Frank turning to the bench once more with 7 minutes left to play. This time he decided on two straight swaps, Mads Bech Sorensen and Hali Dervisoglu replacing debutant Aaron Hickey and the tireless Yoane Wissa respectively. Whilst these substitutions undoubtedly added some much needed fresh energy into the Bees attacks it was Josh DaSilva who provided the incredible equaliser with 4 minutes to go.
When Dervisoglu’s searching drive from 30yards out cannoned off the nearest defender the ball ballooned over to the right where DaSilva was waiting for it. Brining the ball under his control he drove forward to the edge of the box before making a 90 degree pivot left and running laterally into space that opened up as Dervisoglu made a smart run into the right channel. DaSilva made brilliant use of the space his teammate’s run had opened up as he curled a worldie into top bins on the left hand side of the goal. There are very few keepers in the game worldwide (either Men’s or Women’s) that would have had a cat-in-hell’s chance of reaching DaSilva’s rocket and thankfully for the away fans Danny Ward was not one of them. Any fire that the home fans had left in them was well and truly doused by DaSilva’s stunning strike.
To watch the ball rest in the back of the net after such a captivating strike was made extra special by knowing the injury struggles that DaSilva has faced over the past 18 months. Needless to say the away end went crazy and I could barely hear myself think, let alone form a cogent thought at this point. The travelling fans knew what Josh DaSilva was capable of, having seen him produce match winning displays so often in the championship, and now to see him being able to show his skills in the Premier League is such an indescribable that I’m not even going to try.
All I will say is “welcome back Josh DaSilva, we missed you”.
With the equaliser now safely stashed away the visitors drove forward in hopes of finding the winner and this left holes at the back for the hosts to exploit. Twice in the final 5 minutes and stoppage time Leicester would see the ball cannon off the post as they went in search of an equaliser, Fofana’s effort even looked in, from my vantage point at the other end of the ground, for a split second before I saw the ball fly out back into the penalty area.
It was Brentford who would manage to smuggle the ball into the net for a third time though, as Mbuemo laid a delicious delivery on a plate for Rico to tap-in at the back post, but unfortunately a quick glance at the linesman on my near touchline turned my joy to ashes in my mouth. Mbuemo had been flagged for offside in the build up to his sumptuous cross, so the visitors would have to settle for just the single point from their opening match of the season.
The fact that the draw left the bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth is a testament to just how gargantuan the turnaround had been in the Bee’s play for the first half hour of the match. Before Mr. Frank’s inspired double substitution Brentford had been playing like a team consigned to relegation by a comfortable margin at the end of the season, but after it they were playing like a team that could credibly threaten the lower European places come May.
I don’t know about any other Brentford fans, but I’ll have more playing like the latter team this season if it’s all the same to you Bees.
As one Leicester fan said to me on the train out of town though, ‘in the last half hour you showed that any team who attacks us can expect to win’. The lack of depth off the bench and Brendan Rodgers complete lack of willingness to use the few options that do exist there should be of highest concern to the home faithful though. Despite clear indications that drastic measures were needed to change the momentum of play in the final half hour the home side made just 1 of their allotted 5 changes, whilst the visitors made use of the full quota.
This lack of flexibility will cause them issues throughout the season if they are unable to find a workable Plan B.
As for Brentford, there has been a lot of talk over the summer about how Eriksen single-handedly saved them from relegation. This is simply not true!!
Certainly there is no denying the dreadful form that Brentford found themselves in over the winter months before his arrival. Nor is it possible to deny just how much better their results became after his arrival or how brilliantly skilled Eriksen is as a footballer. However, Brentford were also dealing with the effect of injuries to both David Raya and Pontus Jansson when Eriksen joined and losing your number one goal-keeper, your main central defender and your captain all at once would test any teams ability to secure positive results.
Furthermore, the Bees had shown earlier in the season that they were capable of getting results against anyone on their day. Not only had they delivered a dominant 2-0 victory over Arsenal on the opening weekend on the season, but they had also come from behind to take a point from the visiting Liverpool team that would come a hair’s breadth away from completing the quadruple at the end of the season. Even without Eriksen they had shown that they had it in them to compete in this league.
So his arrival definitely assisted in pulling Brentford out of the swan-dive towards the relegation zone that they were in as the time, but they had shown their inherent quality earlier in the season and had many other problems that had to be solved to pull them out of their abysmal form.
There is never one cause for anything and those who decide otherwise are reducing the complex world into simple explanations that are easier for most people to understand, but miss out crucial details of the story.
Contingent on being able to work my train travel around yet more rail strikes this blog will return with the tale of Brentford’s first London derby of the season, away at Craven Cottage on the picturesque banks of the Thames. I hope to see you in 2 weeks for that one.
The Football tourist 