James Maddison Leicester City
Leicester City’s excellent season so far should be considered in the context of their often-overlooked injury list, James Maddison believes. Maddison was keen to point out that City have had their fair share of injuries too. In fact 14 of their 22 senior outfield players have at some point this season missed a match through injury. James Justin is the latest on the sidelines, and so City had to utilise their seventh different full-back or wing-back pairing in the win over Liverpool. But Maddison believes that because City are not one of the so-called ‘big six’, this fact can go unnoticed.
James Maddison said “It’s brilliant. It’s another three points, three points away from Liverpool. We’re taking it game by game, we know we’ve got the quality. I always say we’ve got so much quality, especially in the forward areas, midfield and we’re solid at the back. We’ve got a lot of injuries as well by the way and it doesn’t always get talked about because we’re not the big six. But we’re utilising the squad brilliantly at the minute and we’re right up there and that’s where we want to be. We’re not up there by fluke. We’ll keep working and keep grinding out results against big teams like Liverpool because we had to today. They had a lot of the ball and we probably weren’t at our best today but it’s about big moments and big players come alive in big moments. We scored some big goals today. To be honest, I don’t know what was going through my head,” Maddison said. “Anthony Taylor looked lost to be honest as well. He’s getting told this and that and it’s a penalty then it’s a free-kick. I thought I’d stuck it in but I think Daniel claimed the touch, he got a little flick on it and it turned out to be offside. But then that was a brilliant moment for us to go and kick-on and really get the momentum in the game.”
City moved up to second in the table on Saturday with a 3-1 victory over reigning champions Liverpool, Maddison scoring the first a quickfire late treble for Brendan Rodgers’ side. With Liverpool losing three Premier League games on the bounce for the first time since 2014, their injury issues came into focus again, particularly at the back, where long-term issues for Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip saw January signing Ozan Kabak make his debut, and then collide with Alisson for City’s second goal.
