James Maddison Leicester City
James Maddison has benefitted from his short stint on the bench, Brendan Rodgers believes, as the Leicester City midfielder produced his best performance in months to help earn three points for his team.
Brendan Rodgers said: “I thought he got on quite well, it was much more like him. He was pressing the game, working hard, and then he picked up some great little pockets of space. He was unlucky with a couple of through balls. Overall, he was much better, and he has been. Giving him that break from the team, he came into the Legia Warsaw game, and was good in that game, he was bright in the Palace game when he came on. He’s worked really well over this past couple of weeks. And now he’s setting a standard again of which he has a really high level. I thought he was more like himself.”
It was not just Maddison who looked close to their best, with City as a whole producing their best performance of the season. From front to back, Rodgers was pleased with what he saw.
Brendan Rodgers said: “That’s much more like what we’re used to seeing of the team, being really aggressive, an emotional game, pressing the opponent, being a really difficult team to play against. Once you can press and be that aggressive, that takes the tempo of your attacking game up, and with that we were excellent. We created opportunities, we scored four and could have had some more, and our concentration was at a high level. That was much more pleasing in terms of the performance level. In particular in the second half, I thought we were very good.”
Maddison was left out of the City starting line-up for the four matches before Saturday’s 4-2 victory over Manchester United, in which he gave a display much more like that from before the recurrence of his hip injury. The number 10 is still waiting for his first goal or assist since February, but it seems just around the corner if he can perform as he did against the Red Devils, where he provided an excellent link between the midfield pair of Youri Tielemans and Boubakary Soumare, and strike duo Kelechi Iheanacho and Jamie Vardy.
