View: Aston Villa must exploit wide-open Leicester to compile misery
Steven Gerrard will not get a better chance to kickstart his reign at Aston Villa than a game at home to the Premier League’s bottom club.
Gerrard’s former boss Brendan Rodgers brings his woefully out-of-form Leicester City to Villa Park on Saturday afternoon looking to put a five-game losing streak behind them and start their own climb up the league table.
Villa’s form is hardly extraordinary with one win and one draw in the previous five games but taking a point off the reigning champions Manchester City was a great start to the turnaround.
They will be favourites to beat Leicester too after they were blown away by Brighton last weekend and there are obvious ways that Aston Villa can punish their Midlands opponents.
Brighton’s equaliser early in the game was a perfect example of what Gerrard had to tell Matty Cash and Lucas Digne to do as much as they possibly can.
The Foxes tend to defend narrow and that leads to acres of space for the marauding full-backs and here you can see just how much is left for the Seagulls’ flier.
The full-backs are a serious weakness for Leicester and it was proved again in the second half at The Amex as Leandro Trossard simply walked behind James Justin and was able to take an unchallenged shot at goal to put Graham Potter’s side ahead.
The incredibly narrow Leicester setup also means they can be easy to defend against when it’s done right because they have little threat out wide.
Brighton were able to hunt in packs and deny Youri Tielemans the space to create from deep and it led to their second goal, eventually scored by Moises Caicedo from midfield.
In other Aston Villa news, Richard Keys has been waxing lyrical about Villa defender Tyrone Mings as he proves his critics wrong time and time again.