Leicester's torrid defensive record will be a big concern for Ruud van Nistelrooy
Foxes have conceded the second-most goals in the Premier League this season
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By ALEX JENNINGS
Published: 12:52 EST, 1 December 2024 | Updated: 12:52 EST, 1 December 2024
Ruud van Nistelrooy visited Leicester's state-of-the-art training ground for the first time on Saturday morning, and had a meeting with caretaker boss Ben Dawson.
The summit was booked in before the Foxes were despatched by Brentford, a match Dawson prepared for without any real input from Van Nistelrooy, with whom he exchanged a few brief messages at most.
So Saturday's catch-up will have been a first chance for Van Nistelrooy to get the lowdown on what's going wrong with Leicester right now. One assumes the meeting isn't still going on - though it could be.
As defender Conor Coady neatly summarised on Saturday: 'We're conceding too many goals and not creating enough chances.'
It is the first half of that equation that will really trouble Van Nistelrooy though. Leicester's goal tally this season (16 in 13 games) is hardly explosive stuff, but it's respectable. It's bigger than Newcastle's.
Their 27 conceded, however, is the second worst record in the league, better only than Wolves'.
Nowhere was their defensive frailty more stark than against Brentford, where Dawson picked a five-man defence, with two out-and-out holding midfielders in front of it, and goalkeeper Mads Hermansen still had his work cut out keeping the score down to 4-1.
So one of the greatest strikers the Premier League has ever seen will live and die by the work he does off the ball, the boring stuff that might make Leicester a tougher team to beat in the coming months. The good news for Foxes fans is that Van Nistelrooy the coach is said to be 'obsessed with defensive structures'. The bad news is that he can only work with the raw materials he has.
'If you look at the squad, there's some exciting players there in all lines of play,' said Van Nistelrooy this weekend. A generous assessment. With a rapid turnaround for his first match against West Ham tomorrow, now the real work begins.
Ruud van Nistelrooy