The opponent’s pass is sloppy and the veteran blue-shirted number nine is onto it in a flash. In his long career he’s been in this position so many times before and he knows what he needs to do. It’s early in the game. Leicester are already behind and need to hit back as soon as possible. There’s expectation in the stands from the away fans. The defender tries to stand him up and block his options but with a slight shift of his body the number nine gets the shot away. It flashes past the goalkeeper and Leicester are level. He turns to face his celebrating team-mates.
Behind the goal at the other end of the pitch, the Leicester fans erupt. Because the date is 10th February 2018, we’re at the Etihad Stadium and Jamie Vardy has just equalised against Manchester City.
This was a common scene when our number nine would score seven years ago anyway. This weekend, a similar goal was greeted at the other end of the stadium by silence from rows of parked cars. There are all sorts of ways to illustrate Leicester City’s changing reality and this is just one of them. From Otamendi, Laporte and Ederson at the Etihad to Brannagan, Davies and Cumming at the Kassam. Regardless of the setting, the situation and the opponents, the ball was in the back of the net and Leicester’s number nine was celebrating.
For years the nature of the successor to that number nine shirt was something Leicester City fans didn’t want to talk about. It was almost taboo as we wanted to enjoy our greatest player of all time in his time. We couldn’t have predicted that there would be so many issues to talk about that replacing Vardy when the time eventually came would be something of a sideshow.
But despite the number of talking points, finding the right number nine is still a big deal. After cycling through the likes of Kelechi Iheanacho, Patson Daka and Tom Cannon as potential successors, the idea that Jordan Ayew – previously a Crystal Palace utility player and himself approaching his mid-30s – would end up succeeding Vardy as Leicester’s nine is quite surreal.
As with many positions in the team there is a sense that it’s a solution we have ended up with rather than actively sought out. This squad is less a recipe and more the leftovers. And yet as Leicester fans value players who give their all and fight for the shirt more than ever, Ayew has assumed an interesting position because supporters are responding to wholehearted effort and commitment.
You can level many things at Ayew but his effort is admirable and his name is sung. His response to the first equaliser at Oxford showed a little more of why, cajoling his team-mates to start looking livelier. If Aaron Ramsey hadn’t put quite so much effort into his reaction to that instruction, we might have seen Julian Carranza’s first attempt to stake his own claim for the centre forward role. In ideal circumstances Leicester with a retained 11 players on the pitch at Oxford and given Carranza the opportunity to ease his new surroundings but instead it was Patson Daka who again failed to impress in his cameo.
The question is whether Ayew is part of the problem or part of the solution because his presence doesn’t seem to be contributing to Leicester functioning effectively in attack. We are yet to see a good performance without the aid of an opposition red card or substantial changes made by Marti Cifuentes midway through the match. In theory, Ayew’s qualities should dovetail well with the threat of Stephy Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu running in behind but it hasn’t all come together yet. Would Carranza be more capable of stretching centre-backs while also holding up the ball when needed?
For now, Ayew is clearly a beneficiary of Leicester‘s need for leadership with senior players such as Wout Faes and Harry Winks sidelined from starting lineups and the club and team in a state of flux. Like Jannik Vestergaard, Ayew has become an easy leader when the bolder, future-thinking selection might be Ben Nelson at the back or, at Oxford, throwing Carranza in to try to shake Leicester from their slumber.
It could be argued that the problems do lie elsewhere in the team and once those are resolved, Ayew will prosper. Many supporters were happy to lose Mads Hermansen because Jakub Stolarczyk felt like an able Championship deputy after a run of competent Premier League performances. But at Oxford just as at Preston, Stolarczyk was largely responsible for the concession of the opening goal.
Or for Oxford’s first goal on Saturday you could blame the defence – slow to react, they failed to convey reassuring solidity for the whole 90 minutes and the build-up from the back was shaky until the interval. You could look at Caleb Okoli‘s passing ability, Hamza Choudhury’s limited ability to support Abdul Fatawu in attack or the continuing struggles of Boubakary Soumare and Oliver Skipp as a confident combination in midfield. Even the three behind the striker where it was thought Leicester would be strongest this season have not been consistent, so far relying on Fatawu’s bursts of brilliance.
We could go anywhere within the team in search of improvement but this weekend the number nine feels most pertinent because its previous owner has finally played for someone other than Leicester City. It happened last night in Verona, the sprawling Bentegodi quite a different venue from the previous time Jamie Vardy wore the shirt of a club other than Leicester. It was 28th April 2012 when he made his last appearance for Fleetwood Town in a 2-0 home defeat to Luton.
It’s a well worn cliché that nobody could have foreseen Vardy’s career trajectory upon leaving Fleetwood but nobody could have predicted his subsequent destination. For someone who has been a huge part of our lives for over a decade, it felt like a low-key next chapter with a handful of us subscribing to coverage, many more struggling to find a stream and the majority largely oblivious.
There was plenty of talk in the summer of Vardy picking a retirement league and winding down. Somewhere like the MLS or Saudi Arabia. Instead pitching up at a town in Italy roughly the size of Corby and then coming on as a late substitute in an attritional 0-0 draw away from home didn’t give the same vibes but, as he said in his pre-match interview, Vardy has always relished a challenge.
Vardy’s performance is still relevant as he will inevitably remain a reference point for Leicester fans. If he does well and Leicester fall from their current position, the contrast will be noted. He had five touches in his half-hour or so last night, something we became accustomed to in his time in blue. We were reliant on his ability to retain sharpness and convert with regularity.
So far, Ayew has been feeding off scraps in a similar fashion. He has only had 5 shots from inside the box in 449 minutes of football this season, albeit spending a portion of those minutes dropping deeper in the latter stages of games when Daka has been introduced. Two of those five shots came in the first half at Oxford, the well-taken goal and a sharp near post effort which drew a smart save. Another at Preston hit the post from a tight angle. The others weren’t even half chances, while he has resorted to potshots more frequently, shooting from outside the area nine times.
To compare with the current Championship benchmark for attacking, Coventry’s Haji Wright has had 19 shots in 371 minutes with 18 of those coming from inside the penalty area. He has scored 5 times and will be a major threat on Saturday.
The season so far feels like it has been building up to this Saturday and the performance against Coventry will be a benchmark as a whole. For a team encouraged by its new manager to be proactive, Leicester have been strangely reactive so far. The narrative may be more about a reset than it was two years ago under Enzo Maresca but Leicester’s wage bill remains stratospheric compared to the teams we have struggled to match so far in terms of performance. Cifuentes preaches patience.
The introduction of Ricardo Pereira and Harry Winks on Saturday shows what this team are capable of and patience will only last so long if Leicester fans feel the wrong players continue to start the game.
Ayew isn’t in the sights as much as others yet, but hopefully the addition of Carranza and the need for Leicester to sharpen up across the pitch means he will have to fight for his place as much as anyone.