Jamie Vardy will be the centre of Brendan Rodgers’ stylistic revolution at Leicester with the new manager insisting we may yet see the best years of the 32-year-old former England centre forward.
Vardy will always have iconic status at Leicester City, given that the club achieved a footballing miracle playing to him on the counter attack. Yet when Claudio Ranieri and Claude Puel tried to evolve to a more possession-based game, it was as though they were violating something sacred, with both fans and players seemingly resistant.
Appointing Rodgers, a disciple of possession football, means Leicester City are surely changing now whether fans and players like it or not. But the new manager, who takes on Watford on Sunday in his first match in charge, insists that Vardy is much more than the one-dimensional counter-attacker some might assume he is.
Jamie Vardy will always have iconic status at Leicester City given his achievements there
‘Possession is no good on its own,’ said Rodgers on Friday, as he spent time outlining what his new Leicester will look like. ‘It’s possession with penetration. And you’ve got one of the best strikers who can press the game at the top end of the field so that’s where it starts.
‘When I was at Liverpool it was Luis Suarez, he started the press so that’s where it begins. Jamie is so natural at it.
‘When I see the team, we need to get players closer to him. The team has come deeper and the gap between him and the rest of the team [wider]: the ball goes up to him and he’s fighting on his own.
‘Because of the title win [in 2016] and everything around the threat of Jamie, the space is no longer there all the time, especially at home. So when teams are banked up you have to find a way and a method that still exploits his qualities.
‘It was something I spoke to him about at length on Friday morning before training, where we could get him into areas and how we were going to play against teams that just sit deep because they don’t want to exploit the spaces.’
Vardy is 32, an age at which centre forwards might be put out to grass or at least sent off to the MLS to see out their years – but Rodgers suggests we may even see the best of the striker in a new style.
‘I hope so, yes. I will certainly give him other ideas and just simplify the game. But you saw the other night what he is, pass, makes
