Leicester boss Marti Cifuentes appears to have publicly sacrificed his own Leicester City squad. This justification for a woeful performance came in a post-match interview after the Catalan was humiliatingly beaten by his former club Queens Park Rangers over the weekend.
The Foxes fanbase had been looking ahead with renewed hope before kick-off. The Blue Army were also glancing upward in the EFL Championship standings toward the play-off places, with a victory set to secure a position there, at least temporarily.
Instead, Saturday’s visit to Shepherd’s Bush in West London quickly became one to erase from memory.
What deserves closer examination is what Cifuentes did — or failed to do — as the East Midlands side collapsed at Loftus Road.
Why is the City head coach placing the blame squarely on his players without offering alternatives or accepting any responsibility himself? There is a strong argument that Cifuentes put forward and executed a poorly thought-out matchday approach. Once the game unravelled, he made no meaningful tactical adjustments to address Leicester’s mounting problems on the pitch.
For instance, despite trailing 4-0 at half-time, Cifuentes opted against making any interval substitutions, even with a crumbling defence and an attack completely out of sync. So what did the 43-year-old have to say once the disastrous Foxes outing came to an end?
Marti Cifuentes rightly accuses Leicester City players of not truly competing – but takes no responsibility himself:
To begin with, the Leicester boss conceded that the loss to QPR was ‘emotionally tough to take’. Directing criticism toward his squad, he branded the display “unacceptable”.
“It was just a very bad first half – unacceptable for me, for the players, and unacceptable for our fans that travelled here… In this search for the identity that I’m talking about (having), it’s very important to cope with different scenarios. We definitely need to be better. We need to be more consistent, which isn’t easy in a league like this.” – [PA Media]
Cifuentes called on his players to improve and find greater consistency. Elsewhere, he suggested that the level of ‘competing’ shown by his side fell well short of expectations.
However, the manager stopped short of acknowledging his own shortcomings — whether in motivation, preparation, or adaptability. Nor did he reflect on how his cautious, rigid system proved ineffective and was left unchanged throughout the contest.
“What I can tell you is that we as a club, who we want to be as Leicester, we think we need to do much better in terms of not only the way we play, but the way we compete. ” – [London World]