Bade Aluko’s red card is a blemish on the Leicester City squad and staff collectively, with Marti Cifuentes acknowledging the teenage full-back needed a “better platform” to showcase himself on his first full start at Southampton.
Aluko looked devastated after he was sent off just half an hour into City’s 3-0 loss at St Mary’s on Tuesday night.
But he wasn’t aided by the team’s display. Both of Aluko’s cautions arrived as City failed to cope with Southampton’s rapid transitions, with Abdul Fatawu surrendering possession for the first incident.
“He is a young lad with a lot of desire to do well for the club,” manager Marti Cifuentes said on Aluko’s red card.
“It’s disappointing, not only for him, but for all of us including for me as a manager that he gets this tough full debut.
“We’ll try to be there for him, we’re going to try to pick him up, so he’s ready for the next one, because I’m sure he’s going to be an important player for the future of the club.
“I spoke briefly with him. Life is about ups and downs. Life is about not only the nice part about getting the full debut but sometimes it doesn’t go our way and we need to learn from it, to keep pushing.
“We need to fight against adversity because things will never go your way all of the time.
“And we have to do better, all the 11, all the staff, to try to give him a better platform.”
City were already two goals behind when Aluko was dismissed, with Taylor Harwood-Bellis nodding in a set-piece for the opener and Finn Azaz completing a counterattack for the second.
Harwood-Bellis struck again before the interval and City appeared content simply to prevent the scoreline from becoming even more humiliating. They barely threatened in the second half and didn’t register an attempt after the 19th minute.
Cifuentes said: “It’s a disappointing performance and result. It was a good opportunity to continue our momentum and get into the play-off spots. But I would say almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
“We started pretty well and the first goal is offside, but after that we didn’t react well enough.
“It’s difficult when you are 3-0 down and with 10 men. We spoke in the half-time about showing some pride, about making sure that this was not even worse, so to say.
“We have to show some respect to the fans that travelled on a Tuesday night, such a long trip, although I think the damage was already done.”