Bilal El Khannouss failed to meet Marti Cifuentes’ lofty standards, leading to his substitution at half-time in Leicester City’s loss to Preston.
The midfielder was replaced by Patson Daka at the break as part of a tactical adjustment, with Jordan Ayew shifting back into midfield and the Zambian forward adding more speed up top.
However, El Khannouss’s removal was also due to his lackluster display. The Moroccan offered little inventiveness in a subpar collective performance from City in the opening 45 minutes at Deepdale. For Cifuentes, the 21-year-old fell short of expectations.
“I wasn’t very happy with Bilal’s performance,” City boss Cifuentes said. “With players of this quality, I always expect a lot.
“I was not happy with the whole performance in the first half, about the whole team, so it’s not just about Bilal. But usually I’m more demanding with the best players and Bilal is a fantastic player.”
Asked if he had discussed this with El Khannouss, Cifuentes replied: “He knows very well.”
City showed improvement in the second half, particularly after Jeremy Monga came on, the 16-year-old winger netting his first senior goal to level the score midway through the period.
But as City pressed for a winning goal, they left themselves vulnerable to counter-attacks, a recurring issue throughout the match.
With five minutes remaining, Milutin Osmajic broke away from Jannik Vestergaard and converted Thierry Small’s precise cross.
“It was not a good performance,” Cifuentes said. “From all of the things that we said could happen in terms of how they would play and attack, they did exactly that and we couldn’t control it.
“I’m disappointed about both goals, definitely something that we should have done much better.
“When you start against a team like this at home, who start with energy, play in behind, we knew that would be key. The runs from Osmajic and the no.8 behind, we spoke about how to defend those. Unfortunately, the first goal is poor.
“Then it was not easy to break the low block in the first half, we had to move the ball much faster, they were playing with eight or nine players behind the ball and then it requires either a quick one-v-one or to move the ball much quicker to attack other areas. The ball movement and tempo wasn’t quite good or fast enough to create the one-v-ones.
“At half-time we tried to change a couple of things and then we were slightly better, but the game became a little longer.
“We did, perhaps, the most difficult thing to get the draw and to put pressure on. But after we got the draw, we created situations to take the lead but we conceded from a poor counter that we should have dealt with much better.”