Extra-Time Talking Points: Amazing Vardy, Söyüncü's Growing Stature & City's Pressing

Extra-Time is an hour-long discussion show broadcast live on LCFC Radio the following Monday after every first team fixture throughout the 2019/20 season.

Speaking to host Dan Bates on this week's episode, Cottee, Elliott and Roberts highlighted their biggest talking points from a brilliant performance at Selhurst Park...

'Amazing' Vardy

Tony Cottee said: “I love watching him. I’ve got nothing but admiration for him because of what he had to go through as a kid in terms of proving people wrong and getting rejected by Sheffield Wednesday and playing Sunday League football before coming back via Fleetwood. Everyone would have been surprised by Leicester signing a non-league player. He gets all sorts of goals. He doesn’t get just two-yard tap-ins like me! He gets volleys and headers and it was another fantastic finish at Crystal Palace on Sunday. He’s been amazing and he’s getting better.”

Momentum builds

Matt Elliott said: “That momentum brings confidence and that’s key. You can see it in their play, can’t you? They don’t get too perturbed if things are not quite going to plan. I still thought they were pretty impressive throughout the game, but it didn’t quite flow like it can for the majority of game. But they weren’t upset by that or put out their stride. They kept doing the right things and it did eventually click into gear after their second goal. They battle away as well. They were solid defensively and it was a good, all-round performance.”

Söyüncü's growing stature 

Iwan Roberts said: “It’s a big part of the game these days if you look at the ways teams like to build out from the back. They’ve got that new rule where defenders can go into their own penalty area and get it off the goalkeeper. It’s the way Brendan wants his players to play and he [Çağlar Söyüncü] is comfortable doing that. He can’t have a better tutor next to him than Jonny Evans. He’s been there, done it, seen it. He’s a young lad and he took his goal ever so well I thought. He’d have seen it really late, but you felt that first goal was going to be really key for Leicester.”

Confidence across the whole squad

Matt Elliott said: “Söyüncü is just so disciplined now. He gets tight, he closes down the players, but he doesn’t get involved in as many rash challenges. You can just see the confidence oozing through them all, whoever it is. Dennis Praet, for instance, he came on as a substitute late on. He’d been on the pitch for about 20 seconds and he pinged a 60-yard diagonal for Ben Chilwell, who was unlucky not to get a third. Whoever comes on, they’re straight into the flow of it and you can just see it. It’s a happy group of players.”

The mechanics of the press

Iwan Roberts said: “There’s a trigger point for the press. When that it, only they will know. They can’t do it for 90 minutes, it’s probably physically impossible. You can’t go in ones and twos, you have to hunt in fives and sixes. It does come either from your centre forward or your attacking midfielders. They’ll give a shout to Jamie Vardy: ‘Off you go, we’re behind you’. The wingers will come infield, so they’ve got a good chance of winning the ball back. They’ll have a trigger point when they know they’re going forward and they do it collectively.”

Cottee's Goal of the Month pick

Tony Cottee said: “The one I went for was James Maddison’s free-kick. In open play, things happen, everyone’s moving and sometimes it all falls into place. When he put the ball down, James Maddison in that game against Southampton, I looked at the commentary team and we all knew what he was going to go. I think even Angus Gunn, the goalkeeper, knew what he was going to do, and yet he still couldn’t stop it. The quality of his free-kicks and his dead-ball deliveries are just fantastic. It is difficult and takes a lot of practise. He made it look easy.”

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