VK All Day: Why there’s still a place for Victor Kristiansen in the Leicester City revolution
Ever since Enzo Maresca named his team at Huddersfield last weekend, the rumour mill has been turning and linking the absentees to moves away from the club.
James Knight thinks one of those names is not like the others. Specifically the one with flowing, golden locks.
Three games into the season and we’ve learned a lot about the Enzo Era.
We suspected all the way back in June that Maresca’s arrival would mean the end for certain players. Pre-season taught us a lot about who those players might be. But it’s the start of the real stuff that has confirmed it beyond - almost - all doubt.
The team that played against Huddersfield - or, more pertinently, who didn’t play against Huddersfield -gave us a clear list of first team players who don’t seem to be part of our future.
Those absentees make for a very well paid list of exiles: Danny Ward, Daniel Iversen, Timothy Castagne, Harry Souttar, Victor Kristiansen, Boubakary Soumare, and Patson Daka.
The general vibe since the weekend has been to treat all these players as halfway out the exit door. But there’s probably more nuance to it than that.
Firstly, the situation isn’t the same for all of these players. Secondly, and crucially, we haven’t seen how Enzo will react to properly chasing a game, or indeed how he would see out a game for a long period of time yet.
For the two goalkeepers, Castagne, and Soumare, the general vibe must be right and it almost certainly is all over. After that, it gets more complicated. Souttar is struggling if he’s behind Jannik Vestergaard in the pecking order, but may have been hurt by Conor Coady’s injury more than most.
Modern managers are obsessed with left-footed central defenders, which is probably one reason why Vestergaard is playing, then you can’t play him and Souttar together as their lack of pace might simply bring the earth to a shuddering halt (though this did briefly happen against Leuven in pre-season, so we should count our lucky stars the planet kept on spinning).
Souttar’s departure is surely contingent on another defender coming in. And it seems possible that he could force his way back in, either instead of Vestergaard or as cover for Wout Faes once Coady returns. Daka seems like a similar case. He often came on in wide areas during pre-season and it would be shocking if he left before any more players came in across the front three.
Which leaves us with Kristiansen.
Full back, full back, nowhere a full back
Now that we’ve seen the inverted full back system in full flow, accepted wisdom seems to be that we’ll never use a conventional one again. That, obviously, would mean there’s no point keeping Kristiansen around (and the same goes for Luke Thomas).
This is probably too simplistic a reading of the situation. To start with, it’s not the case that managers from the Guardiola tree never use conventional full backs. They just prefer to control the ball and the game by flooding the middle of the pitch and that often doesn’t leave space for them in the starting XI.
The second point is that, while we haven’t been leading in the two league games for very long, tactically Maresca hasn’t really had to change things up much in order to win them.
Against Coventry, the changes when behind were purely about switching personnel: Dennis Praet for Wilfred Ndidi, a pretty obvious switch to add more quality on the ball to midfield, then Kelechi Iheanacho for Jamie Vardy, to introduce a striker who could link the play up more for one who tends to play on the last defender. These substitutions basically worked, we created more chances with those players on, and there was no need to do anything different from a tactical point of view.
At Huddersfield, the only changes with the game at 0-0 were Ndidi for Wanya Marcal-Madivadua, probably a reflection of the paucity of attacking options as much as anything, then Vardy for Iheanacho, again a relatively simple straight switch. Once ahead late on in both games, Hamza Choudhury marched on to freshen up the midfield.
What we haven’t seen yet is what the plan is if we’re a goal down for a long time, or further behind, or need to chase the game against a determined opponent. In both cases, we may very well want some full backs to create width. You can easily swap out Doyle for Kristiansen and add much greater attacking threat. Similarly, one option to defend a lead is to drop into a back five, which is quite easy to do if you already have three centre backs on the pitch, but rather relies on having a wing back available.
Arsenal, in particular, do this quite a lot with Kieran Tierney, who often comes on towards the end to add more physical presence along with his attacking ability. Both Arsenal and Manchester City still use overlapping full backs at times too. This can help get the wingers more space – see Kyle Walker’s run that gave Cole Palmer the room to cut inside and score in the Community Shield – or simply create an overload against the defence and get the full back themselves in behind.
As much as these managers have led the drive away from conventional full backs, they understand the benefits to having them in certain situations. Even Liverpool have moved towards the inverted system over the last few months, but there are still times when they unleash Andy Robertson’s full powers down the left. It’s logical to expect that Maresca will also want or need to turn to something similar at some stage this season.
Unleash the Viking warrior
Ricardo Pereira is flexible enough to play the classic full back role as well as the inverted one in this system, as Walker is. Ricardo is basically a unicorn in the Championship though, so it’s not realistic to expect anyone else to be able to do the same thing. James Justin can add attacking thrust as a classic right back, though the manager seems to favour him as one of the centre backs, and can feasibly play on the left as well. But we can’t play a full season with only two full backs, both of whom have a seriously patchy recent injury record.
Which is where Kristiansen comes in. He seems the ideal player to keep around as a quality option from the other side. He’s unlikely to start many games, but he makes a lot of sense as a player to have on the bench who’s flexible enough to play as the left centre back, as a genuine left back, or as a wing back in a back five. With nine substitutes, there’s more than enough to keep him, Justin, and third centre back in reserve.
That is what Maresca did against Huddersfield by naming Thomas on the bench. But the simple fact is that Kristiansen is a far better footballer than Thomas, as well as being more physical, and has a much higher ceiling. Jordan Blackwell suggested that decision may have been an olive branch to Thomas to keep him around. It may also have been that Kristiansen wasn’t actually 100%, despite what Maresca said pre-game, a view backed up by the fact that he specifically reported the Dane as fit this week as well.
We should also consider what would happen in the extremely likely event that some first team players go down injured. Right now, given the team at Burton, it’s possible that Choudhury and Justin between them are cover for Ricardo, Doyle, and Harry Winks, all at the same time. Kristiansen would mitigate some of that and reduce the risk of a truly absurd team turning out as soon as the injuries hit.
For a 46-game season we want as many options as possible and as much cover as possible. Leicester would be unlikely to recoup the £17 million we paid for Kristiansen in January, while as a younger player signed when we were already in relegation trouble his wages – cross your fingers and look meaningfully in Jon Rudkin’s direction – presumably aren’t much of a financial burden. For that reason, there’s no real benefit to loaning him out either.
Of all the exiles, he’s the one who we should keep around. All of the rest feel superfluous in some way or are obviously determined to leave. Even Souttar is, ultimately, one of six centre backs (with Coady, Vestergaard, Doyle, and Faes, plus Ben Nelson) and may well be replaced anyway. Kristiansen is a more or less unique option in the squad.
With all these things in mind, it makes far more sense to keep Kristiansen than it does to sell him. Every decision Maresca has made so far has made sense from a team-building perspective, but getting rid of Victor the Viking would be confusing and run the risk of leaving us woefully short later in the season.
And, to top it all off, he actually wants to be here. Which has to count for something.
