Yash Mani

Leicester midfielder James Maddison slams negative headlines from Athletic

James Maddison, Leicester City

It’s no secret to anyone that Leicester City FC have been struggling this season. Being in poor form throughout the season, Brendan Rodgers’ side currently sits 15 on the Premier League table, just 2 points out of the relegation zone.

They’ve scored a total of 0 goals in their last three Premier League fixtures, having lost all of them. With the ageing Jamie Vardy and the departures of the likes of Wesley Fofana and Kasper Schmeichel and no prominent arrivals in the summer window, fans had predicted a tough season for The Foxes, but not many would’ve predicted them to be this bad come the season. 

Having largely reinforced their defence in the winter transfer window with the signings of Harry Souttar, Tete and Victor Kristiansen, the East Midlands-based club had expected a change of fortunes but that has been far from the case.

With 43 goals conceded in 25 games, The Foxes are the team with the third-worst defensive record in the league this season. Between the sticks, Danny Ward has hugely failed to replace the impact of club legend Kasper Schmeichel. Injuries to the likes of Youri Tielemans and Harvey Barnes have been equally detrimental to the club’s form this season. 

Manager Brendan Rodgers has been under speculation of getting sacked throughout the seasons, with the fans demanding the waving of the gaffer goodbye for quite some time now.

Amidst the chaos, Athletic’s reporter Rob Tanner, a famous sports journalist who covers Leicester City on The Athletic’s website, wrote an article which suggests how Leicester are in the danger of getting relegated this season. He put some solid numbers and statistics to back himself in the article. 

This however didn’t go well with Leicester star James Maddison, who called Athletic out for writing headlines that are “rubbish” and “pile up negativity from the fans”.

He suggested that Leicester have been creating chances and that Rob needs to watch the games instead of posting statistics. Maddison also believes they’d win on any other given day if they play the way they did, and create the chances they did. 

The tweet hasn’t gone very well with the fans and critics alike.

The majority of the fans haven’t reacted very positively to the tweet from the Leicester midfielder, with most of them calling Maddison out for Leicester’s extremely poor performance this season and their inability to convert chances.

Rob Tanner received backing from the fans as some tweets read that Maddison will be “just fine” as he’ll be getting a move come the summer.

It’ll be interesting to see if Leicester are able to improve their performances and position on the table within the remainder of the season. Though Maddison isn’t wrong by saying that his side has been producing a good amount of chances, it’s clearly not enough. No matter what Maddison or The Foxes’ camp might think about the quality of football Leicester have been producing, football is a game of taking your chances, something with which they’ve failed massively this season.