Rodgers: The Best Team Won

- Brendan Rodgers analyses Leicester City’s 5-2 reverse at Brighton & Hove Albion
- City took the lead and then got back on level terms but were unable to claim anything from their sixth Premier League outing of 2022/23
- Patson Daka and Kelechi Iheanacho scored for the Foxes

City got off to a fine start on the south coast thanks to Kelechi Iheanacho’s strike just 52 seconds in, however a Luke Thomas own goal and Moisés Caicedo’s effort meant Brighton turned the game on its head.

Patson Daka scored a well-taken goal as the Foxes headed into the interval on level terms, however Leandro Trossard restored the Brighton advantage before Alexis Mac Allister converted a penalty and then a free-kick.

“A disappointing result, I think the best team won,” Rodgers reflected. “We got off to a great start, we just made too many mistakes in the game and if you do that against a good team who play collectively well, then it’s a challenge. All and all, disappointing.

“It’s a part of it (individual mistakes) and I think confidence as well. The team’s obviously short on confidence at the moment. We let them back into it too early and then obviously made the mistake for the second goal, so poor goals were given away.

“The players were fighting, they’re running, they’re working, but you can see the confidence is a little bit low and we’ve just got to keep working to try and pick that up again."

Rodgers handed both Iheanacho and Daka starts up front, and while a positive result wasn’t achieved, they were still able to contribute goals to the team.

Rodgers said of City’s formation: “Exactly that – attack the game. We were thinking that they’ll probably play three at the back, so we got two strikers up against it and just had more attacking players on the field.

“That’s an area that we’ve probably been short on in terms of creation of opportunities, and both the boys scored, so that was really good, but I didn’t think we kept the ball well enough. In the Premier League, you have to look after the ball and we gave it up too easy.”

Rodgers says City must continue to put in the hard work with Aston Villa the visitors to King Power Stadium next weekend in the Premier League.

“You can only be honest and say the best team won,” Rodgers added. “We have to keep working hard, we’ve shown in spells that we can look like a good team, but you’ve got to sustain it over 90 minutes and that’s unfortunately not what we’ve been able to do.

“It’s [about] reinforcing the confidence, we’ll go away and analyse the game and look at the mistakes that we’ve made and see if we can put it right. It’s a lot of application, but of course, whenever you’ve lost five out of your last six, then of course your confidence takes a hit as well.

“We’ve got to try and get the players up, we’ve got to stay aggressive and we’ve got to stay strong. It’s the hard yards at the moment, you’ve got to get through that – that’s football.”