Tuesday 20 September 2016 20:25, UK
As N’Golo Kante tackles a new role at Chelsea, his old club Leicester seek to move on too. Ahead of the EFL Cup clash between the two teams, live on Sky Sports 1, Adam Bate assesses how, despite Kante being a revelation last season, both clubs are now looking for something different…
Idrissa Gueye's impressive start at Everton has been one of the early stories of the season with his all-action displays in midfield helping to propel the team into second spot. Gueye, a £7.1m signing from Aston Villa, has made 31 tackles already - nine more than anyone else.
It's not a huge surprise. Despite Villa's struggles, he ranked second in the Premier League for tackles and interceptions last season too. Perhaps the bigger surprise is that Leicester eschewed the option of moving quickly to bring Gueye in for the man who topped that list.
Kante was described by Claudio Ranieri as "irreplaceable" when he left for Chelsea in the summer. Intriguingly though, Leicester didn't go with a like-for-like swap. Instead they decided to go down a different route, bringing in Nampalys Mendy from Nice.
Mendy has unremarkable numbers as a tackler. His strength instead is as a metronomic passer. And besides, it's the versatile Daniel Amartey who currently occupies Kante's position. Ranieri has been quick to stress that he is not a direct replacement either.
"There will be a big difference," the Leicester boss admitted ahead of the campaign. "Now everybody must understand that there is no Kante so we have to be more close, more attentive. We have to think different and close space quicker. We must be smarter."
To an extent, Danny Drinkwater has filled the breach. He ranks among the top-five tacklers in the Premier League so far. But what's interesting is that despite Kante playing every minute for Chelsea, he's currently outside the top 10 in a discipline he dominated last year.
It's an indication that while Leicester are moving away from the Kante role in their team, his new employers do not envisage a simple replication of those efforts from last season either. Specifically, Kante is being expected to hold his position far more in a Chelsea shirt.
"I think Kante can give a lot to Chelsea, to enforce a zone which is very important if we want to play with two central midfielders," said Antonio Conte. That zone is in the centre of the pitch. Enforcing it means staying there. So that's what Kante has done.
Fifty-five per cent of Kante's activity has come in this central strip, with more than half of those touches coming in the vicinity of the centre circle. It's closer to the traditional role of the holding midfield player, where the onus is on him to protect and not vacate the space.
This is very different from the role that Kante performed for Leicester in their title-winning campaign. For the Foxes, only 34 per cent of his touches came in these central zones with 19 per cent coming near the centre circle. Instead, he was encouraged to go chasing the ball.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, Ranieri commented on this change of role. "I saw him in one of the last matches and he played in front of the defensive line to recover balls," said the Italian. "With us he [had] another job. That's OK."
It was a common sight for Kante to tackle and press the opposition wingers, hounding them on the left and on the right. Merely staying put was simply not part of the job description. As Ranieri memorably put it: "The referee counted 11, but we were 12."
But on his debut for Chelsea he covered 10.44 kilometres and made 29 sprints. These were both record lows for Kante in a Premier League game in which he played the full 90 minutes. His average sprints per full game are down from 64.0 at Leicester to 48.6 so far at Chelsea.
There's no suggestion that Kante is not performing. He is under instructions. "I explained to him what I expect on the pitch," said Conte. He's doing the job that his manager wants and Chelsea supporters are largely satisfied with his contribution to the team so far.
Of course, those fans have seen such players before. The comparison with Claude Makelele seemed a superficial one upon Kante's arrival, but the role that the new man is being asked to fill is indeed reminiscent of the one his compatriot did so well at Stamford Bridge.
Conte's preference for positional discipline from his players could well mean an end to the days when Kante charged around the field. It also means that he might need to adapt his game. "He needs more time to learn about this position," Makelele himself said this week.
Kante can make a success of it. But it's curious nevertheless that when Leicester play Chelsea on Tuesday night, neither team will be asking him or anyone else to play the specific role performed so expertly by the Premier League champions' players' player of the year.
