Brendan Rodgers found a piece to solve his Leicester City puzzle but rethink may still be needed

The piece Brendan Rodgers selected to complete his Leicester City puzzle just about fit the gap, but he may yet have a rethink ahead of the trip to the Netherlands.

Rodgers admitted he had a dilemma in finding a player to fit the deepest midfield position against PSV Eindhoven with neither the injured Wilfred Ndidi nor ineligible Papy Mendy to choose from, and with none of the remaining players perfect for the role.

In the end, he looked past more defensive-minded players, albeit Boubakary Soumare was injured, and opted to plug the hole with Youri Tielemans. The Belgian dropped back, James Maddison came inside and Marc Albrighton returned to the 11 on the right wing.

It felt like the most attacking way Rodgers could attempt to solve his problem, although there would have been defensive considerations, knowing Albrighton could press higher up the pitch and potentially limit the amount of work the ‘defensive’ midfielder would have to do.

Looking at the scoreline, and the clean sheet City kept, it looks like it was a successful experiment. But look a bit closer and there may be concerns.

Those concerns were not when City were in possession. As might be expected, when on the ball, it worked well. When Tielemans can see more of the pitch in front of him, he can better dictate the flow of City’s play, and when he has more players in front of him, he has more feet to ping passes into. It’s stating the obvious, but the way he distributes the ball forwards into dangerous areas is far better than what Ndidi and Mendy can do.

During City’s best period, when they had PSV pinned back in the first half, was when it was particularly effective, as Tielemans could use his greater cutting edge to slip passes through smaller gaps and