Luke Thomas undergoes swift evolution as he takes opposite path to Premier League peers

Luke Thomas’s Leicester City career has been one of filling in. While he is a true member of the first-team squad, nearly every appearance he has made for his hometown club has been because of injuries to more senior players.

That was the case when he was surprisingly handed his debut as an 19-year-old in the Project Restart matches of summer 2020, and it’s the case now.

City have James Justin, Timothy Castagne, and Ryan Bertrand who can all play left-back, and may all have been ahead of Thomas in the pecking order if they were fit.

But they have had their injury issues, and so Brendan Rodgers keeps turning to the lad from Syston.

However, those opportunities have enabled Thomas to gain valuable experience as a top-flight player, and that experience has seen him undergo a swift evolution. The player he is now is far from the one that first broke into the team.

It’s not just the case that he has improved, it’s more that his style of play has changed completely.

In his first three matches back at the end of the 19-20 season, he created nine chances, three in each outing. While he was playing as a wing-back and so had greater scope to get forward, this was still very impressive for a player who had no prior first-team experience running out in high-pressure matches.

He was filling the void left by the injured Ben Chilwell, and he, a full England international by that point, had only managed to create three chances in a match three times across 27 appearances.

But since then, Thomas has not registered three created chances in a match even once. In fact, he has only reached two created chances on one occasion, then 4-2 home defeat to Newcastle last season.

So while he came onto the scene as an archetypal modern-day full-back,