Ndidi Gains Pundits’ Sympathy After Substitute Role Versus Arsenal

Leicester City of England midfielder, Wilfred Onyinyen Ndidi has gained sympathy from a number of English Premier League pundits, who opined that he should have started Sunday’s match against Arsenal, megasportsarena.com reports.

With The Foxes failing to hold their own at Emirates Stadium and eventually crumbled before Ndidi was later introduced by his side’s coach, Brendan Rodgers, the pundits felt it would have been a different story had he been on the pitch earlier.

Leading the battery of comments in that regard is former Crystal Palace star, Clinton Morrison, who also wondered why Rodgers left Ademola Lookman on the bench, hence his early prediction that Leicester would lose the game.

While Lookman was benched all evening long, Ndidi was eventually on for the final 29 minutes, but that was after Leicester had already conceded two goals, and Morrison felt it was because Rodgers got his tactics wrong.

Rodgers’ ploy might have been with an eye on this week’s UEFA Europa Conference League tie against Stade Rennes of France and the gaffer from Northern Ireland opted to rest many of his key players, much to Morrison’s chagrin.

Morrison said on BBC Radio 5 Live: “I knew it would be an Arsenal win with that team sheet. When I saw no Wilfred Ndidi, no Youri Tielemans, no Patson Daka.

“Also no Ademola Lookman, who I think has been good for them recently, I just thought there would not be enough attacking threat to cause Arsenal problems.”

The same view was echoed by BBC’s Leicester City analyst, Matt Piper, who pointed out that Ghanaian international, Thomas Partey was able to score in Arsenal’s 2-0 win on Sunday evening because Ndidi was not on the pitch.

Partey struck only 11 minutes into the match, when he found space to head home from close range and open scoring for the home team, but Piper argued that Ndidi would have covered the area from where Partey headed the ball in.

Piper said on BBC Leicester: “I tell you who was missing there, Wilfred Ndidi. That’s his space. If you defend like that, you will ship plenty of goals.”