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Meet the new era, kind of the same as the old era. Brussball’s debut gave us some things we didn’t expect – a goal from a set piece – and some things we definitely did. Hello, 80% possession, three shots on target, and a whole bunch of slapstick defensive errors, our old friend. Make no mistake about it, this was a strange encounter. A game from the great unknown, where the worlds of the pre-season and the real season come together as one. The fact this took place at 3pm on a Saturday and was shown live on television perhaps says it all. It ultimately got the performance it deserved. A largely poor, confusing display, the game won with a bizarre header where the opposition goalkeeper slumped to the ground instead of making a comfortable save. Maybe we should all collectively ignore this game and pretend it never happened. It would, however, be rather a short report if we did that. Instead, here are a couple of thoughts from the team at TFW Towers. Catastrophic Organ Failure Like a lot of Leicester fans, I wasn’t thrilled with the appointment of Russell Martin. But like a lot of Leicester fans, I’ve been impressed with two or three things he’s said in press conferences and interviews since taking charge. So I’m firmly in the quite large “Let’s give him a chance” camp. My concern all along has not really been to do with this season. My concern is that the hierarchy at the club are still obsessed with a style of play that requires the best players in the division every single season. And we’re not very good at signing players, hence the ragtag bunch of lazily-acquired misfits that made up a large proportion of this starting eleven. You might look at this as a glorified final pre-season friendly rather than a competitive game in what is a largely pointless competition for Leicester City this season. But it still managed to be both a grim watch as a standalone experience and a perturbing glimpse of what the Russell Martin era will look like if we can’t do a lot more business in the transfer window. What have we done to still be cursed with Caleb Okoli being instructed to play out from the back? Or reduced to watching “Bobby” up front on his own? If I thought a little piece of me died every time I watched Patson Daka or Jordan Ayew playing as a lone striker last season, it was more like catastrophic organ failure watching Bobby De Cordova-Reid do it. But that can be remedied with a competent striker or two arriving in the next few weeks. It’s harder to magic up a couple of central defenders capable of playing the kind of football Martin wants. We might be stuck with Okoli, Harry Souttar and Wout Faes trying to make it work. It took just 37 seconds for Leicester to gift an open goal to an opposition striker this season after Souttar’s woeful attempted square pass to Okoli. For the second time this summer, Northampton striker Harvey Saunders missed an open goal. In pre-season he blazed over. Here, he took a terrible touch and a terrible shot instead of just passing the ball into an empty net. But even League One strikers won’t be so forgiving. There’s no need to go overboard but Leicester certainly need to sharpen up if this is going to be the cakewalk many people are expecting. David Bevan Out, vile Jelly This game highlighted the two basic problems with the squad as it stands. One is the lack of a striker, as David has touched on. The lack of anything resembling strikery behaviour – runs in behind, physical presence, the occasional shot – renders whatever tactical approach you try pointless. A lot of words have been typed and screamed into the void about the style of play, but even if Leicester reanimated the corpse of Charles Reep to hammer high balls at the opposition defence every week, that wouldn’t be any more successful. You can’t go direct to no one any more than you can rely on no one to finish off your ponderous 40-pass moves. I had assumed Liam Cullen was signed to play up front, or at least in the front three. Instead he started in midfield here, which means Leicester surely still need to find two strikers from somewhere. It seems implausible that Martin would actively choose De Cordova-Reid to ‘lead’ the line if he signed Cullen with the intention of playing him there instead. The other, related problem is a pretty obvious lack of motivation from some players. De Cordova-Reid – even typing his name out so often is annoying – is an old winger playing out of position, it’s not his fault that he can’t do the job. Stephy Mavididi has no such excuse. He should be able to ease the goalscoring burden. He should be able to consistently threaten a League Two full back and drive his team forward. Instead, he was sloppy and disinterested and thus Leicester collectively had two touches in the box to show for 80% possession in the first half. When Mavididi finally did get in behind Northampton, the defender strolled back and tackled him. And he was not the only culprit. Souttar’s absurd mistake inside the first minute reeked of complacency; only Jakub Stolarczyk’s quick reactions prevented a calamity then, and on numerous other occasions when he was forced to rush out of his box to deal with some backline shenanigans in possession. A number of players in this team were signed to be Premier League players, or were considered good enough to play for Leicester in the Premier League: four of the back five, plus Skipp, Mavididi, and De Cordova-Reid. When they look bang average against League Two opposition, it’s not a technical problem. The only real way to solve this is to get rid of all of them. Flog them to any unsuspecting mug who even thinks about it for a second, although quite who is going to do that for Mavididi based on the last year or so of his career is a separate question. Because they all feel like they’re killing the vibe, ruining everyone else’s night by sitting and pouting and whining in the corner. Players like Sammy Braybrooke and Jayden Joseph were sloppy at times in this game but at least you don’t feel the same sense of clawing despair at the sight of them. Tommy Watson looked genuinely exciting when he replaced Mavididi. There was a moment where Cullen whipped in a ball from deep for Will Alves at the back post, and it was like watching a real football team at the start of the season. One with hopes and dreams, unburdened by the ghosts of the past. There’s always next week. James Knight