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'We knew Chelsea switch off on set pieces' - Maddison reveals Leicester's plan to target ailing Blues
Wilfried Ndidi's opening goal at the King Power Stadium came from a short corner routine which saw the midfielder wide open at the edge of the area
James Maddison says Leicester knew they could exploit Chelsea’s weakness from set pieces after the Foxes went top of the Premier League with a 2-0 win over Frank Lampard’s side.
Leicester’s opening goal came from a short corner routine, with midfielder Wilfried Ndidi eventually found in space to fire home from the edge of the area.
Maddison scored the second goal himself, taking his tally for the season to seven and heaping the pressure on Lampard.
Chelsea are now eighth in the table, with several teams above them still having games in hand.
“We worked on it,” Maddison told Sky Sports of the opening goal. “We looked at Chelsea with little short corners and being creative.
“We [saw] they switch off sometimes from set pieces and we knew that was something we could pick on.
“We haven’t scored enough goals from set pieces. I’m pulling my hair out sometimes as the corner taker! You look at the stats that come up, it says ‘goals scored from set pieces, Leicester City bottom of the table’, so it’s really nice to see one come off. A bit of a relief, actually!”
Maddison was happy to enjoy the moment as Leicester went top of the league ahead of Manchester City’s game with Aston Villa on Wednesday.
"Sounds nice to say we're top of the league - probably for about 24 hours but it's a good one psychologically because we've worked really hard,” he said.
“It's a great achievement for us and I don't think you'll see a better team performance from us this season. It had a bit of everything, bit of tactical nous, I thought we were brilliant today.
“Credit to the manager as well - we switched to a 4-4-2 out of possession at half-time and just little things like that helped and we deserved the three points.
"You don't play for Brendan Rodgers if you don't do dirty work - he always reiterates that it is a running game and you can't have passengers or carry anyone in this league. If we want to stay up there for the rest of the season there might be teams that can spend more money than us but that team spirit will keep building to try and keep us up there."
