Mads Hermansen joined Leicester in the summer from Brondby. The 23 year old Danish u.21 international has special distribution skills that took the eye of Enzo Maresca, but this has overshadowed what Hermansen lacks in traditional goalkeeping.
Danny Ward and Jakub Stolarczyk are the other goalkeepers at the club, none of them seen at this point as full functional quality PL goalkeepers, and we believe a new search must be on if Leicester returns to the top.
Sadly a great number of points are lost to opponents mainly because the organization from the back is lacking the edge of good leadership and correct use of passes and getting the team more settled when starting up from the back.
To be critical to the Leicester team at the moment, might be unfair, but when you see certain problems, you of course have to work on them and try to repair, but sadly strange distribution and risky passing has just continued and looks never to stop.
A goalkeepers job is first and for most to stop the opponent from scoring goals, distribute the ball either by hands out wide to the left or right back, or use the long ball out and over to the opposite half. The range and power inside the penalty area is far from good enough, also questioning the talk with defenders and organizing the defense on set pieces, corners etc.
Mads Hermansen is 1.87m in height and that should be a good enough size to be able to have that range needed to save more than he does. Leicester were seen in a chase for Anthony Patterson, also 23 years of age, but he is still with Sunderland.
Watching Anthony Patterson against Leicester, he gave a solid impression, but reading stats you will see that he has not the same levels as Mads Hermansen in every line, but if you take the league position of the teams and points collected into the consideration, and use that as a factor, you will get some interesting values.
Being a Leicester fan you are a bit spoiled by fantastic goalkeepers, having Kasper Schmeichel, Mark Wallington, Peter Shilton and Gordon Banks as a base of reference, Mads Hermansen will never reach that level in goalkeeping, sorry but he is not of that calibre.
To cope with life in Premier League, surely Leicester cannot play out from the back the way they do at the moment. Getting away with errors, that will see you punished much harder a level above. If you do not have a goalkeeper who is at his best in shot stopping and organizing his defense, doing the correct and best distribution of the ball, without taking heavy risks that can punish you hard, you are in trouble.
Hermansen is ranked among a group of goalkeepers in the FBref list, and looking at his points from the games so far, you will find his stats relatively good, but not at the top, and with all the domination in play Leicester do have he is not much involved. He is on 6,6 points in the Foxes Talk ratings, being 4th among Leicester players, which is fairly good. But in some way do not feel him being a point saver for Leicester, rather the opposite.
There is a massive gap after Kasper Schmeichel, not yet filled by anyone, and in knowing that, Premier League might be a league too much for Mads Hermansen. Still not convinced he has the quality in traditional shot stopping, penalty area work and organziational skills to be the certain first choice in a tier above.
Before this season, had no clue who Mads Hermansen was. He would not have been on our list of 200 potential goalkeepers in the frame to become the first choice at Leicester.
He will hopefully not end up in a list of all those strange goalkeepers who have been signed, added or had a short life at Leicester, as this list of goalkeepers is an interesting read.
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