Gary Rowett doesn’t want to discuss the supposed lack of fight in the squad because he feels their recent poor form rests on their failure to finish their chances
Jordan Blackwell
07:00, 17 Apr 2026
Former Leicester City player Jamie Vardy watches from the stands during the Sky Bet Championship match between Leicester City and Swansea City at The King Power Stadium
Everybody associated with Leicester City would have wished that Jamie Vardy was on the pitch against Swansea, rather than sat watching from the stands. It feels like even an injured Vardy could help City right now.
Filling the void left by their talismanic striker was always likely to be a tough task for City, but they have done a particularly bad job.
They signed a striker on loan last summer in Julian Carranza, but he did not make the grade and failed to score a single goal. He left in January. Despite then bringing in four players in the winter window, City did not sign a replacement forward.
That left them with Jordan Ayew and Patson Daka, two players who had already shown they could not get close to offering what Vardy does.
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The failure to bring in a decent or promising successor to Vardy has been one of the big frustrations of the season. But City had, for a long time, gotten away with it.
That was until Gary Rowett came in. All of a sudden, City’s strike rate has plummeted. While the conversation among supporters and pundits has been one of a lack of fight as City’s results have deteriorated further and left them staring at relegation, the manager has frequently brought up the poor finishing.
Since he took charge of City, they’ve had 155 shots, with only Middlesbrough taking more among Championship sides. And yet City have scored just 10 times in Rowett’s 10 games, putting them 17th for goals scored.
They’ve had 57 shots on target, scoring with 18 per cent of those. Across the games under Marti Cifuentes and Andy King, City netted 38 per cent of their shots on target.
If City had maintained that finishing rate under Rowett, they’d have 12 more goals to their tally, and likely many more points.
“We have to take care of ourselves and take care of our own business,” Rowett said at his press conference on Thursday. “We haven’t managed to do that often enough.
“In the past four games, we’ve had numerous big chances, we’ve had probably three times the number of shots on goal, three times the amount of shots on target than our opposition.
“But we’re not finishing those moments. We haven’t done what we need to do, therefore we’re in a position we don’t want to be in.
“The performances have been good enough to do that (win games), we just haven’t been clinical enough in those moments. Apart from the odd silly goal against us, that’s probably the only thing missing.
“We have to make sure we have all of those elements in the game on Saturday because we’re running out of games. We understand the urgency of the situation.
“It still comes down to doing the right thing in games and it’s still going to be the same question of whether we can finish the chances we’re creating.”
There’s two ways to look at City’s finishing. The first is that they are now being punished for their failure to sign a proper hitman to replace Vardy.
Arguably one of the reasons that City’s shots on target are not finding the net is because it’s frequently midfielders shooting from 20 yards out, and having to do so because there’s not the fox in the box for them to pass to.
The second is that their luck has run dry of late. If City had maintained that 38 per cent shots on target-to-goals ratio, it would be the best in the division. They’ve just been reverting to the norm of late, at the worst time of the season to do so.
But there’s also an optimistic way to look at that. The 18 per cent conversion rate under Rowett would put City comfortably bottom of the Championship over a whole season.
It feels like they are due now some luck in front of goal. That fortune only comes if they create the chances, and they have been doing that under Rowett of late.
It’s perhaps their last hope of survival: that they keep creating the chances but their players channel Vardy’s spirit and start beating the keepers in front of them.
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