Harry Redknapp: Chelsea's N'Golo Kante can't unlock teams and must make bigger impact - starting against Leicester

Summer signing: N'Golo Kante arrived at Stamford Bridge from Saturday's opponents Leicester
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Harry Redknapp13 October 2016

It was a big blow for Leicester to lose N’Golo Kante but I’m not sure how much he has improved Chelsea so far. He was a big fish in a small pond last season but hasn’t made a massive impact since coming to London.

It is very early days at Stamford Bridge and there’s plenty of time for him to improve but you couldn’t say he is a major player for Chelsea at the moment.

Whether he needs time to adjust to a bigger stage, I don’t know, but it was certainly easier for him to sit in front of the back four and break up play at Leicester given how compact they always were.

Chelsea have to be a bit more expansive so that makes the job a bit harder. He came from nowhere really to become a big star at Leicester but has to back it up at one of Europe’s biggest clubs now.

The Blues play his former club on Saturday and it is possible Antonio Conte will continue playing three at the back as he did against Hull before the international break — that change in system may just help Kante.

Chelsea used that shape at Hull and I saw he completed more passes and had more touches of the ball than he had in any of his previous 43 Premier League games.

But it is worth remembering with those stats that he is only a steady passer of the ball.

Most of those passes will have been safe — you don’t look to him to unlock teams. He’s a continuity player who gets it and gives it to someone who can play better than him. There will be times when Conte might want a quarterback who can really play — maybe someone like Cesc Fabregas. He hasn’t been a regular in recent weeks but can pick it up off the back four, thread it between the lines or run it upfield from there. We’ll only find out how good Kante is in that role when they play the better teams, starting this weekend with the champions. Leicester’s title defence was always going to be tough but it has been made harder by having to learn the art of defending all over again following the rule changes in the summer.

The changes — where players face tougher punishments for holding and grappling in the box — have been good for the game. Teams have to defend properly now and so many have had to go back to the drawing board to reassess how they set up.

Leicester got away with a lot last year. Stoke are another team struggling to come to terms with the fact defenders have to go with players’ runs and use their strength rather than shirt-pulling and hauling them to the ground.

Wes Morgan doesn’t seem to know how to defend set-plays this year. It looks as though he now needs hours and hours of work on the training ground learning how to mark properly, the same as a lot of defenders.

It isn’t easy for players in their thirties like Morgan and Robert Huth to change their style so late in their careers but they have to do it.

Defenders could almost murder someone in the box and not give away a foul before. It was too easy to grab an attacker back by the arm or pull them down by their waist as soon as they go to make a run in the box. Hopefully kids in this country will learn how to get their distances and body positions right rather than just standing there and holding someone back. It has to be good in the long term.

Leicester have to adapt but they are still a very dangerous side who can give anyone problems on their day.

They had a self-belief about them last season which made them unbeatable for long periods but it is a lot tougher this year because they are there to be shot at. Teams are showing them a lot more respect and not pouring forward as much, allowing Leicester to hit on the counter-attack.

Their game is based on the counter-attacking pace of Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy so there isn’t too much they can do differently in terms of the way they set up. Chelsea beat Hull but if they are going to be a top-four team — and Kante is to quickly establish himself as a £30million player should — then they can’t lose to Leicester.

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