Talk of who could be Leicester City’s player of the season would be premature after only seven games, but you would expect goalkeeper Mads Hermansen to be in contention if his start to the campaign is anything to go by.
Like many of his team-mates, the 24-year-old has stepped up to the Premier League after a superb first season in the Championship following his £6million ($7.9m) from Brondby. His displays last season as Leicester secured the title and an instant return to the top flight earned him a spot in the Championship team of the year.
He was integral to Enzo Maresca’s style of play, a ball-playing goalkeeper who could come out and act as an 11th outfield player, creating overloads against sides that went man to man. Maresca described Hermansen as the most important signing he made in the summer of 2023.
As his distribution map from last season shows, from goal kicks and open play, many of his passes were into Leicester’s own third of the pitch because he was a key figure in starting attacks.
Hermansen chose to play short from goal kicks, with a quarter of them taken and received around the six-yard box and 67 per cent short from goal kicks. From open play, his short-pass ratio rose to 80 per cent.
It is noticeable how much he looked to move the ball to the left, rather than the right, where right-back Ricardo Pereira would vacate the flank to step into midfield.
His average position in the home game against Watford (see below) last season demonstrated his role. He was outside the penalty area with a high proportion of passes and interaction with defenders Jannik Vestergaard and Wout Faes.
The departure of Maresca and the arrival of Steve Cooper has brought a significant change, with Cooper not wanting his keeper to take so many risks.
The share of short passes from goal kicks has reduced to 32 per cent, and the darker squares show how many more goal kicks are going over the halfway line. There is also a notable reduction in open play.
The change may not just be down to Cooper’s philosophy. Maresca’s Leicester were the dominant possession side in the Championship, just behind Southampton, regularly enjoying over 65 per cent possession last season so there was more opportunity for Hermansen to be involved in the game with the ball.
In the Premier League, Leicester are averaging just 41.8 per cent possession and while Hermansen faced 154 shots on target last season, making 113 saves, this season, he has already faced 135 shots, the highest in the division, with 45 on target. Only Brentford’s Mark Flekken has faced more shots on target in the first seven games (46) but Hermansen has made the same number of saves (33), with 27 of those saves coming from efforts inside the penalty area.
Leicester’s figure for post-shot expected goals (PSxG) — which measures how reasonably expected a goalkeeper is to save a shot — of 15.4, meaning Hermansen would be expected to have conceded over 15 goals, but he has conceded just 12. That is the highest difference between PSxG and actual goals conceded in the Premier League.
Similarly, he is averaging 31 passes per game, only four keepers are averaging fewer — David Raya of Arsenal, Nick Pope of Newcastle, Dean Henderson of Crystal Palace and Matz Sels of Nottingham Forest — while 20 passes are accurate on average.
His role may have become more conventional and he has been showing he can be just as effective with his hands as with the ball at his feet.
He made 13 saves in one game alone, the 4-2 defeat at Arsenal (see below) — one less than the Premier League record set by David de Gea. It was a performance Cooper felt passed below the radar.
“To get a result here, your goalkeeper needs to play well,” Cooper said after the game at the Emirates. “It’s a real pity his performance and JJ’s goal (James Justin’s spectacular volley) is not probably getting talked about, although I shouldn’t take anything away from them.
“If we got the result we nearly got, then you know they would be real headlines, wouldn’t they?”
Hermansen is getting recognition from the Leicester fans, who have accepted him as the successor to former favourite Kasper Schmeichel, a role he hopes to inherit on the international stage.
Hermansen, who has played for Denmark at every age group from under-16s, has been on the bench for the senior side on 21 occasions but has yet to earn his first cap. His displays for Leicester, however, have led to calls from some journalists in Denmark for the succession plan to start now so Hermansen can be ready for the next World Cup in 2026, when Schmeichel will be about to turn 40.
Leicester have returned to the model of selling one key asset every summer to help refresh the squad without the financial issues the 2021 summer window caused (when an asset was not sold), and it is expected Hermansen will attract attention from suitors.
In the meantime, he has a crucial role to play for Leicester as they bid to retain their Premier League status — and he has made a superb start in a new style.
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
