Gary Rowett will love Leicester City trend ft £23m star - West Brom, Portsmouth won’t | OneFootball

Leicester City are fighting for their lives at the foot of the Championship, but a recent upswing in the form of one player gives them hope.

Leicester City are fighting for their lives at the foot of the Championship, but while the team's form has been abysmal since the new year, one key player whose form has taken an upswing at a crucial point of the season.

If Leicester City are to avoid a second successive relegation come the end of this season, it's going to be tight. With five games left to play they remain in the bottom three, a point adrift of Portsmouth and having played a game more.

Leicester are in the middle of appealing the six-point deduction that they incurred from the EFL as a result of PSR breaches, and a successful conclusion to that case would likely keep them in the Championship for another year.

But this certainly can't be relied upon, and there is a very real risk that the club who were the champions of England just ten years ago could be playing third-tier football by the start of 2026-27 unless they can start picking up more points from their final five matches of the season.

Manager Gary Rowett hasn't had that much of a positive impact on the team's fortunes since arriving in the middle of March as a replacement for Marti Cifuentes, but his team are still in with a chance of avoiding relegation, and the improved recent form of one of their most valuable players offers the possibility that they could yet pull themselves out of trouble.

Patson Daka's recent upturn in form offers Gary Rowett some hope

Gary Rowett may well have been hoping that his players would start to show the sort of form that could turn their season around at the last, but there have been few signs of them collectively doing so.

One player who has, however, is one of their most valuable. Zambian striker Patson Daka had a very successful Easter weekend. On Good Friday he scored both of their goals as they rescued a point with a 2-2 draw against Preston North End at The King Power Stadium.

And on Easter Monday, while only managing to secure a 1-1 draw from their trip to bottom club Sheffield Wednesday was clearly a very disappointing result, given the gravity of their position and how little time they now have to put things right, Daka chipped in again with the assist for Jordan Ayew's 84th-minute equaliser.

Daka's record since joining Leicester City has been less than stellar

Since first joining Leicester City from RB Salzburg for £23 million in June 2021, Patson Daka has broadly failed to live up to expectations.

His goalscoring record at The King Power Stadium has not been especially good, with 29 goals in 160 appearances for Leicester City, a figure which contrasts sharply with the 68 goals that he managed in 125 for Salzburg.

At the time of his signing, there was a lot to be excited about. Daka had an excellent goalscoring record in Austria, while he was also a seasoned international for Zambia despite still only being 21-years-old, having become their youngest-ever player in making his full international debut for them at just 15 years of age.

It's a symbol of how far Leicester have fallen in the five years since he first signed for them, that he made his full debut for them in the Community Shield against Manchester City, with Leicester having won the FA Cup earlier in 2021.

But things just haven't quite gelled for him in front of goal. He's failed to reach double-figures in one season in the league since he first joined their club, with the seven goals that he managed throughout their 2023-24 Championship promotion team having been his best return so far.

This season has been little better. With the majority of his appearances having come from the bench, he took until the 22nd November to score his first League goal of the season in a 2-1 win against Stoke City, and it took him until the 10th February - two and half months later - to score again, this time in a 4-3 home defeat against Southampton in which they led 3-0 at half-time.

But the Easter weekend did seem to bring something out in him. Having scored Leicester's goal in their impressive 1-1 draw at Ipswich on the first weekend in March, the two goals and an assist that he managed over the weekend have hinted at him hitting a bit of form at just the right time for the Leicester manager Gary Rowett.

The Foxes aren't entirely dependent on Daka for goals. At this late stage in the season, he's only their fourth-highest league goalscorer after Jordan James, Fatawa Issahaku and Jordan Ayew.

But with five games left to play and Leicester City having recorded just one win in the 15 Championship matches that they've played since the 5th January, a return to form for Patson Daka will give Rowett cause for some degree of optimism, as some of the most important games in the recent history of the club start to come into view.