.. if Villa hadn't had that bit of luck then we would have come away with a 1-0 win so I won't be being critical of the substitutions .. we had enough quality on the pitch to have won it ..Drinky's through ball to Vards after they had scored was overly heavy but we might still have scored... Arsenal would have hoped for 3 ponts at Stoke..that they didn't has more to do with the players than Wenger ..
It's not just Ranieri who makes the decisions about substitutions. Craig Shakespeare is also party, although the buck stops (rightly) with Ranieri. I think they had had one eye on Wednesday's match with Spurs, as they will be keen to try and win that, especially as there is what should be an easier opponent awaiting. Okazaki was already limping badly after an incident, so I think that's why he was replaced. At that point we were leading and reasonably comfortable. The only threat was coming from down our right with crosses to their big striker. Ranieri would also have been mindful of the fact that Gestede would likely be coming on and his threat is in the air and not on the floor, so De Laet would have been tasked with stopping the supply to him. Yes, we sacrificed an out and out striker but that was most likely out of trying to protect him for Wednesday. We have played Mahrez successfully behind Vardy before and it has worked. This time it didn't. How many times have we raved about how effective Mahrez can be, especially feeding good passes into Vardy from a more central position? Up until that point the midfield hadn't really provided Vardy with much in the way of quality passes. Just because it didn't happen for Mahrez this time, does that mean it will never work in future and we shouldn't try it again? He had a poor game and that's all. It wasn't necessarily a defensive move by Ranieri, just a change of formation that had worked in the past.
