- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
For those of us who are ‘unaligned’ when it comes to the EPL – read: our teams are struggling somewhere in the lower reaches of English football’s four tiers – Leicester City have provided a neutral’s buy-in unseen since probably the 1970s.
That was when Derby County became improbable English champions.
A lot has changed since the days when Brian Clough took the Rams to the pinnacle of English football. The fact he repeated the feat with Nottingham Forest had him justifiably labelled a coaching genius.
Under the spotlight of modern standards, his achievements with Forest are amazing. The club were promoted from Division 2 in 1977, having finished third. The following season they won the English title.
The season after that they won the European Cup (that’s the Champions League for those youngsters reading this). The season after that they retained the European Cup. To put that in perspective, this would be the modern equivalent of Norwich City winning this season’s Premier League and going on to win the next two Champions League titles.
Ridiculous, yes? Well, so was the concept of Leicester City sitting atop the Premier League with seven games to play. 5,000 to 1 outsiders at the beginning of the season, having miraculously clung on to a Premier League place last year.
Yet here we are, elbowing each other for room aboard Claudio Ranieri’s bandwagon, as the Foxes this morning recorded another 1-0 victory, at Selhurst Park against Crystal Palace.
To say they are making us bandwagoners work and sweat for this is an understatement – their last four wins have been by a 1-0 scoreline, with a 2-2 draw sandwiched in there against West Bromich Albion four games ago.
In fact, the sheer improbability of what Leicester are currently achieving can be summed up in the last two games where they have dropped points – the West Brom game and the 2-1 loss to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on February 14th.
On the face of it, the draw with a non-descript and totally ordinary West Brom side seemed to be a sign that Leicester were losing their grip at the top. However, by the end of that weekend, they had extended their lead when all three of their closest rivals lost. That ‘stumble you have to have’ had happened, and they’d profited from it.
Sighs of relief were heaved on the bandwagon.
However, what has really defined Leicester City’s recent run was their most recent loss. It was on that day that I thought Leicester could win the title. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, their performance on that day, and their response to the result has been title-like.
They were on top of the Gunners that day until reduced to ten players with more than thirty minutes to play, and it was only an injury-time set-piece from Mesut Ozil, delivered lovingly onto the head of Danny Welbeck, that denied Leicester something from that game.
The red card to Danny Simpson, coupled with injuries to other defenders, meant that Marcin Wasilewski was pitched into the cauldron of the last 33 minutes of that game, and he was found wanting, conceding the free kick which led to the goal. Significantly, he hasn’t been seen since.
Despite the paucity of personnel that day, Arsenal found it difficult to break down the Foxes, who somewhere around Christmas added a layer of steel to a backline that up until then had been somewhat freewheeling in their concession of goals. The side had relied on the mercurial Riyad Mahrez and the redoubtable Jamie Vardy to score goals for fun.
Since the festive season, Leicester have had the best defence in the league. Jose Mourinho is no doubt smiling knowingly.
In Ranieri, Leicester have a manager who by birthright alone would know how to defend in order to win a title. They have almost reinvented themselves since the halfway point of the campaign.
Mahrez and Vardy, while still influential, have not been the fulcrum by which the side performs.
The amazing work-rate of N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater and Marc Albrighton has instead become more recognised as Leicester invite teams to them and then bewilder them on the break. It’s working, but it’s causing anxiety on the bandwagon. Would it be too much to ask, Mister Ranieri, for a few comfortable 3-0 wins?
The over-reliance on Mahrez and Vardy was seen as the Foxes Achilles heel. It has not been so in the last month or more.
Vardy hasn’t scored in five games. Mahrez has two in the last six. Neither have been as statistically dominant and yet Leicester tick over, and every week, more space needs to be found on the bandwagon to accommodate the new believers.
There hasn’t been this much fun at the top of English football since Brian Clough ruled.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.