The Leicester City Fairy Tale is Getting a Depressing Sequel… But That’s Okay
Godfather III, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Anchorman 2, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Leicester City 2016-17. You already know what all of these have in common.
The title season was a miracle and a masterpiece, a timeless work of art created out of what was beginning to feel like the new footballing dark ages, where money was the only avenue to success, meaning the same few teams were going to win everything, every year. Then Leicester City won the Premier League and we all got to dream again. Fast forward to current times and only nine months later they’re a team in crisis sliding fearfully towards the cavernous pit of relegation.
Nah, okay. First of all, relegation is hardly the end of the world. The Championship is notoriously tough to get out of but Newcastle look to be doing a decent job of it at the moment. Plus it’s a nice consolation for fans of teams that tend to struggle in the bottom half of the Premier League to have a season where they get to watch their team win most weeks for a change. You do everything you can to avoid it, obviously, but if you do get the drop it’s not like your club is disbanded and all the players shot against a wall. Football continues as always.
And in a way wouldn’t relegation be the most poetic ending to the three year narrative? They avoided relegation with a miracle, they won the league with a miracle… then they went down in circumstances, as defending champs, that are almost as unprecedented as the other two years. Don’t ever doubt this team doing the unexpected… whatever that might be.
The one way they can spoil the fairy tale is if they sack Claudio Ranieri. Relegation cannot take away what he has achieved with this club and if things are fair and true, he should have a job for life. Problem is the players don’t seem to feel that way. There are rumblings that some blokes are upset with things there, Leonardo Ulloa has spoken pretty boldly about that (though his issues were more about his wanting a transfer and not getting one). Kasper Schmeichel hardly doused the flames when he dodged a chance to back his manager in a post-match chat recently. He’s not the only one.
Frankly the club looks lost right now. Remember the images from Jamie Vardy’s house as the team celebrated winning the title? That was a team whose hearts beat as one. They ate pizza after clean sheets as one. It was a completely unified squad all fighting for the same goal, overcoming perhaps a lack of talent with a team morale and focus that defied convention. That’s not who they are now by a long shot. You watch them play now and the moment they concede their heads drop. They’re the second-worst team in the league when playing away from home, without a win in 13 games scoring just eight times in those. Nothing is coherent. Nothing is anything but confused, anxious and fearful.
The team that won the league is all still there except for N’Golo Kante. That was a defined starting XI and we all knew exactly how they played. It was Schmeichel in goal, Morgan and Huth at centre-back, Simpson on the right and Fuchs on the left. Drinkwater and Kante played in midfield with Mahrez and Albrighton outside them, Okazaki played second striker to Vardy. One of the many things that broke right for them (outta roughly 1000 things that broke right for them) was that none of those guys, once they settled on the preferred XI, were ever injured or suspended long enough to miss much time. This season they still aren’t dealing with injuries but their depth is being tested instead by the terrible form of some of these folks.
Ranieri has thus reverted back to the Tinkerman strategy with constant changes in the team leaving everyone in a bit of flux. But he’s had to because they’ve all been so damned poor. Nobody is matching last season’s standards. The only two players that can really hold their heads up and say they’re close to that are Danny Drinkwater and Kasper Schmeichel. Well, N’Golo Kante too, he’s been every bit as good… except now he plays for Chelsea. And also is gonna win the league in consecutive years with different clubs, how about that?
So… Kante was the reason they won? They couldn’t have done it without him, that’s for sure, but he wasn’t alone in it all. Jamie Vardy was the PFA Player of the Year as he scored 24 goals, including that record run of 11 straight games hitting the inside of the net. 24 goals and six assists in 3140 minutes. This time he’s scored only five with two assists in 1704 minutes. More than half the time and less than a third of the contribution. He’s shooting way less, he’s also tackling way less. He’s probably running way less as well, all of the things that made him so effective… he’s no longer doing.
And his Premier League Player of the Year buddy is doing no better as Riyad Mahrez drags his heels around the King Power Stadium. 17 goals and 11 assists in 3058 minutes against three goals and two assists in 1784 minutes. His shooting stats are pretty similar but his attempted dribbles are way down – he used to be fearless running at defenders and tying them in knots. These days watch him and he’s the first to drop his head when something goes wrong. A team that grounded out results like genuine champions last season now crumble at the hint of adversity.
Those two have been terrible and Ranieri is right to come under pressure for persisting with them (although the same people would call him disloyal if he’d cut them out earlier). But at least they have options in those positions. Islam Slimani has shown a strong presence as a target man and the young dude Demarai Gray deserves more of a run on the wing. Ahmed Musa hasn’t lived up to expectations yet but there’s serious talent there and it’s a travesty that Shinji Okazaki is always the first guy dropped. In the middle there’s an N’Golo Kante sized hole, though Wilfried Ndidi gives them something knew and Andy King is still a solid player.
A less solvable issue is the one at the back. There were four players who played every minute for their teams in 2015-16: Andrew Surman and Toby Alderweireld were two of them. The other two were Kasper Schmeichel and Wes Morgan. Schmeichs is still playing well but Morgan has been bad. Robert Huth also played 35 out of 38 games. Morgan is 33 now, Huth is 32. Neither of them was ever very quick but now they look like they’re running on treadmills. They’re shot, really. That title season must have taken it out of them and it’s not too likely they ever get that back at their ages. Failing to address that worry in the transfer window could be the error that dooms the Foxes.
Plus, remember the Copa Americana where Jamaica played and Morgan was given time off because he hadn’t recovered from his title celebrations yet? He maybe still hasn’t recovered to look at him. There’s nothing wrong with that, you’ve gotta live it up in those once-in-a-lifetime moments. It’s in expecting him to repeat the dose that the silliness lies and Leicester really don’t have anyone else.
Also there’s the matter of strategy, with the long ball and pace approach taken away from them. They don’t have the talent to build up their possessions and with teams sitting deeper they’re lacking the incision to break through anyway. In a very real sense it’s like everyone turned up hungover, only this isn’t Sunday League football we’re talking about.
Then again, isn’t that Sunday League feel one of the great things about this Leicester side? They’re flawed and they’re honest. Jamie Vardy used to play non-league and all that. We look at these hugely compensated footy players up against even more hugely compensated footy players and see ourselves going up against that team down the road where one guy used to play national league and the wingers were on the bench for the top team the week before and the captain might have once played internationally and the centre back is the brother of that professional fella. We can’t compete with that kind of pedigree… except… Leicester City did, didn’t they?
Maybe they figure a way out of this mess and maybe they don’t. Five straight losses without a goal since New Year’s Day suggests it’s less than likely but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what they did last season and if they sack Claudio Ranieri then they taint a tale that stands for so much more than one bad season could ever tarnish.
Like the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, where Atticus Finch suddenly became racist.