da brdice： It feels like I have spent the last few months waiting for Leicester to flop, for the bubble to burst and for Claudio Ranieri’s unlikely run at the top of the table to come to an abrupt end.
da realbet： In my defence, everyone else has been waiting for that, too. Not in a malicious way – apart from fans of other title contenders, everyone is rooting for Leicester. Even fans of the other title contenders are rooting for Leicester, too, in some cases. Whether that is out of niceness, out of romanticism or even just out of the fact that it hasn’t quite sunk in that Leicester could be challenging for the title, no one, it seems, wants Leicester to fail. But that doesn’t mean we don’t expect it.
It’s just that it never comes.
When they played Chelsea and Manchester United in November, that should have been the time that everything evened out, that Leicester would go back to having a wonderful season, but not the most incredible of meteoric rises they have enjoyed up until now. Really, at the start of the season, anything above 18th place would have been a good season for the Foxes. But the fall back to Earth never came. It never even came after the small wobble they had over the Christmas period where they went three games without scoring. Given they have been such a prolific team over the first few months of the season, it was natural that we all thought this was the moment they’d lost it.
But we should have realised that actually, Claudio Ranieri – the genial and loveable twin of Dr Strangelove – was plotting world domination in dottery yet very real kind of way.
He was working on the assumption that in order to win the league, Leicester couldn’t keep coming from two goals down every game. It was a smart move, he had to shore up the defence because the form of Vardy and Mahrez couldn’t last all season. At some point you have to rely on other players.
Step forward Danny Drinkwater, N’Golo Kanté and Christian Fuchs, all these guys who are becoming household names because of their wonderful form that can scarcely be believed.
This weekend, Manchester City and Arsenal dropped points to leave the Foxes three points clear at the top of the table. They have lost the fewest games this season, and to add to their impressive attacking displays, they’re now creating some impressive defensive displays.
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But what’s more impressive is how they’re going about it. They’re doing things that most teams haven’t done this season. Games like the one at the weekend, against a high-flying Stoke City team scares most Premier League managers. But then you remember that there’s no team flying higher than Leicester.
So can they win the league? I’m still inclined to say that Manchester City and Arsenal, with their extra strength in depth, will carry off the title. But it’s looking more and more like Leicester going to keep plodding along. Because not only have they proven that they can score and create, but they’re starting to prove that they can defend, too. Famous for coming back from the dead, for outscoring their opponents rather than grinding out 1-0 wins, Leicester have turned it on its head. They’ve conceded two league goals since Christmas and kept four clean sheets in their last five league games. That says it all.
On top of their new-found defensive solidity, they’ve added Demarai Gray and Daniel Amartey to the side, extra strength in depth into the squad, but hardly big name players. What they’ve done, instead of adding something that will upset the squad, is simply to bring in a couple of extra players who will challenge the starters and be able to come into the side when needed, rather than bring in bigger names that what they already have.
And that’s why the Leicester bubble may not burst this season. That’s why, when the likes of Vardy and Mahrez slump – as all teams and all players do at some point – they should be able to keep grinding it out.
I find it hard to fault Leicester’s approach. The start of the season was one of the cliched ‘take every game as it comes’ approach to the league. They didn’t really mind that they were top because it was never meant to last. All they wanted to do was ride the wave and see how many points it would get them, then they would just focus on making sure they were safe. But the wave didn’t end, and instead of trying to keep going as they were, they started to change tack and see if they could engineer the defensive solidity needed to win a league title. And so far, they’re on the right track.
I wonder if the pressure will get to them later in the season. When there is a team with no experience of winning the league title, it becomes much harder to get over the final hurdle. Just look at Liverpool only a few seasons ago when they came within a stud-length of winning the league. Strange things happen when you’re so close to the finish line, but have never experienced it before. You start to throw caution to the wind when you’re leading 3-1 at Crystal Palace instead of defending your lead and end up throwing it away.
I worry that might happen to Leicester, but all the evidence seems to suggest it won’t. They’ve suddenly become a team with a solid defence who can grind out results, yet everyone knows they’re capable of scoring lots of goals, just like the start of the season proved – only Manchester City have scored more goals over the whole season.
Surely the bubble will burst at some point, but for now it just keeps rising and rising. It may well burst later in the season, but by that point, will Leicester have accumulated enough points to hold onto their Champions League spot? If the bubble doesn’t burst til April, will they have accumulated too many points for the chasing teams to catch them?
I’ve stopped waiting for Leicester to fall. They’ve proven me wrong at every point along the way, and now they’ve added a defence to their scorching attack as well as some extra reinforcements who look like they’ll play their fair share of games without upsetting the squad’s balance too much. You get the feeling that Ranieri isn’t going to go mad and blow it, even if he’s had a career of second place finishes and never won a league title. This time his fidgety-dottery plotting of world domination might just bear fruit.
So I’ve learned to stop worrying and love Leicester’s title charge.
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