Leicester City’s Premier League success last season can be characterised by statistics: 12 clean sheets in the second half of the campaign, 24 goals for Jamie Vardy, 17 goals and 11 assists for Riyad Mahrez.
With that in mind, one statistic revealed this week is indicative of how things have changed. When asked by fans website Foxes Talk whether Claudio Ranieri should be retained as manager, only 52 per cent of supporters responded in the affirmative.
On Thursday, Ranieri summed up his team’s predicament rather well. ‘Last season, everything was right,’ he said. ‘Now everything is wrong.’
From first in May to 16th in December. It has been quite a fall for Ranieri and his team. It does not threaten the Italian’s job yet but Leicester’s descent from the summit of English football has been more dramatic than anyone could have predicted.
On Saturday at the King Power Stadium, Leicester face West Ham on the back of one win in nine Premier League games. No wonder Ranieri sought salvation in dramatic rhetoric.
‘The first six months of this year were unbelievable in a good way and the second six months unbelievable in a bad way,’ he said. ‘But in life there are good and bad moments and I want to see how these men react to the bad moments.
‘When things are right, everybody is good enough. When things are not so good then you see the real men.’
Leicester spent their pre-season in the Los Angeles resort of Santa Monica. They had been invited to play in the International Champions Cup alongside the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Their lodgings were in the very upmarket Shutters on the Beach Hotel.
Ranieri and his players had sprung unexpectedly from the football undercard and had arrived in every way. It was the culmination of an incredible year but Ranieri — far from the avuncular old guy he sometimes appears — had spotted problems.
‘I did not see the same mentality together,’ Ranieri said in August. ‘Forget what we achieved. I want more than the maximum.’
In sport, champions are often vulnerable in the afterglow. Blackburn Rovers, for example, won the 1995 Premier League unexpectedly and finished seventh the next season. At one stage, they were sliding towards relegation, losing 5-0 at Coventry just before Christmas.
Ranieri was aware of the dangers early but has been powerless to stop his team’s slide. He asked for more in the summer but received less.
Vardy has struggled for goals while Mahrez waited until early November to deliver his first assist. In the first 12 league games of the season, Mahrez passed to Leicester’s centre forward just nine times. Suggestions of issues between the two have been flatly denied but on the field last season’s invaluable chemistry has disappeared.
Others have suffered too. Some qualified observers suggest central defender Wes Morgan, 33 next month, has lost a shade of pace while goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel has been injured. Last season Leicester conceded 36 goals. Already this time, they are five short of that.
‘Last season, opponents would have four or five chances and wouldn’t score,’ said Ranieri. ‘This time, they have one and they score.’
If Ranieri wasn’t exactly suggesting his team were lucky last season, he was inferring that Leicester played to the extremities of their best levels. Certainly, it was expected that there would be some levelling out. Roughly half the team that will start against West Ham, for example, started on New Year’s Day 2015. That Leicester team had just won their first game in 14 and were bottom of the league.
So how much of what has happened this season is the restoring of a natural order and how much is down to Ranieri’s failure to keep his team of champions moving forwards or, at the very least, standing still?
When you happily project the eccentric image that he does then your methods will always be scrutinised. Left field looks clever when you are winning, less so when you aren’t. Leicester sources say Ranieri has not lost his players. Their efforts in drawing 2-2 at Stoke with 10 men recently lent that claim some credence. It was an extraordinary effort.
Nevertheless, Ranieri has at times confused some of his players — switching formations more than once during games — while he is known to seek tactical counsel from his staff and then do his own thing anyway.
His recent decision to drop Mahrez was bold but Ranieri gave the Algerian no warning. There was no arm around the shoulder. As such it will be interesting to see how the 25-year-old responds if he is recalled to the team on Saturday.
‘I am the manager,’ was Ranieri’s take on it. ‘I have to decide when a player needs a rest. Players are not machines. You cannot put a coin in them and watch them work.’
In a recent interview with The Times, former Leicester chief scout Steve Walsh, now director of football at Everton, predicted that his old club wouldn’t go down. ‘There is no chance of that,’ he said.
Leicester will hope their old friend is right. They will also have noted his very public reminder that he had a hand in recruiting every member of the title-winning team with the exception of goalkeeper Schmeichel. Walsh was always going to be missed and his absence has been keenly felt given that, with the possible exception of £28million striker Islam Slimani, Leicester’s summer purchases have not made the grade.
Ranieri raised eyebrows recently when he suggested £7.5m Polish winger Bartosz Kapustka was not ready for the Premier League and it is clear the January transfer window will be crucial to Leicester’s chances of survival.
The Walsh issue is not as clear-cut as it may look. The 52-year-old only left in July and will have played some role in identifying new players.
Whatever the case, the sale of N’Golo Kante to Chelsea has not been adequately compensated for and the Frenchman’s absence has had an undeniable effect on the form of players such as Danny Drinkwater.
Leicester will shortly announce the signing of £15m Nigerian midfielder Wilfred Ndidi from Genk. They are also considering a move for defender Francesco Acerbi of Sassuolo.
Time will tell if players with no experience of the Premier League can help. What would be useful is if Ranieri could find a little of last season’s incredible unity. When he took over from Nigel Pearson in July 2015, Ranieri gathered his players and delivered a simple message: ‘I love the way you fight for each other and that’s what I want.’
That meeting was the beginning of a rare connection. Not often do players respond to one man’s idiosyncrasies so well.
The night before he broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record for consecutive Premier League goals, Vardy received a video compilation of good-luck messages from Ranieri and just about every team-mate and member of back-room staff. That kind of thing doesn’t happen often in football and is indicative of what Ranieri and his players once had.
This time round there is talk that some of the Italian’s patter is wearing thin but it goes back to what he said himself on Thursday. It’s easy to be a good player, a good team man, when things are going well.
Ranieri at least spotted this coming. At the end of last season, Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha promised each of the squad a BMW. In August, just before the Community Shield, they were delivered and Ranieri didn’t like it much. By that time, defender Morgan had his name on a special limited edition bottle of rum.
There is nothing wrong with any of this. They are called trappings of success. But success has to be backed up by performance if the aura of winners isn’t to be replaced by something else.
Leicester City are now at that point where it could go either way. It took a while for us all to realise last year that Leicester really could win the league. Equally, it has taken time for it to become clear that they really could go down.
Source: All Football
