Sixteen games into the Premier League season, Leicester City are two points clear at the top of the table. It is a scenario not even the most ardent of fans at the King Power Stadium could possibly have foreseen just a few months ago.
After Monday's 2-1 victory over defending champions Chelsea, however, it has now long since passed the point where observers can be dismissive of the Foxes’ early season form, where critics can brand it a fluke or an aberration and leave it at that. Leicester have 35 points from 16 games – every previous team in PL history that has hit such a mark has gone on to qualify for the Champions League at the end of the season.
It is not a fluke, either: the Foxes won seven of their last nine league games to stay up last season - a run of form that more than equals what they have done so far this term. Some might assume that the current form is down to the purple patches being enjoyed by Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, but that late-season surge under Nigel Pearson (where Vardy and Mahrez were not so dominant) suggests they were a good side even before that.
So if we now accept, begrudgingly or otherwise, that Leicester’s position is no fluke, then the obvious next question is: how have they got to this position? How have they found a way to outperform the likes of Manchester City and Manchester United, teams that have spent many hundreds of millions more on their squad and have become accustomed to challenging every season? Or even the likes of Tottenham and Everton, teams who have been trying for more than a decade to make the leap from pretender to contender that the Foxes seemed to have managed just 18 months after being promoted?
Never ones to give ourselves an easy task, we have tried to identify some of the factors.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS WERE IN PLACE
Leicester’s run to stay up last season – seven wins in nine, including six wins in a seven-match span – underlined the potential of the squad. Nigel Pearson may have been sacked at the conclusion of the campaign but, having stayed up in such impressive fashion, it is almost impossible to argue that this was for any reason other than the dubious off-field incidents the manager (or, awkwardly, his son) frequently allowed himself to get embroiled in.
It may be simplistic to suggest that such a prolific run of form made Leicester’s players realise that the Premier League was nothing to be scared of, that they were just as good as their opponents and could achieve anything they wanted, but there is probably an element of truth to that somewhere. The squad certainly will have gone away for the summer full of confidence and determination for the season ahead, and returned for pre-season with no psychological hang-ups to distract them.
That late-season surge also should have given us the first lesson in what we know now, about the quality of some of the players within the squad. Kasper Schmeichel is a goalkeeper who surely now deserves to be respected on his own terms (and not on those of his father), while Wes Morgan has finally refined himself from the powerful but agonizingly gaffe-prone centre-back that made hometown club Nottingham persevere and then eventually lose patience with him.
Vardy and Mahrez have been the subject of many thousands of words elsewhere but there clear progression has been echoed throughout the squad. Danny Drinkwater seemingly learned a lot playing alongside Esteban Cambiasso for a season, while Danny Simpson and Marc Albrighton seem to have moved along a step in their Premier League understanding.
On paper Leicester’s side is arguably not a particularly impressive one, but perhaps that is only because we view it with perceptions of the players that are no longer entirely accurate.
UNDERESTIMATED IN THE MARKET
Despite finishing the season as one of the form horses in English football, that run seems to have been dismissed as either a fluke or one motivated by a primal fear of relegation by Premier League rivals when it came to the summer transfer market – with little sustained interest shown in any Foxes players who had just produced a string of results a title-winner would be proud of. This certainly played into Leicester’s hands, as they looked to build on that momentum themselves.
The two significant players the club sold, David Nugent and Chris Wood, were fringe players who went to the Championship, while Esteban Cambiasso decided to leave for personal reasons. But the club were able to complete Robert Huth’s loan move without much interference, while they received little or no significant interest in the likes of Vardy, Kasper Schmeichel, Danny Drinkwater, or Jeffrey Schlupp.
Perhaps Marseille chairman Vincent Labrune offered the most extreme version of the opinion that was at sway over the summer, when he dismissed a suggestion (last December) that he try to sign Riyad Mahrez.
"Do you really think that Leicester players now have a place at Olympique Marseille, in the project we've got?” Labrune told the unfortunate advisor who suggested Mahrez to him in an email.
"To save time … the probability of us taking this sort of player is zero."
Of course, it seems safe to now assume Marseille – bogged down in Ligue 1’s mid-table – would love to have Mahrez, just as any number of Premier League sides would take Vardy, Schmeichel, Drinkwater, Morgan and others.
The same works in the other direction, with Leicester, despite being enriched by the Premier League rights deal, perhaps not exploited in the same way as more established English sides in their own search for talent. The fact they managed to sign N’Golo Kante for less than £6 million in the summer now seems incredible – yet Caen were happy to take the sum and few rivals showed an interest in a player who made more interceptions than any other in Europe's top five leagues last season.
The 24-year-old, Cambiasso's de-facto replacement, offers a ball-winning quality the Argentine did not - he may not be as efficient in other areas, but that attribute has proved vital to the team.
"He is amazing," Ranieri said of Kante after the win over Chelsea. "He recovers all the balls, in this stadium, the other stadiums, everywhere!"
Elsewhere, the signing of Austria captain Christian Fuchs on a free transfer has given Leicester a settled back-four, where last season they chopped and changed left-back options. Refined rather than overhaul things with new faces, the sprinkling of arrivals has enhanced an already good team and shored up some weak spots.
A SETTLED SIDE
Kante is perhaps the exception to the rule, however; looking at their recent transfer record, it is interesting to note that the club have not necessarily even bought particularly well in recent times. Shinji Okazaki was a £7m summer signing who has struggled to force his way into the team (so far), while Gokhan Inler arrived from Napoli with a far higher profile (and presumably bigger wages) than Kante but has not been able to dislodge the youngster in the team.
Yohan Benalouane, signed for nearly £5m, has made just four league appearances so far this season (the same as Inler), meaning that Fuchs – a free agent signing – has been the second most important addition behind Kante.
This hit-and-miss record can be traced further back: Marc Albrighton has grown in influence since arriving at the club in January, yet Andrej Kramaric remains something of an enigma. The Croatian striker has plenty of potential, however, so perhaps will benefit in the long run from a slower introduction to the first team.
Of course, it is difficult to be too critical of some of the signings – especially so early in their spells. When a team is winning, as this one is, any player would have to wait his chance, and that might be the case for Inler, Okazaki and others.
For now Leicester still have the spine of a side that won 31 of 46 games in the Championship in 2013-14 (10 players in that title-winning squad still feature at least occasionally now), meaning they have a deeper understanding of each other's tendencies and more ingrained winning habit than many of their rivals. Once they gained the realisation they could compete at this level with the aforementioned seven in nine run to end last season, perhaps we could have foreseen something better this term than another relegation battle.
THE NEW MANAGER
Claudio Ranieri, perhaps one of the nicest men in football, would never dare to take full credit for his side’s current efforts – and rightly so. Clearly his predecessor Nigel Pearson put many of the elements in place for this current success, the Englishman let down by incidents, many of them off-the-field, that were undoubtedly unbecoming of a manager.
Ranieri deserves his share of the praise for taking Leicester to the top of the table, although without actually being inside the dressing room (and perhaps even then) it is probably going to be hard to put your finger on exactly why.
The Italian has not messed significantly with the tactical structure Pearson had in place (although he has perhaps been more confident in freeing Mahrez from defensive constraints, and rolling the dice with Vardy as a central striker once the hot streak started) but seems to have lifted the whole atmosphere around the club, a factor as important as the improved defensive compactness and more refined pressing strategy he seems to have implemented.
Much has been made of Jurgen Klopp’s innate charisma since arriving at Liverpool but Ranieri is similarly compelling, albeit perhaps in a more guileless, innocent fashion. He seems to have fostered an incredible unity and spirit among the squad, one that most recently saw them celebrate yet another win with a fancy-dress trip to Copenhagen.
The Italian has made training interesting, by all accounts, and unusual incentives like free pizza after every clean sheet seem to have helped cut through the pressures and stresses of professional sport to tap into the very basic joy that football is supposed to be about.
Couple that with some tactical refinements, and it has certainly been effective.
OTHER TEAMS HAVE BEEN WOEFUL
Leicester’s surge has been accompanied by a parallel loss of edge among some of the traditional Premier League heavyweights, enabling the Foxes to make the early running (35 points would put them third in the table at this stage last season, and you have to go back to the 2010/11 season for the last time the leader did not have at least that many points after 16 games).
Manchester United, recently ravaged by injuries, have clearly not spent money as wisely as they could have done – while Arsenal and Manchester City have dropped points against teams you would not expect. Of course, their European involvement plays into that, with Leicester undoubtedly aided (as many teams have been in the past) by not having to contend with the brutal Tuesday-Saturday, Wednesday-Sunday schedule of the Champions League sides.
And as for Chelsea … well, who knows what is going wrong there.
Perhaps that all points to the growing competitiveness of the Premier League – that the swell of television money that all clubs get means even lower mid-table sides can add great talents to their squad (and resist overtures for their own star players) and contend with the established heavyweights. It may be a trend that grows more pronounced over the coming seasons, as the TV deals continue to increase.
CAN IT CONTINUE?
When you consider that Leicester’s form now extends over 25 matches, it has surely gone on too long to be considered a flash in the pan. But even the best sides go through difficult spells in a season, and it seems certain that the Foxes (who face Everton, Liverpool and Manchester City in their next three games) will have theirs at some point.
When it comes, it will be interesting to see if they can find a way to get back to their current level – or if a certain regression to the mean (i.e. mid-table form) happens.
The later certainly seems likely, with Mahrez even seeming to admit after the win over Chelsea that Leicester will not be able to sustain their challenge for the entire campaign.
"We do not have broad enough shoulders,” the winger said. “The other teams have bigger squads.”
He added: "The big teams will all wake up at some point. We are just trying to finish in the best place possible and we will see how it goes."
That is the sort of assumption we have all been making for a while now, however, and are yet to be proved correct. In a season where no team is proving themselves to be clinical enough to run away with the title, Leicester should certainly now be targeting the Champions League as a very realistic ambition. And other clubs should be viewing their case for lessons they can apply themselves.
