A week to forget for Leicester City. A flat midweek performance exposed The Foxes weaknesses, but it was Arsenal that delivered the fatal coup de grâce to the pests of the Premier League.
Before this afternoon, Leicester’s league record against the traditional big six was W-W-L-W-D-W-W, Liverpool’s November victory being the only fault in an impressive set of results. Arsenal has struggled recently in domestic matches succeeding mid-week European ties. However, they bucked the trend at The King Power Stadium and recorded a 3-1 victory despite rotating six players from their midweek victory over Benfica.
Harvey Barnes faces a six-week layoff and knee surgery after going down on the 50-minute mark. Joining James Maddison, Wesley Fofana, James Justin, Dennis Praet, Ayoze Perez and Wes Morgan on Leicester’s perpetual injury list. Jonny Evans was also substituted, having looked fragile all month since limping against Wolves.
FoL reviews Leicester’s fortunes this season and considers what has gone wrong in recent weeks, and what it could mean for the club’s future.
Leicester City not part of the ‘Big Six’ – and that is okay!
A common trend on social media and football opinion pieces is endless debate over the Premier League’s Big Six. Both Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea are easily identified as the giants of the league, while Arsenal and Tottenham fervently cling to slipping shreds of acclaim despite only the former achieving any silverware in the last decade. This season has witnessed Leicester, Everton and West Ham be heralded as members of a new order. However, none of the three are – and that is okay.
Given that Tottenham’s average position since the inception of the Premier League is eighth, and Arsenal are languishing firmly mid-table under pretences of Mikel Arteta’s developing a ‘project’, neither can be considered elite performance-wise. However, The Big Six has never been to do with performance. It is entirely based on the strength of each respective brand.
Professional services giant Deloitte publishes an annual report entitled the ‘Football Money League’, an analysis of the economics and financial performance of leading clubs worldwide. Five of the Big Six make up the top 10, while Arsenal lies at 11, Everton 17, Leicester 22 and West Ham at 26. With an estimated £176 million between The Gunners and The Toffees, the zeitgeist is unlikely to change any time soon.
Being part of the Big Six is the equivalent of joining the Freemasons, it sounds grandiose and decadent but in reality, it is just senile men getting drunk. Such titles are just measurements of the clubs as brands and economic powers. If Tottenham can go 13 years and only have a deprecating chant to their name, then they can keep their vane Big Six plumage.
Leicester’s training ground woes?
Unprecedented has been thrown around so much in the last twelve months that most things seem just precedented. Perhaps owing to their status, or the Othellian fall of former media darling Jurgen Klopp, news coverage of Liverpool’s injury crisis has been as persistent as BT Sport’s unfaltering commitment to Steve McManaman. Coverage of Leicester City’s injuries has been restricted to the club’s press releases and fans on social media. If anything in the post-Trump and COVID-19 world could be considered unprecedented, it is the injury crisis facing Leicester and last year’s champions.
Barnes, Evans and now reportedly Jamie Vardy picked up injuries against Arsenal; Leicester’s woes are mounting. At what quantity of missing stars does a trend become endemic? In trying to isolate a fundamental reason behind The Foxes injuries this season – that now exceeds 25 – fingers can be pointed in various directions. Is it down to a lack of authentic rest over summer? Or the density of fixtures over a tightly-condensed season?
Leicester and Liverpool have received the brunt of injury misfortune. A commonality is moving to new training facilities, with Liverpool’s move to the AXA Training Centre and Leicester to Seagrave Training Centre. A common thread in sports physiotherapy research is exploring the effects natural and synthetic turf can have on injury occurrence in athletes. One such paper offers a potentially relevant point.
"Rapid changes between playing on different surface types may act as a precursor to injury in soccer… it appears that players who change frequently from playing on one surface to another may be at a greater risk of injury. Sean Williams, Patria A. Hume and Stephen Kara in A Review of Football Injuries on Third and Fourth Generation Artificial Turfs Compared with Natural Turf."
This is entirely speculative, and the training ground connection could be entirely circumstantial. However, further food for thought is Leicester City’s dismissal of Dave Rennie in September. Rennie was a long-serving medical staff member and wrote a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Can The Natural Turf Pitch Affect Injury Risk And Performance Within Elite Football?’. The former physio was active on Twitter in the wake of Leicester’s defeat, referring to injuries as being “multi-factorial”.
Doing a Leicester City
Last season’s dismal form in the latter half inflicted a scar on the collective conscious of Leicester City fans. Any omen of poor play will reawaken the pain and bring forth the doomsayers amongst the pessimists. Some might label Rodgers as a bottle job on behalf of Liverpool’s (and Gerrard’s) infamous 2013-14 slip and last season’s antics.
Two matches are not indicative of a team’s season. Alas, this week’s games were disappointing. But to write off Leicester’s fortunes would be to underestimate the quality of results so far. A downturn in form seems inevitable, but the context is different. Ndidi and Maddison’s absences found the team in a lurch last season, but this year has been a bizarre game of injury whac-a-mole. Positions have been filled at will. Justin’s meteoric rise as one of the most promising players is a stark contrast to the unreliable defender we saw last season, and wholly thanks to Ricardo Pereira’s initial absence.
Should this omen come to fruition and pre-empt capitulation, inevitable comparisons will come. With Leicester City now having to contemplate playing with a vast amount of players missing, the natural tempo and partnerships that have been developed between key players will be missing. Vardy was visibly struggling with his groin during the match against Arsenal, and will potentially be leaving Tielemans as the only fit player capable of scoring. Given that his role in the team is traditionally deep and oriented towards providing support, the omen could be a dark one. Losing steam in the second half of the season could become known as ‘doing a Leicester’.