Leicester City need to find themselves

IT doesn’t feel that long ago and, of course, it wasn’t. Just nine months have passed. In the centre of the pitch he stood proud as punch as his buddy Andrea Bocelli, wearing Leicester City blue, belted out the Nessun Dorma.

Even at the worst of times Puchinni’s aria is transcendentally beautiful. In that precise moment it went beyond even that. It was a moment of apotheosis and synthesis.

Truly these were the best of times for Leicester City and Claudio Ranieri. Like nothing we’d ever seen before. Like nothing we were ever likely to see again. The 5000/1 shots had won the Premier League.

In all honestly they’d won it pulling up. They had ten points to spare over second placed Arsenal. Leicester finished last season on a high too. They didn’t allow all the swirling emotion and the beauty of the Nessun Dorma distract them that afternoon as they despatched Everton by three goals to one.

The win, the margin, the manner of it was a statement of some intent. Leicester gave every indication that they weren’t going anywhere. Fair enough nobody seriously considered they would win the league again in the short term, but by the same token such was the vibrancy of Ranieri’s side last season that their place at the top table seemed assured.

There was always a danger that their best players would be picked off one by one by more storied and moneyed clubs. Arsenal looked to sign Jamie Vardy but he demurred. Riyad Mahrez too remained. Music to Ranieri’s ears and the Leicester fans’ too.

N’Golo Kanté, of course, did depart for Chelsea, but at the time it didn’t seem as big a deal as it later became and not because people didn’t rate Kante, they did, absolutely they did, it’s just that we didn’t necessarily consider him to be quite as good, or rather as influential, as he actually is.

To lose one player from a title winning squad shouldn’t have been sufficient to send Leicester into a tail-spin, a tail-spin from which they have yet to emerge, a tail-spin which may yet see them relegated to the Championship.

And, yet, as we sit here in the middle of February, with less than half the season to go, that is precisely the position Ranieri and co are in. With twenty five games played Leicester sit just a single point above the drop zone.

Last weekend they suffered another set-back, going down two-nil to Swansea in the Liberty Stadium. To lose two-nil when fighting for your Premier League life is bad enough, to lose like that in a classic six pointer is almost criminal.

That defeat, Leicester’s fifth consecutive league defeat, has left many of us wondering whether last season was all a dream. How could that Leicester team have degenerated to such an extent in such a short space of time?

A lot of observers will point to the departure of Kanté. He was the catalyst, the one who made them tick, the one who protected the back four, set moves in train, the one who, more so even than Mahrez and Vardy, allowed Leicester be Leicester.

On Twitter Gary Lineker, with tongue only ever so slightly in cheek, made the cutting remark that “Huth and Morgan without Kanté in front of them are like Huth and Morgan”.

There has to be more to it than that, however. Ranieri isn’t above criticism. Teams have him and his Leicester side figured out, had them figured out from very early in the season and, yet, the manager still hasn’t found a new way of making them play effectively.

Indeed, the season’s high point came against Manchester City when City played as though they had never seen Leicester play. All of a sudden Mahrez and Vardy looked every bit as devastating as they did last season. Three of Vardy’s five league goals came in that one game.

If anything that game did Leicester more harm than good as it gave Leicester a false impression of their reality and reminded everybody else in the league just how foolish it is to play Leicester the way they like to be played. Not even Pep Guardiola at his most ideological would make that same mistake twice.

The way they’re playing – not a single league goal scored in 2017 – Leicester are as likely as not to be relegated. The bookies give them a better than even chance at 4/9, but hey the bookies have been wrong before when it comes to Leicester.

Their next league game is against Liverpool in a couple of weeks. It’s a game that’s pretty much impossible to call – Liverpool should win handily, then again Liverpool don’t win games they should win handily.

Before then they’ve got FA Cup and Champions League fixtures to distract them. Given the pressure that’s on them that might be no bad thing. One way or another Leicester need to rediscover themselves and fast.

Time is running out.