LINEKER NAILS LEICESTER’S PROBLEM

So, WHAT did go wrong at Leicester? The most insightful explanation came from Gary Lineker the morning after the outstanding champions League win over Sevilla.

Lineker, on his way out to Monaco and still smiling, traced the root of the problem back to the end of last season.

It was his view that, from January onwards, as the club closed in on the Premier League title, every match superseded the last as the biggest in Leicester’s history. The biggest for every player, too, none of whom had ever known success like it.

The intensity of experience each week was unprecedented and would be impossible to sustain, long-term.

The next season began with disjointed preparations caused by Leicester’s late addition to the International champions cup, and the first match of the league campaign was at hull. Suddenly, it was not the biggest game in Leicester’s history any more.

The dip in performance, in adrenalin, was not intended, but explicable. And Leicester lost. Then they started to struggle. They were inconsistent; they missed n’Golo Kante. A draw against Arsenal; a win over Swansea; a heavy defeat at Liverpool.

It wasn’t the same. how could it be? how could any team follow the greatest achievement in the history of english football?

The champions League campaign went well, because it had echoes of the previous season, but now Leicester were under pressure at home. claudio Ranieri began making small tweaks in the hope of changing fortunes — it is a myth that he altered a lot this season — and the players began using that to hide behind their manager.

As criticism grew, so confidence ebbed, and Ranieri became the scapegoat. It was not that the players stopped trying, more that they lost their way.

And now it is different because the intensity has returned. Again, it is not that craig Shakespeare has greatly shifted strategy, more that every game is huge again and the adrenalin is back.

The champions League knockout stage: huge. Avoiding relegation: huge. The necessity of proving their critics wrong about Ranieri: huge.

And there is no proof for Lineker’s theory, of course. It just makes sense, or as much sense as any of the tumult around Leicester over the last two years.