Why Leicester have gone from champs to chumps

LONDON — When it comes to Leicester City’s condition, Howard Wilkinson does not mince his words. “There is no doubt they are in serious trouble,” he says. “The statistics tell us that if you are down there at this time of the year then almost invariably you are in it until the end. The fact is, being champions does not give you immunity from history.”

From champs to chumps, the narrative of Leicester’s season has turned into a traumatic inverse of last year’s fairytale. Even as Claudio Ranieri’s side take on Swansea in a match overnight to avoid their 14th Premier League loss, victory or defeat will not change what has been a calamitous title defence for the Foxes just 10 months after they topped the Premier League.

“I knew it would be a challenge for them. That’s the nature of the beast,” says former England caretaker manager Wilkinson. “But I am surprised.”

Wilkinson knows all about how champions fall apart. The last English manager to win the title, he then presided over a wretched defence. After topping the top flight the previous May, in 1993 his Leeds United finished 17th of the 22 teams in the inaugural Premier League. Relegation was ultimately avoided by just two points. Looking back on it, the former manager’s diagnosis is simple.

“The year after, everyone wants to beat the champions,” he says. “Everyone ups their game. And everyone has examined how you did it. Where you could surprise the first time, you can’t do it a second. That’s the challenge of being champions.”

As the tactics that produced the triumph have been nullified, he suggests, so the very things that made Leicester exceptional last season seem to have disappeared.

They are in the midst of a perfect storm of deterioration. The doughty defence appears collectively to have aged 10 years, showing all the speed of reaction of an articulated lorry attempting a handbrake turn. The electric-heeled forwards are no longer being fed the kind of incisive passes on which they previously thrived.

Nothing is as good as it was. Andy King, the Leicester midfielder, accepts the analysis of a ripple effect.

“It’s just that one thing, I think, has led to another,” he says. “If we knew what the missing ingredient was, obviously we would put that right.”

N’Golo Kante, the most obvious missing ingredient, is not available to make a speedy return. The man who provided Leicester’s glue last season is now shielding the defence and feeding the attack for Chelsea — who, by no coincidence, look champions-elect.

Wilkinson agrees that a marginal deterioration in the qualities that worked last season, has had an exaggerated combined effect.

“As it was for Leicester, it was a brilliant achievement for us to win the title,” he suggests. “The season after, we failed to reach the same levels of performance and consistency. We just weren’t able to repeat many of the qualities that won us the title and we were short of other plans to fall back on.”

Here has been the Leicester problem. Not only have they been unable to echo the tricks that came together so effectively last term, they have no new material on which to call. It is a pathology that Chris Sutton recalls only too well from his time at Blackburn Rovers.

While nothing like as poor as Leicester’s title defence (in 1996 Blackburn finished seventh after winning the Premier League), there were elements of alarming similarity in their falling off. Not least in the failure to adapt and progress.

“The philosophy after the title win was: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’,” he recalls. “I can understand why Ray Harford (who took over in the summer from title-winning manager Kenny Dalglish) didn’t want to change things, and it made perfect sense at the time. But it meant we were relying on the same personnel who, in many cases had really just given a one-off, unrepeatable performance.”

It was not complacency that gripped the Blackburn dressing room, Sutton says. Rather, it was something more debilitating: The rapid discovery that the things that had served so well were no longer working as effectively. A loss of faith in the process quickly became articulated as a corrosive loss of faith in one another.

“We thought we could do it again but something had changed and the atmosphere just wasn’t as good,” he says. “I wouldn’t use the word toxic, but it was clear we weren’t achieving what we had the previous season and then the wheels came off a little bit.”

That quickly had an undermining effect on morale, as players looked around a previously-solid dressing room seeking to attach blame. It had ridiculous manifestation when Graeme Le Saux and David Batty traded blows during a Champions League tie in Moscow.

As yet, there have been no Leicester players scrapping in the centre circle. But there has been no escaping the hangdog air of resignation that has permeated the place since the turn of the year. Nor the drip-drip of dressing room leaks hinting at a loss of confidence in the manager.

Ranieri has recognised that, in such circumstances, managerial priorities change.

“It’s different because last season you have to maintain the calm of the players,” he said. “You win and they are full of confidence. Now, this year, you have to push a lot and give confidence and remember they are very good players. They have to go back.”

Go back not to their annus mirabilis so much as the season before, when much of the same squad achieved an epic escape against the odds.

“It could be difficult for a big team who are used to fighting for the title and suddenly they stay down. What happened, they are not used to this,” he added. “But Leicester are used to staying in the battle.”

Indeed, King suggests it is that experience of flirting with disaster, rather than with victory, that will be vital over the coming months.

“I think it would be naive of people to doubt the strength of the group. We are a group of fighters here,” he says. “We are good players. You can say what you like about us — but we are still in the Champions League, still in the FA Cup and there’s more than one-third of the season still to play.”

It is a stout call to arms. Although, as Wilkinson points out, Leicester have reached the point of the campaign where words are no longer sufficient. Only action will suffice.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH