Claudio Ranieri and Leicester City finally enjoying life back in the Premier League

Claudio Ranier has had a happy return to the Premier League, but trouble is never too far away.

The 2014-15 season in the Premier League is one we’d all like to forget. It was a poor season for the purist. The early season excitement gave way to dull-as-dishwater football. And it completely lost any goodwill it may have accrued in its initial stages.

Until 4 April 2015. That’s when it changed. That’s when a floundering season was given a shot in the arm by Leicester City, who were fighting for their lives at the bottom of the table.

That day, Leicester City were facing West Ham United at the King Power Stadium. They were bottom of the league, seven seemingly insurmountable points from safety.

They had not won in the previous eight games. Out of the next nine games, they would win seven. A total of 22 points from those nine games. And most importantly, the safety of a 14th place finish – only the third time in Premier League history that a team dodged relegation after being bottom on Christmas Day.

It must have looked improbable, if not impossible, even as late as kickoff on 4 April. The players and the manager deserved a lot of praise for pulling it off.

Pearson’s Coefficient

But the manager, Nigel Pearson, was gone by 30th June. It seems unthinkable to part company with a manager who masterminded the mother of all escapes. But Pearson, you could say, had it coming. He was intimidating, abrasive, confrontational – quite scary, really.

His replacement, however, looked an even worse fit.

On 13 July, scarcely two weeks after Pearson’s dismissal, Claudio Ranieri was appointed in his place.

He has managed in England before you know. With Chelsea, from 2000 to 2004. Nicknamed “Tinkerman” for his seemingly pathological need to fiddle with tactics and formations.

He looks quite interesting. Jovial. Benevolent. Somewhat professorial, with his spectacles akin to those used by an academic.

Apparently this amiableness filters to the squad as well. Training is now more light-hearted, and Ranieri even kept the promise he made to the squad when they would keep their first clean sheet – after the side’s 1-0 win over Crystal Palace on 24 October, he took them out for pizza, with some champagne thrown in for good measure.

But are these deceptive signs? In the dogfight against relegation, you need someone who will readily crack the whip of discipline. For all Pearson’s faults, he would have no hesitation in playing the hard man if push came to shove.

Too soft for his own good?

Ranieri seems hardly the ideal man for such a situation. Winning 107 out of his 199 games as Chelsea boss and powering them to second place in 2004 (their highest league finish since 1955) was certainly respectable, and led Arsene Wenger to describe Chelsea’s side of 2005 (by which time Ranieri had been replaced by Jose Mourinho) in these words (boldface mine):

“ When Claudio left Chelsea he had built the team that was so successful at the start, I remember them finishing second in the league with Ranieri and the team was upcoming with young players like John Terry and Frank Lampard, who were the players that contributed to the success of Chelsea winning the league title”.

But one suspects it was simply yet another backhanded jibe from the Frenchman to his Portuguese adversary. Ranieri’s subsequent managerial outings have been the definition of topsy-turvy: for every rescue act with Parma in 2007, there has been a disappointing 2009 with Juventus.

Having only just beaten the drop last season, Leicester must have been reckless to appoint Ranieri for the new season. The Italian, however, is hugely enjoying his return.

After the first 10 games of the season, Leicester City stand fifth in the table. Fifth place, that puts them a full ten places above Chelsea and Jose Mourinho. As Vernon Dursley so deliciously crowed in the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - “Justice!”

A solid start

Leicester have won 5 out of their 10 games this season, collecting 19 points at a win percentage of exactly 50% - distinguishably higher than Ranieri’s career win percentage of just over 46%. Pretty good for a manager whose last job saw him record precisely zero wins with the Greek national team, sacked after four months and a woeful 0-1 home defeat to the Faroe Islands.

Contrast this with a total of 9 points at the same stage last season, having scored nine goals less.

Consequently, this improvement can be explained by the form of the attack. From its ranks have emerged Jamie Vardy (recently recalled to the England national squad) and Riyad Mahrez (a superb double of 5 goals and 5 assists), between them responsible for 75% of Leicester’s goals.

Vardy, in particular, has been a revelation. Hewn from the rock of non-league football, the Sheffield native has seized his moment. He is comfortably leading the ‘top scorers’ chart with 10 goals, four clear of second place.

Part of the reason has been a positional shift. Vardy, now brought in centrally from his previous wider role meant to accommodate Leonardo Ulloa, has managed his best irritating louse impersonation – the same nagging, persistent, hard running style that has benefited Diego Costa and Luis Suarez in seasons past.

Mental toughness

Ranieri also surely has a hand in Leicester’s newly honed mental strength: the Foxes have also clawed back 7 hard earned points from losing positions this season. These include two-goal recoveries at Stoke and Southampton, and a quite preposterous 3-2 win against Aston Villa, the Villans going 0-2 up after an hour only for the home side to smash in three goals within 17 minutes of each other.

Interestingly, Leicester’s current points average [1.9 points per game(ppg)] sets them on course for a finish in the Champions League places (estimated at an average of 2 ppg or 76 points; good enough for top four in four of the past five seasons).

Too good to be true?

There, however, is lingering, very ominous feeling that Leicester are sitting on a crate of explosives, and the fuse is shortening with each passing week.

The attack is very exhaustible, despite its pretensions to the contrary. It says much that Vardy and Mahrez, playing out of their skins at the moment, are carrying the attack by themselves, with Andrej Kramaric twiddling his thumbs and new signing Shinji Okazaki’s role appearing largely peripheral. It is unreasonable to expect the duo to carry on without a dip in form, or without sustaining injuries, and when that happens, Leicester are left with highly unreliable backup.

A depletion of the Foxes’ attack has other, potentially disastrous implications. Although Leicester are the third highest scorers in the league, they have comfortably the most porous defence in the top half, with just one clean sheet all season. In fact, they have conceded more after ten games this season (17) than at the same stage last season (16). They equal bottom placed Aston Villa in that unwanted distinction.

Leicester fans may shudder to think what will happen once the attack cannot score more than the defence can concede.

The cases of West Ham and Southampton last season are also an inglorious precedent. On 26 December 2014, after completion of fixtures, Southampton were fourth with 32 points, with West Ham just one point behind them in fifth. This was too large a sample size to simply call a start. It was nearly half a season.

But it wasn’t to last. Injuries set in, and Southampton, in particular, seemed to run out of ideas when faced with massed defences. The Saints finished seventh while West Ham fell to twelfth.

Leicester’s current position is eerily similar to the aforementioned two, and it remains to be seen whether they can accumulate enough points so as to render a potential late season slump innocuous to their hopes of survival. Phil Brown’s Hull City, for example, had a similar start to their 2009 season (20 points from 10 games), but only ended up escaping relegation by one point.