Our system detected that your browser is blocking advertisements on our site. Please help support FoxesTalk by disabling any kind of ad blocker while browsing this site. Thank you.
Jump to content
 Share
jonthefox

The "do they mean us?" thread

By jonthefox, in Leicester City Forum

Recommended Posts

Dr The Singh

Dr The Singh

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Nalis said:

Think we're too busy slating our own team to worry about what others think. Probably why posts on this thread have been a lot more sparse than last season when Arsenal and Spurs forums were in meltdown.

And the fact that weve become a standard laughing stock throughout, so nothing has changed on there opinion of us this season

Link to comment
Share on other sites
HitchinFox

HitchinFox

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, UPinCarolina said:

Every Tom, Dick and Harry seem to have an opinion about what's wrong - pundits having a field day. 

To be fair, that's their job - having (an often invalid and rather bizarre) opinion on what Team A is doing right or what Manager X should be changing. 

The fact that you rarely find two pundits who agree should tell us that they haven't got any more clue about things than your average group of fans down the pub. Yet they still get paid for it. I can only assume they all have jobs because we love reading and listening to them and getting angry at them. Funny old world. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
brucey

brucey

Posted
Posted

Premier League top six were shocked into spending by Leicester and have now regained stranglehold on game

JASON BURT

CHIEF FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

 

In August 2015 Jose Mourinho spoke at the launch of the new season at Southfields Academy in south-west London and put forward his theory that the Premier League had changed forever.

 

“Every club has very good players so I think it’s difficult for the top teams in England because of the competitive nature,” Mourinho told reporters hanging on his every word (me included). “It’s also difficult because they [the other clubs] have players who could play in our teams – [Yohan] Cabaye could play for Chelsea, what’s the doubt? [Georginio] Wijnaldum [then at Newcastle United] could play for Chelsea, what’s the doubt? [Max] Gradel could play for Chelsea, what’s the doubt?” 

 

But we did all doubt. A few months later and no one doubted. Mourinho had begun the season as the manager of Chelsea, the champions, but was out before Christmas as, gloriously, Leicester City took the title by 10 points and we all did start to believe – or at least hope – that there was something happening. That, in fact, the Premier League had changed forever as Mourinho had predicted.

 

Other managers, and clubs, also believed. Or said they did. Slaven Bilic, Mark Hughes, Roberto Martínez. They all said it. The league had changed.

The latest, stupendous television deals had created a more level playing field – everyone had spending power and there were only so many good players the big clubs could buy while the real superstars, the likes of Lionel Messi, could not be lured to England to make that extra difference.

 

“You can’t buy Messis, there are not plenty of them,” Bilic said. “They [the big clubs] already have 15 good ones; they can’t buy 30 [players]. There is no space. Clubs like us [West Ham United], you had some positions that were not so good, they were OK, let’s say, but the gap was big. Now with this money, the gap is closer, that is the conclusion.” 

Of course the big clubs were still better, Bilic added, but the gap was not so daunting. Midway through this season, however, that gap appears to be a gulf; almost wider than ever, in fact. 

 

The top six are away and so much better than the rest. There is no sense that they can be caught or even competed against and the likelihood is that mini-league will only pull further and further out on its own, out of sight, as the season progresses.

 

Before Monday’s matches Chelsea were 22 points – that is more than seven wins – ahead of seventh-placed Everton, who started the day an apparently unbreachable nine points behind sixth-placed Manchester United. After only 19 matches each. Last season seventh-placed West Ham were just 10 points off the top and a sign of the difference, also, is that leaders Chelsea have 49 points this season – 10 ahead of the total gained by Arsenal, who were top this time last year.

 

At the midpoint of this campaign the top six had played 114 league matches and lost just 16 of them – and only five of those defeats were inflicted by teams outside that top-six group (Burnley and Bournemouth beat Liverpool, Everton defeated Arsenal, Leicester beat Manchester City and United lost to Watford). The established order has re-established itself and with force.

 

So what happened? Well, for a start the ‘big six’ did the obvious. They spent a lot of money. The biggest spenders last summer? From one to six it was the ‘big six’ (although not in their current league order): City then United followed by Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. A spend of around £680 million. The rest of the league, the other 14 clubs, spent £510 million between them.

 

But no one signed Messi. What they did, instead, was sign, or back, the men who were good enough to manage Messi: in came Antonio Conte and Pep Guardiola (OK, City are struggling right now but Guardiola’s arrival certainly raised the bar for the league) with Mourinho returning to add to a touchline stellar cast list of Jürgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino and Arsène Wenger; the Messis of management, if you like. 

 

That is some roster of managers at clubs who rearmed themselves on the pitch and gave themselves the men in charge to fire those bullets.

Those managers have also affected the culture of their clubs, especially the new ones, as they centred the focus on themselves as the biggest personalities and the leaders. They moved their clubs further away from being about the individual player. Even at United, where they broke the world transfer record to sign Paul Pogba, the player is not bigger than the manager.

 

Complacency had undoubtedly set in. The big teams had stopped working hard enough on and off the pitch – in their recruitment, in their coaching – because they believed there would be little ‘churn’ in the league and the worst that would happen was that they would only finish in the Champions League places. Leicester changed that. They provided a wake-up call that the others had to work harder, had to realign themselves.

 

What will happen now? The fact that six teams are going for the top four, maybe, arguably, also going for the title has to be healthy with Spurs and Liverpool now firmly among that elite. 

 

That there are others below them falling away is disappointing but now it is for the rest of the league to react. Although they have collectively spent far less than the big boys, there is significant money available and they need to respond to close that gap. Leicester looks like what we all feared but hoped was not true: a one-off.

It is even harder than ever to see it happening again and not least because those big clubs have had their shock and are now forewarned.

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
Babylon

Babylon

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, kushiro said:

Don't think this has been posted yet. We've become a bit blase about getting this kind of coverage, but it's still pretty amazing to get a huge feature like this in the New York Times:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/sports/soccer/leicester-city-premier-league.html?_r=0

"Now, the cup might provide something quite different: It is not a distraction, but a destination. Leicester has never won it; fans of a certain vintage still remember the pain of losing three finals in the 1960s. To win it would be a fairy tale, another chance to journey into the unreal, a reminder that things that cannot happen do, and things that did not happen can."

 

God i hope the club think like this, I do... It's the one thing left that we could reasonably win that I haven't seen us do. (I'm fine with not seeing us win league two). I'd love us to put all our efforts into the FA cup.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
WigstonWanderer

WigstonWanderer

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, Babylon said:

"Now, the cup might provide something quite different: It is not a distraction, but a destination. Leicester has never won it; fans of a certain vintage still remember the pain of losing three finals in the 1960s. To win it would be a fairy tale, another chance to journey into the unreal, a reminder that things that cannot happen do, and things that did not happen can."

 

God i hope the club think like this, I do... It's the one thing left that we could reasonably win that I haven't seen us do. (I'm fine with not seeing us win league two). I'd love us to put all our efforts into the FA cup.

Hhem.. Champions League?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...