Does our current Leicester team beat Nigel Pearson's Championship Winners?

[Mr Weller 2]

Yes it beats Pearson’s team hands down. Largely because it has better players but also a more tactically astute manager.

 

 

[Monk]

10 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

Difficult question to answer. Could this team win the Premier League in a couple of seasons vs 15/16 top 6?

If you'd asked that question at Christmas 2014 I doubt anyone on here would have suggested we were capable of winning the Premiership in our wildest dreams

[Kinowe Soorie]

This lot have not achieved anything yet.

We currently have a £12 million goalkeeper, that doesn’t always make the match day squad. 

Similar to when we were doing ok under Rodgers, and people were saying the squad/team was better that the 15/16 team. Ridiculous!

[Daggers]

Everything about NFP is greater than anything else. 

[Ashley]

12 hours ago, eblair said:

Pearson side would absolutely mug us. Vesty playing as our deepest player 10 yards in front of half way line against Vardy, Dyer, Mahrez and Nugent

 

That side best champ side ever, had 3 world class players in it. We currently have none (not a slight we are a championship side). Would bet lot of money none of this side achieve anything close to Vardy, Mahrez and Kasper

 

Not slagging current side off but that team was special - really special 

No players in our championship side have ever been world class. Stop it 😂

Edited 26 December 2023 by Ashley

[Dahnsouff]

12 hours ago, eblair said:

Pearson side would absolutely mug us. Vesty playing as our deepest player 10 yards in front of half way line against Vardy, Dyer, Mahrez and Nugent

 

That side best champ side ever, had 3 world class players in it. We currently have none (not a slight we are a championship side). Would bet lot of money none of this side achieve anything close to Vardy, Mahrez and Kasper

 

Not slagging current side off but that team was special - really special 

Our best champ side maybe, but isn’t Reading the best ever thus far? Difficult to gauge on points due to which teams are in it, but it’s still about the best measure.

[inckley fox]

15 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

Only after adding Fuch, Simpson, Kante, Huth, Albrighton, Okazaki.

 

That's over 50% of the side changed, so not sure that's a fair comparison regarding the OP question.

 

 

 

 

Do you think the current side could have five players capable of forming the backbone of a future title-winning side? And two of football-as-a-whole's most exceptional talents for the next decade? Maybe some of us didn't predict that in 2014 either, but it happened. And that's a spectacular exception to the rule of what you can expect from second tier-winning personnel, as we ourselves know. Even ones who deliver as well as those guys did in 2014 (and we hope these guys will a decade later).

 

We're talking about the keeper, the CB (and captain), the CM, and the critical attacking partnership, as well as most of the fringe players of a side that would comfortably win the top flight two years later! Weren't all five of them at some point featured in an EPL team of the season? Can you pick out so many individuals from the regular line-ups of any other promoted side who have gone on to those sorts of achievements? As for that attacking partnership, it would become the greatest we've seen in our club's history, and consist of a future golden-boot winner, and a PL Player-of-the-year winner. Mahrez-Vardy alone sets that side apart, even if we didn't fully know it for a while to come and yes, if their 2014 incarnations came up against Vestergard and Justin, I suspect we'd be in serious trouble. Perhaps that's what will become of some of these players too. I hope so. But it's highly unlikely.

 

We've won seven past second tier titles - a club that this team has yet to join - and something really extraordinary and quite unprecedented occurred with that particular batch.

 

Of course, promoted teams often carry some serious talent. We came up with Chandler, Duncan and Adcock in the 20s; with Glover, Nish and Shilton in the 70s, Smith, Lynex and Lineker in the 80s, then Izzet, Lennon and Heskey in the 90s. These are club legends, and I suspect this squad might contain 2-3 of its own too. But that 2014 team gave us - at fear of repeating myself - eight EPL medal-winners, five members of our best ever line-up (with two of the most crucial trio already intact). They won our club's only major trophies, and in some cases went on to earn trophies elsewhere too.

 

I also have a bit of a problem with people so boldly asserting that football is just better now than it was then. What's that based on? Do recently-promoted sides from this league suggest that it's better comparatively?

 

If we're so confidently stating that the school of 2023 is of that calibre, then I do hope expectations get drastically more realistic over months and years to come. Otherwise it could get disappointing!

[coolhandfox]

12 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

Do you think the current side could have five players capable of forming the backbone of a future title-winning side? And two of football-as-a-whole's most exceptional talents for the next decade? Maybe some of us didn't predict that in 2014 either, but it happened. And that's a spectacular exception to the rule of what you can expect from second tier-winning personnel, as we ourselves know. Even ones who deliver as well as those guys did in 2014 (and we hope these guys will a decade later).

 

We're talking about the keeper, the CB (and captain), the CM, and the critical attacking partnership, as well as most of the fringe players of a side that would comfortably win the top flight two years later! Weren't all five of them at some point featured in an EPL team of the season? Can you pick out so many individuals from the regular line-ups of any other promoted side who have gone on to those sorts of achievements? As for that attacking partnership, it would become the greatest we've seen in our club's history, and consist of a future golden-boot winner, and a PL Player-of-the-year winner. Mahrez-Vardy alone sets that side apart, even if we didn't fully know it for a while to come and yes, if their 2014 incarnations came up against Vestergard and Justin, I suspect we'd be in serious trouble. Perhaps that's what will become of some of these players too. I hope so. But it's highly unlikely.

 

We've won seven past second tier titles - a club that this team has yet to join - and something really extraordinary and quite unprecedented occurred with that particular batch.

 

Of course, promoted teams often carry some serious talent. We came up with Chandler, Duncan and Adcock in the 20s; with Glover, Nish and Shilton in the 70s, Smith, Lynex and Lineker in the 80s, then Izzet, Lennon and Heskey in the 90s. These are club legends, and I suspect this squad might contain 2-3 of its own too. But that 2014 team gave us - at fear of repeating myself - eight EPL medal-winners, five members of our best ever line-up (with two of the most crucial trio already intact). They won our club's only major trophies, and in some cases went on to earn trophies elsewhere too.

 

I also have a bit of a problem with people so boldly asserting that football is just better now than it was then. What's that based on? Do recently-promoted sides from this league suggest that it's better comparatively?

 

If we're so confidently stating that the school of 2023 is of that calibre, then I do hope expectations get drastically more realistic over months and years to come. Otherwise it could get disappointing!

The question was would the 13/14 championship side beat the current team.

 

Vardy, Marhez, Kasper, Drinkwater weren't the player they were in 15/16 in 13/14.

 

Two years us long time in football, look at the difference between the Kane who played for us in the 12/13 season and the one who won the golden boot in 15/16

 

People keep answering it as the 15/16 vs the current team, that's not the question.

 

[Le Renard]

Let's see at the business end of the season, I'm too long in the tooth to get carried away at the halfway stage.  We've had our fingers burnt too many times at this club.

I would say though this team had a better foundation to build on, and we can still attract decent players.  Pearson had to dismantle a whole squad and collect misfits from other clubs on the cheap, Enzo has had quite a bit more cash to spend.

[inckley fox]

52 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

The question was would the 13/14 championship side beat the current team.

 

Vardy, Marhez, Kasper, Drinkwater weren't the player they were in 15/16 in 13/14.

 

Two years us long time in football, look at the difference between the Kane who played for us in the 12/13 season and the one who won the golden boot in 15/16

 

People keep answering it as the 15/16 vs the current team, that's not the question.

 

The hindsight of knowing that we had a large number of PL-standard players, including three top-level talents among our number and in addition to them two of the game's absolutely finest talents, is a stronger testament to the standard of that side than imaginary match-ups, spurious claims about football being more competitive, and comments on points totals are to the quality of this side.

 

As it stands, only one member of this side has ever won the second tier, and he did it with us, as a far superior player to that of today, and in that team, when he was in the early throes of becoming our best ever player. Simply saying that makes any claims that this is the superior side seem a stretch, especially when you add Schmeichel, Morgan, Drinkwater and Riyad Mahrez into the comparison. And beyond that, the like-for-like analysis of the strengths of the players, what they had achieved, what they would in that season - or the next, or the one after that - all seems to undermine any serious argument that the class of '23 is the superior of the Pearson side.

 

Who would beat who in a game? You can debate it all day long - the best way of guessing is to compare the quality of the players rather than imagining that Fatawu would hands-down beat an experienced top flight England-capped LB, as some do. The 2013-14 side probably wins that match-up because (a) it actually won the division and we don't know whether these guys will and (b) the players were exceptionally talented by the standards of any second flight side, and we can't be too sure how many of the current lot are. I'm not sure what a more reliable barometer would look like.

 

But one thing is for sure, and that's that the wider question of which side 'beats' the other in terms of being the better set of players, as opposed to the winner of an imaginary head-to-head, would have to favour the Pearson team.

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, coolhandfox said:

The question was would the 13/14 championship side beat the current team.

 

Vardy, Marhez, Kasper, Drinkwater weren't the player they were in 15/16 in 13/14.

 

Two years us long time in football, look at the difference between the Kane who played for us in the 12/13 season and the one who won the golden boot in 15/16

 

People keep answering it as the 15/16 vs the current team, that's not the question.

 

Schmeichel, Morgan, Drinkwater and Vardy were hands down the best players in the Championship already in their respective positions though tbf. I’m not convinced they were *that* far off their peak (Mahrez I do think was though), they just had never had the chance to prove it yet.
 

That’s why I don’t think you can really answer the question until you’ve really seen how some of these players play in the top flight next season. Knockaert was one of the players I thought would step up most and he never really did, yet fringe players like Wood and Schlupp went on to be good Premier League players (Schlupp was still fairly young when we went up tbf).

Edited 26 December 2023 by Sampson

[HighPeakFox]

And another thing I won't discuss is reeeeeeligion, it always causes a fight. 

[iancognito]

We'd both be in the top 2 because that Pearson team was better than most of this league too. Championship has got worse in 10 years no doubt.

[Foxaholic ME]

3 hours ago, inckley fox said:

Do you think the current side could have five players capable of forming the backbone of a future title-winning side? And two of football-as-a-whole's most exceptional talents for the next decade? Maybe some of us didn't predict that in 2014 either, but it happened. And that's a spectacular exception to the rule of what you can expect from second tier-winning personnel, as we ourselves know. Even ones who deliver as well as those guys did in 2014 (and we hope these guys will a decade later).

 

We're talking about the keeper, the CB (and captain), the CM, and the critical attacking partnership, as well as most of the fringe players of a side that would comfortably win the top flight two years later! Weren't all five of them at some point featured in an EPL team of the season? Can you pick out so many individuals from the regular line-ups of any other promoted side who have gone on to those sorts of achievements? As for that attacking partnership, it would become the greatest we've seen in our club's history, and consist of a future golden-boot winner, and a PL Player-of-the-year winner. Mahrez-Vardy alone sets that side apart, even if we didn't fully know it for a while to come and yes, if their 2014 incarnations came up against Vestergard and Justin, I suspect we'd be in serious trouble. Perhaps that's what will become of some of these players too. I hope so. But it's highly unlikely.

 

We've won seven past second tier titles - a club that this team has yet to join - and something really extraordinary and quite unprecedented occurred with that particular batch.

 

Of course, promoted teams often carry some serious talent. We came up with Chandler, Duncan and Adcock in the 20s; with Glover, Nish and Shilton in the 70s, Smith, Lynex and Lineker in the 80s, then Izzet, Lennon and Heskey in the 90s. These are club legends, and I suspect this squad might contain 2-3 of its own too. But that 2014 team gave us - at fear of repeating myself - eight EPL medal-winners, five members of our best ever line-up (with two of the most crucial trio already intact). They won our club's only major trophies, and in some cases went on to earn trophies elsewhere too.

 

I also have a bit of a problem with people so boldly asserting that football is just better now than it was then. What's that based on? Do recently-promoted sides from this league suggest that it's better comparatively?

 

If we're so confidently stating that the school of 2023 is of that calibre, then I do hope expectations get drastically more realistic over months and years to come. Otherwise it could get disappointing!

People asserting football is better now never take into account conditions  Do people saying it is better today really think our side   which won the league is better than the invicibles  or  the Tottenham  Hotspur side of Blanchflower    Speaking as a oldie I  loved the sides of Dougan and Worthington  but  feel then Leicester crowds tended to put entertainment  before results 

[oohaahmustafa]

New Leicester 0 - 1 Old Leicester 

 

Old Leicester sit back soak up the pressure Mahrez slots old Vardy in on 88, rinses Vestergard and slots. Knee slide / ear cupping / shushing celebration towards new vardy on the bench. Vardy on Vardy scuffle. Both booked. 

[Steve_Walsh5]

Pearson’s team pisses all over this current bunch. 

[Foxin_Mad]

This aged well. 

[Steve_Walsh5]

On 26/12/2023 at 02:31, NeilLCFC said:

The fighting spirit Nigel’s team had is a huge reason I think that team beats this one.

This is something Nige addressed after 12/13 collapse. He got in a few older heads that the previous season we had missed. Not the most glamorous signings but they’d been around and were leaders. Something we are massively missing now.

[Tuna]

This team would be 1-0 up at 87 minutes and lose 3-1.

 

Nugent 89, Dyer 90+1, Taylor-Fletcher 90+5

Edited 4 March by Tuna

[Pliskin]

Yea, they had Vardy coming into his prime. 
 

Plus they had the grit required to get the job done. 

[don_danbury]

not sure. that pearson side did lose against some crap opposition. charlton, forest and sheff wednesday and we even drew against yeovil. 

i'd much rather watch that nigel pearson side than this current side tho

[Kinowe Soorie]

Counter attacked to death.

[blaaklint]

Our team atm scores more and concedes fewer, so at least on paper the answer is fairly straightforward. I'm not sure its that easy to answer though.

[Foxmeister]

It's difficult not to apply confirmation bias based on what the same players did 2 seasons later but Vardy, KS and Schmeichel particularly were not anywhere near the level in 2014 that they achieved down the line.

[Izzy]

On 25/12/2023 at 20:18, Pliskin said:

This is the best squad the championship has ever seen. You’ll see when we’ve got 117 points on the board. 

 

43 minutes ago, Pliskin said:

Yea, they had Vardy coming into his prime. 
 

Plus they had the grit required to get the job done. 

So which is it then?