Leicester City’s title defense got off to a rocky start when they lost to relegation favorites Hull City.
When Claudio Ranieri said ET landing was more likely than Leicester City defending their Premier League crown, perhaps people should’ve taken him more seriously. While one game is hardly ever indicative of a whole season, Ranieri’s men were still expected to win against Hull City, a team that most people have pegged for relegation. Instead, an uncharacteristically sloppy defensive performance resulted in a 2-1 loss, making you think this team really misses N’Golo Kante.
After a game like this, one has to ask the question: Is it possible for Leicester to fall so quickly after winning the Premier League title? In a word, yes, especially since we’ve seen it happen just last year. After Chelsea won the league, they stood pat in the transfer window, and they went from a first-place finish to a 10th-place one. That was hardly the only reason for their drop-off, but it was a key factor.
Keeping a winning core together is understandable, but the Premier League is a spending league, and you have to spend money in the off-season. While Leicester stood pat, in addition to losing one of their key contributors, the teams that finished below them engaged in an arms race to acquire the best players and managers.
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Leicester will also be taking part in the Champions League this year, and the prospect of balancing between the two competitions is something that will be foreign to them. As it stands, the Premier League already has a very busy schedule, being the only league that has games during Christmas and New Year’s, and anyone who competes in the Champions League knows how tough it is to balance the two. That’s why it’s been so long since an English team has even sniffed the Final. If Leicester are stumbling out of the gate already, imagine how they’re going to deal with having games mid-week.
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Combine all of that with the fact that defending in the modern Premier League era is practically impossible — it hasn’t been done since Manchester United won in 2008 and 2009 — and that might be why Ranieri put Leicester’s odds for winning the title at 6,000-to-1. It was a clever play on them winning despite 5,000-to-1 odds, but what he’s trying to say is that it will be more difficult this time around.
Seeing Leicester fall off so quickly after winning the Premier League title would be really strange, but for this team, it’s par for the course. This is a team that won the title within two years of being promoted; following the form book is not something that they do. There’s still plenty of time to turn things around, but this opening loss might not be the only time that Leicester fail to live up to expectations.