Leicester are redefining failure
Leicester this season, and possible every season hence, exist apart from the rest of the Premier League. They cannot be judged by the same standard as the other 19 teams, even as they are awarded the same number of points for wins and draws and, increasingly often, losses.
“It’s a sad fact of the human condition,” Jon Champion mused during the first half of the the Foxes’ comprehensive 3-0 defeat to Chelsea, “that when you get as high as Leicester did last year, the only way is down.”
But what if there’s another way, and that way is into some kind existential void, and “down” not being a direction in this void, what if Leicester now exist in a sort of parallel universe, wavering uncriticizably between memories of the most unlikely triumph in Premier League history and the more sobering present, where that triumph is simultaneously the cause of and excuse for every new failure? Or sideways?
In some respect, Leicester are confirming many of the things we suspected last season. In particular, that the manner of their success was so unique, historically and otherwise, they would collapse (or at least decline) once the unique confluence of conditions that made it possible un-confluenced itself. In another respect, nothing they do this season matters, because how could it?
Here’s a difficult claim to analyze: Leicester are better now than they were 12 months ago. This might seem, on the face of it, ridiculous. Leicester won the league last season, and are currently 14th (yes, it’s early, but it seems unlikely they’ll challenge even for the top six). In what way are they better now than they were 12 months ago?
But it’s not an unreasonable suggestion.
N’Golo Kante has been missed, of course, but Islam Slimani, Ahmed Musa and an older, wiser Demarai Gray provide greater and more varied depth in attack. Daniel Amartey is no Kante, but he’s a talented young midfielder; it’s not as if the Foxes are playing with 10 men. Luis Hernandez, meanwhile, is a valuable option in defense and, lest we forget, Kasper Schmeichel, Robert Huth, Wes Morgan, Danny Drinkwater, Marc Albrighton, Shinji Okazaki, Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy are all still around.
In short, Kante’s departure alone can’t account for the drop off Leicester are experiencing this season. And so we are left to look for more, shall we say, intangible explanations, explanations having to do with things like focus and desire.
And there seems to be something to them — especially when looking at Leicester’s woeful set-piece defending, their sluggish start to games, the apparent lack of enthusiasm which has doomed so many of their formerly hyperactive counterattacks. Kante has left a tactical hole, but the bigger problem this season has been a sort of emotional hole.
It’s possible Kante’s departure explains this, too, but the more likely explanation is that when you win the most unlikely title in literally ever, there’s bound to be some sort of comedown. Leicester in the second half of last season seemed to be propelled by the feeling of their own impossibility as much as anything else.
Now that feeling is gone, and they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. And we, in turn, are left with very little to say about them. Or rather, everything we say about them feels almost immediately pointless. Because every time Leicester disappoint us, we are forced to confront their historic, impossible success, and it sends tumbling once more into the void, where the only thing that makes sense is N’Golo Kante, tackling his way through eternity.
Bob Bradley makes chaotic debut
It should probably come as no surprise that Bob Bradley’s first game in charge of Swansea didn’t make any sense at all. That is, in the end, the American way, a certain kind of chaos. The question is how controlled the chaos was, how deliberate.
On a scale, let’s say, of Tim Sherwood to Jurgen Klopp, the answer is approximately Harry Redknapp, which history suggests is more than enough to survive in this league.
Of course we should resist the temptation to read too much into this match. Bradley’s been at the club only two weeks, one week of which coincided with an international break, and his first game came away from home against one of the league’s elite teams. That’s not a recipe for serious insight. Nonetheless, here we are.
In the first 20 or so minutes against Arsenal, Bradley seemed to have set his side up as many managers set their sides up at the Emirates: to defend. They weren’t doing it particularly convincingly, even before Theo Walcott opened the scoring in the 26th minute, but the approach itself made sense.
It made even more sense for a side that had conceded 12 goals in seven matches before Bradley took over. And we saw early and often why that was the case, as the Swans dropped progressively deeper in the face of Arsenal’s attack.
“Don’t concede” has always been one of the central tenets of relegation avoidance. In that much, Bradley failed his first test as Swansea manager. But “don’t concede” falls under a larger, umbrella tenet, which is this: be hard to beat.
If you’re hard to beat, some teams will not be able to beat you, and if some teams are not able to beat you, you’ll be able to beat them. The easiest way (or maybe just the most popular) to be hard to beat is to be hard to score against, but there’s another, dare I say, more American way, which is just simply to keep going, to not stop until the referee says you have to, because the match is over.
Swansea weren’t able to get a result Saturday, but they weren’t far off, and while some of that had to do with Granit Xhaka doing two strange and inexplicable things, other parts of it had to do with the fact Swansea seemed not even remotely to be demoralized by the fact they were being so comprehensively outplayed. In short, they didn’t give up.
That’s a valuable trait. The trick now is finding a way to sustain it over the course of the season, especially against the league’s less glamorous sides, against whom Swansea will be required to do more than just play their role as plucky underdogs.
Bradley’s USMNT were often at their best, as USMNT’s typically are, with their backs against the wall — almost every match at the 2010 World Cup springs to mind here — and if Saturday’s game is any indication, Bradley’s Swansea will be similar in that regard.
The league format poses new and different challenges, and Swansea are likely to look very different come the end of the season, but if they’re going to drag themselves out of the drop zone, they must maintain the spirit, if not the tactics, they displayed against Arsenal.
Weekly Awards
The Simone Zaza Award for Worst Penalty: Christian Benteke
There was a lot of competition for this award, as Kevin de Bruyne and Sergio Aguero both had spot kicks saved by Maarten Stekelenberg. Both penalties were on target, however, and both were at near identical heights to the keeper’s left, so they lose points for (relative) competence and unoriginality. Enter Christian Benteke, who, with a chance to draw his side level against West Ham, missed both high and wide, which, despite penalties being very much binary things, is even worse than either high or wide. It was a typically nonchalant Benteke penalty run up, except instead of rolling the ball into the bottom corner as he is wont to do, he opened up his body, seemingly forever, until the ball was lost somewhere in the floodlit rain.
The 2010 World Cup Award for Anticlimax: Liverpool 0-0 Manchester United
This was supposed to be the match of the week. England’s two most successful clubs squaring off in their biannual history-swinging contest, with the sense of occasion ratcheted up a few notches thanks to the arrival of Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho (that’s a big improvement on Brendan Rodgers and Louis van Gaal). After the fact, a boring 0-0 felt entirely predictable — what else was Mourinho going to do away from home but set his side up to kill the game? He did an excellent job of it, too, with the help of a couple of characteristically mind-boggling saves from David de Gea. Still, only four shots on target and no real controversy is not what you expect out of a game of this magnitude. Liverpool’s re-jigged midfield (injuries forced Georginio Wijnaldum out of the squad and Adam Lallana onto the bench, so Emre Can started his first match of the season and Philippe Coutinho was dropped into a deeper role) struggled to find much fluency in the face of United’s defense, and the game never really fizzled into life.
The Paul Pogba Award for Second Comings: Victor Moses
Antonio Conte’s switch to a back three may or may not be a viable long-term solution to Chelsea’s problems, but it has if nothing else proved to be the perfect system for, of all people, Victor Moses, who has spent most of the three seasons since the Blues bought him both confused and on loan.
In the two games Conte has played a 3-4-3 (both comfortable wins against bottom-half teams) Moses has been arguably the Chelsea’s best player. His goal against Leicester was his second of the campaign and at this point, even if he’s dropped — there’s a possibility once John Terry returns to full fitness that Terry will play in the back three, pushing Cesar Azpilicueta to right wingback and Moses onto the bench — you get the sense he’s going to be an important contributor off the bench. This is fast becoming one of the feel-good stories of the season.
The Sir Alex Ferguson Award for Unremarkable Result-Getting: Southampton
There they are, where they always are, in eighth place. Southampton endured their customary departures last summer, this time losing Graziano Pelle, Sadio Mane, Victor Wanyama and their manager, Ronald Koeman. In came Claude Puel, Nathan Redmond and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, and after only two points from their first three games, the Saints are back where they belong. They’ve now won three of their last four, and look set to challenge Everton as the best side outside of the top six. There will (presumably, maybe) come a season when Southampton’s inability to keep hold of their best players catches up to them, but it is not this season.
The Not Jose Mourinho Award for Amicable Touchline Relations: Pep Guardiola and Ronald Koeman
The glory days of the managerial feud are mostly behind us, despite Alan Pardew’s best efforts. Managers are simply not around long enough at the same clubs anymore to really learn to hate each other. Instead, we are forced to witness the twin touchline indignities of respect and admiration, or, in the case of Pep Guardiola and Ronald Koeman, decades-long friendship. Koeman taught Guardiola everything he knows back when they were both playing for Barcelona and now the student has become the master and Koeman thinks Guardiola’s Manchester City are the best team he’s ever faced as a manager and it all just warms the cockles of your stupid heart. Disgusting.