Premier League Hangover: Leicester Party Postponed as All Eyes Turn to Tottenham

To Stamford Bridge.

It’s a measure of where we are currently that Leicester City’s failure to beat Manchester United at Old Trafford, to secure the three points they needed to wrap up the Premier League title with a couple of matches to spare, seemed a bit of a damp squib.

We’re getting picky about how and where Leicester are going to win it. What a glorious off-kilter season. That the final line of one of the most improbable stories in football history could now be written at the King Power Stadium seems a fitting finale to the most human and idiosyncratic of tales.

Given Manchester United’s home record (11 wins, five draws and two defeats) is bettered only by Leicester, a 1-1 draw at English football’s most successful club is hardly cause for Lesley Gore-style "It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To" histrionics. Especially considering the point it gleaned means the Foxes now need just two more from as many remaining matches (Everton at home and Chelsea away) to be certain of a first title in a 132-year history.

In any case, it would have seemed grossly impertinent to start the party on Sunday as the newly crowned Football Writers’ Player of the Year Jamie Vardy sat on the naughty step. Had Vardy been available on Sunday, they may well have had the cutting edge to get the job done on the day. A 20-minute spell at the start of the second half when they repeatedly hit United on the counter-attack was crying out for the searing pace of their 22-goal top scorer.

Leonardo Ulloa put in another valiant shift in his absence, and while his aerial prowess unsettled United’s defence all afternoon, he never quite looked like troubling them with his feet.

Of course, Leicester could win it without even playing. Derby County’s players found out they had won the league in 1972 while holidaying in Mallorca. Leicester’s have said they will watch Tottenham’s game at Chelsea as a group, like a band of expectant fathers reassuring one another while pacing the corridors of a congested labour ward. Expect cigars and champagne should Chelsea do them a favour.

Spurs cannot afford any slip-up from the three remaining matches. To ensure their title aspirations stave off a flat line and a high-pitched beep for another game at least, only a win in west London on Monday night will suffice.

It will be no easy task given Chelsea hate Spurs so much even Eden Hazard is threatening to end his season-long sabbatical to make an appearance. He’ll probably take to the field in flip-flops brandishing a pina colada, but with the transfer window set to be prised ajar, the Belgian will have all the motivation he needs.

Leicester’s players left the field on Sunday to a rapturous and generous reception from all four sides of the ground. On a weekend in which people old enough to drive cars held up homemade placards to hound a man of an eligible age for a free bus pass, it was reassuring to see a group of football supporters act with such magnanimous civility.

Leicester’s success has provided the perfect antidote to the self-entitlement so often proffered by the elite. Arsenal supporters talk of a title drought as if they are lamenting a lack of a basic human right. The sound you can hear emitting from my keyboard as I type is the world’s smallest violin being played.

The last time an opponent had been afforded a gesture of such lofty reverence at Old Trafford was back in 2003, when Real Madrid striker Ronaldo brutalised United’s back four with a hat-trick befitting of a museum and its own security guard. That’s the company Leicester keeps these days. They may have enjoyed just 30 per cent possession, but this was no smash-and-grab job on their travels. You don’t get standing ovations for being plucky alone.

Heads were held high, as well they might, yet there was a sense of quiet frustration over a job left half- done. The coronation was to be delayed. There was to be no knees-up in The Rovers on Manchester’s famous cobbles. Poor Betty had whipped up a special "Huth Hotpot" as well.

In Leicester, everything was set too. The champagne was on ice, bunting draped, sausages battered blue to resemble reconstituted Smurf meat and the town hall aglow in the same hue. Richard III (his statue, not remains) was adorned in a club scarf, while one coffee shop made it literally possible to drink in Vardy's success.

It would be melodramatic to describe events at Old Trafford as being akin to a surprise party where the recipient doesn’t show up; it was more a surprise party where the guest of honour retires to a bedroom after five minutes complaining of a headache. Everyone still had a drink, albeit unsure how much consumption is sociably acceptable in the circumstances.

According to the Telegraph, the unlikeliest title challenge in perhaps not just the history of the Premier League, but English football since its inception as a league format in 1888, has attracted unprecedented global interest. The report states in recent weeks documentary crews have pitched up from as far afield as Japan, America, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Ghana, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, China, Spain, Norway, South Korea, Brazil and Greece.

For the first quarter-of-an-hour, Leicester’s marketing department must have hoped at least one shanked clearance was propelled high enough to interfere with satellite signals, to send distorted pictures back to new-found, far-flung fans.

With United demonstrating atypical pugnacious spirit, seemingly released from the shackles of processes and principles in the pursuit of Manchester City in fourth, as Jose Mourinho hid in the bushes wearing a half-and-half scarf, Leicester were rocking.

Perhaps for the first time in the run-in, if not the whole season, they looked uncertain of themselves. Doubts the rest of us have harboured all campaign had never previously penetrated the most Teflon-like group of players. Yet here, Leicester looked hurried and harassed in everything they did. Only seven minutes had elapsed when the cheer inside Old Trafford was matched in north London.

A Leicester defence breached just twice in its last seven matches found itself pulled all over the place. Christian Fuchs was overloaded at left-back as Antonio Valencia got in behind on the overlap, to clip over an inviting cross to the back post. Danny Simpson was then guilty of ball-watching as he was sucked into the centre, to leave Anthony Martial all alone as the Frenchman drifted in from the left channel, as is his wont, to steer past Kasper Schmeichel with customary cool concision. OptaJoe noted Martial's impressive stats:

The 20-year-old is scarily good, and in possession of a poker face that makes him look as if he’s reduced the art of scoring goals to the level of a teenager asked to set up a television set by an older relative. It’s with an almost disinterested, yet at the same time calmly authoritative, shrug he gets the job done: "Of course I can get it working score season-defining goals."

Every time I watch him get up with icy eyes after being upended by a careless centre-half yet again, wearing an expression of absolute nothingness, it reminds me of when Todd shoots the kid on a bike in Breaking Bad without so much as blinking. He’s blood-type ice.

For a few minutes immediately afterwards, Leicester looked like a boxer trying to disguise feeling disorientated, after a blow shook them to the boots. A better United side would have ensured they never got back up; the current incarnation would rather first write a thesis on the processes involved in the goal than chase another. Had Schmeichel not demonstrated granite wrists minutes later, when Jesse Lingard hit a daisy-cutter towards his near post, it would have been an undertaker rather than smelling salts required.

Wes Morgan took a deep breath before regrouping and reorganising his teammates. The fortitude of champions was soon evident once more, as Leicester ensured no one saw the soles of their boots again. A colossus at both ends of the field, Morgan is such a leader of men, it seems almost a waste he’s never been stranded on a desert island. He’d enjoy nothing more than making a boat from driftwood and soggy in-flight magazines or killing a wild boar with his bare hands. Morgan's comments exhibit his leadership skills, as he praised his teammates and thanked fans:

On Sunday he settled for scoring an equaliser, bullying his marker Marcos Rojo to head in Danny Drinkwater’s set piece. For a manager so fastidious in his note-taking, it seems strange Louis van Gaal failed to notice how Rojo marking Morgan was the biggest mismatch since Elton John went down the isle with Renate Blauel. Each time the Leicester man was ushered into United’s box, he caused mayhem and could have scored at least another as Rojo repeatedly floundered.

Both teams had chances to win it; both will feel at least partially aggrieved with referee Michael Oliver.

When a typhoon met a hurricane in Leicester’s box as Robert Huth and Marouane Fellaini got up close and personal while waiting for a set piece, it could have simultaneously resulted in the award of a United penalty and a red card for the latter.

The home fans felt Simpson’s tussle with Lingard on the half-hour mark, as he looked to clear up his own mess after gifting the United forward a run on goal, merited a red card. Simpson lent in on his man, but to deem it anything more than a show of superior strength would have been harsh in the extreme.

Next it was the turn of the away end to be up in arms.

Riyad Mahrez crashed to the floor after flummoxing Rojo with a trademark turn everyone knows is coming but no one quite knows how to stop. Rojo certainly didn’t. Oliver weighed it up and presumably thought Mahrez, a la Vardy against West Ham United, had thrown himself into the challenge. The award of neither a penalty nor yellow card for simulation spoke volumes. Oliver darted off like a dog owner pretending he hadn’t noticed a call of nature had afflicted his pooch.

Ranieri shared his thoughts on Monday Night Football:

The game’s most contentious moment arrived at its death. Drinkwater’s hand, it wasn’t quite a tug, on Memphis Depay’s shoulder as he darted past him was deemed worthy of a second yellow card.

Oliver, in his haste to brandish a first red card of Drinkwater’s career, failed to spot Depay’s foot was on the line of the penalty area. His hand was just outside, busy as it was deleting his Instagram account of any pictures posted of him wearing a Manchester United shirt. He’ll likely unfollow Oliver too now after Sunday.

Drinkwater, outstanding all afternoon on his return to the club where he started his career but never started a game, appeared to say to Oliver as he left the field: "You can’t (send me off?)."

The Football Association’s lip readers can’t believe their luck, charging as they do double time on Bank Holidays. Football’s Mary Whitehouse brigade may have further evidence to add to their case to have Leicester stripped of the title should they win it.

The post-match interviews unearthed little of real note yet somehow captured the oddest of seasons perfectly. Ranieri was first up, confirming he would almost certainly miss Tottenham’s game at Chelsea on Monday night due to a dinner date he had scheduled with his 96-year-old mother back in Italy. Sky Sports’ incredulous interviewer nearly choked on his fluffy mike as he tried to compute the fact some people, grown adult people, might actually prefer their mothers to Monday Night Football.

He was chocking on something different entirely not long after when Van Gaal issued a remarkable, and all the more brilliant for it, defence of Manchester’s second-most famous elbow behind Guy Garvey. Fellaini’s weapons of mass destruction had in the first half connected with Huth’s windpipe after the German had run his fingers through the Belgian’s hair in a manner less than tender.

Van Gaal certainly thought so, as he responded to being quizzed on the incident by tugging said reporter’s own hair, before ensuring a glut of red-faced parents across the country were forced to explain to confused offspring why hair pulling in a sadomasochistic sense would escape a Football Association retrospective ban for violent conduct.

"Your hair is much shorter than Fellaini but, when I do that, what are you doing then? It’s a reaction," an animated Van Gaal said in his post-match interview with Patrick Davison of Sky Sports. For the record the interviewer did not react by elbowing the Dutchman in the chops.

"Every human being who is grabbed by the hair [reacts], only with sex masochism, then it is allowed but not in other situations."

All before the watershed and to think some people want him out.

To Stamford Bridge.

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