Premier League Hangover: Leicester City Host the Mother of All Parties

The pause was lovely. It’s not uncommon for a captain to steal a private moment on taking receipt of silverware before holding it aloft, and Wes Morgan was no different.

Tilting his head skywards with eyes clenched shut, it was as though he was caught in the peripheral space between sleep and consciousness, trying to prolong an extra few seconds enveloped in a dream he was afraid he may never be able to return to.

He needn’t have worried. Leicester City are no longer dreaming; Leicester City are the Premier League champions. It’s inscribed on the trophy, inked in the history books. The greatest underdog story ever told. Alongside Morgan stood Claudio Ranieri proud and dewy-eyed, just like everybody else inside, and outside, the King Power Stadium.

The first new champions of England since Nottingham Forest won it some 38 years ago in 1978 were irrepressible on the day, vanquishing Everton in a 3-1 scoreline grossly flattering to the sorry visitors.

The Foxes could win the title by the second-biggest points margin in English football history. If they can extend the 10-point advantage they currently hold at the summit by three points, they would match Everton’s dominance of the 1984/85 campaign. The Toffees won it then by 13 points, with Manchester United holding the record on 18 points in 1999/2000. Yet still some people dispute whether Leicester have been this season’s best team. 

Leicester’s deputy chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, has boldly claimed the club’s 14-year-old stadium may no longer be big enough. A punchy observation that could be put down to too much champagne and too little sleep; on the day, though, it looked a fair assessment of where Leicester may be heading. They won’t be priced at 5,000/1 for the UEFA Champions League.

By their very nature, processions can feel a bit like, well, processions really. When Liverpool and Manchester United used to dominate each season after next in their respective heydays, days like Saturday must have felt like fetching a plastic Christmas tree down from the loft. Stick on a bit of Queen, soak the gaffer in champagne, get the kids on the pitch and repeat on a loop.

Not this one. This was a celebration without precedent, and the better for it.

Here was a victory party as imagined by Willy Wonka, brilliantly bizarre. When Leicester were awarded a second penalty, and the crowd bellowed for Kasper Schmeichel to take it, I half expected Shinji Okazaki to get his customary hook so an Oompa Loompa could step from the substitutes’ bench to take it.

One couple dressed as pizza slices, a shirtless guy with more tattoos than an average-sized parlour rang a bell continuously, groups of Italian day-trippers soaked it all in without a ticket and not needing one to join the party, while others enjoyed a fairground that had sprung up next to a roundabout. All against a backdrop of free beer and pizza, elaborate fireworks and a reservoir of tears. Even the heavens shed one, opened as they did over 90 minutes in which Leicester played with not just the conviction of champions but with glorious elan.

It was as though they still needed a win to secure the title. N’Golo Kante’s third lung worked just as hard, Morgan and Co. blocked every ball, Jamie Vardy put in enough sprints to suggest he can remember his non-league days all too well, while Okazaki is still in the stadium now pressing the groundsman despite being threatened with a rake.

Legendary Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli had at his request got the proceedings underway 20 minutes before kick-off with an ethereal rendition of Nessun Dorma, No One Shall Sleep. The bald chap caught on camera having overdone it to the extent he kipped through it may disagree, otherwise it was a wonderfully apt choice for a city that hasn’t put its glass down since Monday night.

It was like Italia ’90 all over, except this time the guys you wanted to win were shedding tears of joy instead of those of the sorrowful variety.

Ranieri assisted Bocelli, who had lost his sight as a boy, on to the field. Without wishing to be gauche, gently guiding individuals who could have lost their way without a little help has been what Ranieri has done so shrewdly all season. He’s shown belief in talent that could have lain hidden in less adroit hands and given it a platform to flourish.

"We are champions because of you," Ranieri announced. "Thank you so much. I love you."

It's safe to say his feelings were reciprocated. There is not a sculptor in Leicester who won’t have drawn preparatory sketches.

In fairness, Everton could not have been more obliging guests. Had their players got off the team coach upon arrival at the King Power Stadium carrying vol-au-vents and a cheese board, few would have raised an eyebrow.

Often in games like these where the match itself is a mere precursor to the main event, the coronation, those to be fitted for a crown often fail to show up. Here, Leicester feasted on Everton like kings with gluttonous appetites. They tossed the Toffees aside like Henry VIII might have done with a finished ham hock—or wife.

A dead-rubber perhaps, but given Roberto Martinez is the proverbial dead man walking, he will have been desperate for his players to show the outside world, and those inside Everton’s boardroom, they are still playing for him. They emphatically did not.

The spirit they demonstrated throughout was so paper thin, you could have poked a finger through it. Everything Leicester were, Everton were not.

In Everton’s last two away games, they have conceded 70 shots to Leicester (33) and Liverpool (37) respectively. It’s a damning statistic.

Bearing in mind no Leicester player has been photographed since Monday without a bottle in their hand, Everton essentially failed to stop a stag party on the final day of a bender (when everyone is a little emotional and wants to go home without admitting it) from recording more shots than they have had against any other Premier League side this season.

It’s a wonder Joel Robles doesn’t take to the field wearing a crash helmet. It's well-known his agent negotiated danger money in lieu of clean-sheet bonuses as part of his last contract.

Even Martinez, the type of man who, if he were kidnapped and chained to a radiator would draw consolation from the fact his captors were finally making better use of the spare bedroom, had nothing positive to say.

According to the Liverpool Echo's Phil Kirkbridge, he spoke for no more than two minutes and answered "none at all" when asked if he could take any encouragement from the game.

Everton’s new major shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, would probably answer the same, if quizzed on Martinez’s chances of still being manager next season. 

Only five minutes had elapsed when Leicester took the lead. Andy King, in for the suspended Danny Drinkwater, ensured the combination that has led to more Leicester goals than any other this season was not missed as, in his pal’s absence, he provided an assist for Vardy. His clipped, smart and inviting centre into the box presented a battle of wits and movement between the forward and John Stones. 

As a contest, it was like throwing a Rubik’s Cube to a monkey and a giraffe and wondering who’d work it out first. The Everton defender took a couple of steps to the ball, Vardy licked his lips and impudently flicked his 23rd league goal of the season past Robles.

Stones’ deterioration has been startling, and many have laid the blame squarely at Martinez, who is not known to be overly fastidious when it comes to briefing his defenders. Telling the England international to defend now and again would be a start. 

It was King who scored Leicester’s second goal, sweeping home elegantly after Riyad Mahrez had done as he has all season in twisting a full-back’s blood, in this case Leighton Baines, before laying the ball on a plate for his team-mate. To think England could start at Euro 2016 with two Everton defenders.

For King, the only man to win League One, Championship and Premier League titles, it was a rare but deserved day in the sun driving rain having been the perfect club man all season.

Leicester’s success has been built on a relentless team ethic, and no player embodies the quality more than King. Despite playing second fiddle to the indefatigable Drinkwater and Kante all season, he genuinely seems as proud of the Foxes' achievements as any of his more feted team-mates. Not in a David May always at the front of photos kind of way but in a quietly dignified manner where he loves the badge on his shirt like so few others.

While Everton’s pedestrian possession saw them repeatedly meander down cul-de-sacs of false promise, Leicester again showed it’s not how much of the ball you have but what you do with it. With one game left, an average 42 per cent possession across the season is the third lowest in the division.

"

What a day.. What a trophy.. What a season.. What a team!! Words can't describe this feeling... #CHAMPIONS  pic.twitter.com/ajALzdg2t8

— Danny Drinkwater (@DannyDrinkwater) May 7, 2016"

Upon falling two goals behind just past the half-hour mark, Everton pretty much gave up in every respect, except in terms of conceding penalties. In all fairness, they showed due diligence in that particular field.

Vardy smashed the first low past Robles after Matthew Pennington had upended Jeffrey Schlupp. He then squandered the chance of a hat-trick goal when presented with Leicester’s second spot-kick of the day. The adrenaline seemed to get the better of him, as he lashed over from 12 yards, to remain one goal shy of Harry Kane in the battle for the Golden Boot.

By that stage nobody cared. Probably not even Vardy. Saturday was not about individuals or even the game. It was about something so much bigger, bigger than Leicester even, in some respects.

It was about celebrating sport’s capacity to transcend the parameters of what is perceived to be possible. The achievement of Ranieri and his players has given every player all the way down to wheezy-lunged Sunday Leaguers hope, misguided hope, but hope all the same. And sometimes that’s all you can ask for.

Leicester City, Premier League champions 2015/16.

Football, bloody hell.

After the Party Arrives the Hangover

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If the mother of all parties was held in Leicester on Saturday, the hangover to end all hangovers kicked in a day later in Manchester.

Ranieri’s address to Leicester’s supporters left barely a dry eye in the house; most of Manchester City’s brethren were back home before Manuel Pellegrini had bid farewell to three years and as many trophies, with a speech of his own.

A 2-2 draw with Arsenal means City’s UEFA Champions League destiny is now out of their hands and in those of neighbours Manchester United.

If Louis van Gaal can guide his team to victories at West Ham United on Wednesday and at home to Bournemouth on Sunday, City will be playing their European football in the UEFA Europa League next season. 

It proved to be the most miserable of backdrops as the Chilean and his players resurfaced from the bowels of the stadium 15 minutes after the game had ended to be greeted by more empty seats than Pellegrini probably deserved.

The rot had set in before Pep Guardiola was appointed as his successor, but since the announcement was made public at the start of February, just 21 points have been gleaned from 14 games. Had the season started post-Guardiola news, City would have finished 10th. 

Pellegrini is a dignified and gracious man. He’s also one who could call to inform you of a lottery win and make you feel a little bored by the time you’d placed the phone back on the receiver. He’s not what City need now. They need someone capable of firing a rocket up the collective derriere of a squad brimming with talent and about as much complacency. Few would dispute Guardiola is not that man.

However, after the tempestuous years of Roberto Mancini, Pellegrini was what City needed at the time of his appointment to steady a ship steering dangerously off course. He deserves credit, even with an open chequebook, for guiding them to a second Premier League title and a first Champions League semi-final in his time at the helm.

There's no need for a statue, but he deserved more than a smattering of supporters having waited around to see him off.

Defoe the Difference-Maker in 3-Way Battle to Stay up

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In October last year, Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce dropped Jermain Defoe to the substitutes’ bench with a flea in his ear and a warning that specialist goal-poachers are anachronistic in the modern game.

"There is always a place for a goalscorer but you cannot just be a goalscorer today so I don’t know if that’s something we need to address with Jermain," Allardyce opined, per the Guardian.

It seemed to me at the time to be akin to complaining about a model only being beautiful or lamenting Jimi Hendrix for not being much of a cook.

It was a little disappointing thereafter when Allardyce failed to conclude his post-match press conferences with a Shakespeare soliloquy or a little jazz piece in the improvisational style of Thelonious Monk. He settled for just being a manager, which presumably he felt was enough.

Fast forward six months and it’s hard to think of too many pound-for-pound players in the Premier League who have had a bigger individual impact on their side's season.

The English forward has scored 15 leagues goals for Sunderland, 10 more than his closest team-mate Fabio Borini. In total, he’s responsible for more than a third of the Wearsiders' 43 league goals, with 14 of their 35 points having been won by Defoe opportunism. 

It’s an eye for goal showing no sign of fading, despite the 33-year-old being in the twilight years of a career as a specialist goal-poacher. A specialist goal-poacher who has more than likely single-handedly kept Sunderland in the Premier League. Unlikely but might Defoe’s name have popped into Roy Hodgson’s head at the sight of Danny Welbeck hobbling off for Arsenal on Sunday?

His winner on Saturday in a breathless encounter against Chelsea means Sunderland now need just one win from their remaining two matches to be assured of safety.

Everton ("Sam, mate, Roberto here, just checking whether you wanted sour or cream cheese with the smoked salmon") are the visitors to the Stadium of Light on Wednesday, with Sunderland able to save themselves and relegate Newcastle United and Norwich City in the process with a three-point haul.

Defoe left the field in tears on Saturday, with the raw energy of Sunderland’s crowd leaving him exposed emotionally. It was an outpouring much to his chagrin when he composed himself post-match, via the Daily Mail:

"

Don’t tell anyone I cried! It is hard not [to]. It is crazy. The fans won us the game. Even when you are tired, when the fans roar like that you find something, you find an energy.

I was emotional after the goal and also in the tunnel. It was just the noise, it was frightening, it was even louder than the derby.

I don’t know what is wrong with me! As I get older, man, I am just getting too emotional.

"

Had either of Newcastle or Norwich had Defoe at their disposal as opposed to Sunderland, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have hauled them to a similar state of near safety.

It was Defoe’s last-gasp penalty last weekend that salvaged a draw for Sunderland at Stoke City, for what was an 11th goal away from home this season.

"He hasn’t been starved of service but, for me, the pleasing thing is he scores goals continuously while playing up front on his own," said Allardyce, per the Sunday Times.

"People have suggested he couldn’t do that all his career. He’s proved everybody wrong."

Yeah, to think people doubted Defoe, as if. 

The former Tottenham Hotspur man now needs just two more Premier League goals to take him to 145 and usurp Robin Van Persie in the all-time top goalscorer list at No. 10.

If Stones is assigned to mark him in midweek, it could prove a double celebration for Sunderland and Defoe.

All stats provided by WhoScored.com unless otherwise stated.