Premier League Hangover: Leicester City on the Verge of True Sporting Glory

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them," wrote John Updike.

The great American writer probably didn't have Wes Morgan on his mind when he encouraged the world to hold onto their dreams.

Towering headers from strapping centre-halves rarely come up in discussions about sport and its transcendental qualities. Maybe they should.

For if Leicester City secure the four victories they require to win the Premier League title, after Sunday's win over Southampton took them seven points clear with six games remaining, every book ever published about sport and its capacity to amaze will need a revised edition that includes a whole new chapter.

It's usually difficult to know in the moment if you are witnessing something of true sporting significance. Events that stand the test of time to become something bigger than the parameters of a particular sport are rare to the point it needs a story like Leicester's to remind us they are not extinct.  

It doesn't take Hugh McIlvanney to tell you what is unfolding is something very special. 

Updike's most famous work is his "Rabbit" series that chronicles the life of everyman character Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a former high school basketball star who never fulfills his sporting ambition.

Had Updike been writing the same novels today, he might have had Angstrom playing for Leicester City in an altogether different story. After all, few sides demonstrate so many everyman qualities as Claudio Ranieri's. If Robert Huth had been an award-winning butcher in another life, few would raise an eyebrow.

Unlike Rabbit, the Foxes are showing no sign of being caught in the headlights.

We are now at the stage of the season when the Premier League’s resident mathematician is allowed out of his box.

If second-place Tottenham Hotspur win all six of their remaining matches, they will finish the season on 80 points. With Leicester currently on 69 points, they need 12 more before Morgan is assured of getting his hands on silverware.

By the time Tottenham play next, on Sunday at White Hart Lane against Manchester United, Leicester will be 10 points clear if they win at Sunderland. 

Leicester could be crowned Premier League champions when they play Manchester United on May 1, if they beat Sunderland, West Ham United and Swansea City in their next three games. And why wouldn't they? In the past 12 months they have won 18 more points than any other club. 

Of course, if Spurs drop points between now and Leicester’s trip to Old Trafford, the race could be over even sooner. 

Leicester can afford to lose a third of their remaining matches and still win the league, even if their closest rivals win all of theirs. Read that back and let it sink in.

That just-about-audible choking sound appears to be emanating from Manchester and the red side of north London.

For a man who will probably be heard chuckling from the coffin at his own funeral, Ranieri seemed uncharacteristically tense before kick-off on Sunday.

A pre-match chat with broadcaster Sky Sports is invariably a contractual obligation to be endured rather than enjoyed. Even still, the Italian, normally genial to a fault, seemed irritable, particularly when asked what effect Tottenham's draw at Liverpool could have on his side's game. 

At least the home supporters had the benefit of a free drink (and doughnut) to neuter nerves, as Leicester chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha bought the world’s largest round on Sunday to celebrate his birthday the following day.

Leicester’s fans responded in kind with a "Happy Birthday" message flown overhead by a plane. Football supporters clubbing together to wish a chairman well? Wake me, Updike, I'm literally dreaming. 

As birthday gifts go, a fourth successive 1-0 victory (a fifth in six matches), using the exact same starting XI for a fourth game in a row, takes some beating. The Foxes have won by this scoreline seven times this season. In a recent interview with Sky Sports, Sir Alex Ferguson spoke of how titles are won by fine margins.

"We won eight games 1-0 and won the league," Ferguson said of Manchester United's title-winning campaign of 1995/96 when they overhauled Newcastle United at the summit. "These are championship-winning games without question."

No side in the Premier League has won more matches by a solitary goal than Leicester's 14.

Ranieri has made just 25 changes to his side all season, 14 fewer than any other Premier League club. From the main stand in the sky, Bill Shankly has been channelling Jim Royle in muttering to anyone who'll listen: "Squad game, my arse."

Sunday’s game was tense in the manner all games in a title run-in tend to be. There was little difference to Leicester’s performance at the weekend than many of Chelsea’s at the back end of their title campaign last season.

A day earlier, Spurs' draw at Anfield was similarly tense. The difference being Leicester got the job done.

Morgan's winning goal on 38 minutes arrived shortly after the game's most contentious incident, when Southampton were adamant they should have been awarded a penalty. A smart counter-attack saw Graziano Pelle cutely play in Sadio Mane who, after rounding Kasper Schmeichel, had Danny Simpson's arm block his shot en route to an unguarded goal.

Referee Michael Oliver ruled it unintentional as Ronald Koeman on the touchline emitted more steam than a steak slung on to a sizzling frying pan. If he had one to hand, he would have chased the official around the field with it like a Laurel and Hardy sketch. 

His mood was hardly tempered when Morgan settled the contest after towering over Jordy Clasie in the biggest mismatch since Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett to plant a peach of a header past the otherwise immaculate Fraser Forster.

Leicester's talismanic captain and all-round good egg was touch and go to play due to illness. He stepped from his sickbed to continue a remarkable run of having played every minute this season. Not a bad time to score a first goal of the season either.

Someone I know who certainly isn't me thought to himself, "Morgan could definitely do a job for England at the Euros" before remembering he might be tired having spent the summer playing for Jamaica in both the Gold Cup and Copa America.

Morgan may not be eligible for England, but Marc Albrighton is. Given how practically every Leicester player heralded as unsung this season has ended up playing for their country, it seems a little churlish on Roy Hodgson's part if he's not at least had a look. He certainly outshone a jaded Riyad Mahrez on Sunday.

The Algerian looks knackered to the point that it wouldn't be a surprise if he stepped straight onto the plane for his summer holidays still wearing his kit. On the contrary, Albrighton, with his incisive diagonal runs inside and Steve Guppy-esque deliveries, is in fine fettle. An east Midlands-based bunny is almost certainly missing its Duracell.

To borrow from Updike again, he once said "celebrity is a mask that eats into the face," meaning when one becomes aware of being watched, of being spoken of with any kind of reverence, the temptation is to change, to mould oneself into another's perception of who we are.

What Leicester have done, to a man, is resist that temptation. It has often been asked of Ranieri and his players this season whether they know how good they are. Equally important though—if less commented upon—is the fact they also appreciate their limitations.

Morgan and Huth work so well as a partnership because they accept they are not Franco Baresi and Franz Beckenbauer. They might not be able to pass a ball like John Stones, but if the Everton man was half the defender of either of them, the Toffees' goals-conceded column would look a whole lot healthier.

Leicester's defending pretty much from the moment they scored could be—and has been—described as "desperate." By its very nature, though, should defending not always be desperate? Maybe that's why Leicester are enjoying so many shutouts. Perhaps "unapologetically" better summarises how they defend their goal.

Southampton exerted territorial pressure on Leicester both before and after Morgan's goal, yet save for an excellent Schmeichel tip over on the stretch from Jose Fonte's speculative drive from range, it's hard to recall the Dane making a stop of note. 

In the opposition goal, Forster made one of the saves of the season in the second half when he reeled backwards to spare his captain Fonte's blushes when he looped Danny Drinkwater's cross towards his own goal.

Leicester would have been further out of sight had Forster not been at his sharpest to deny Simpson, who in finding the centre of the goal from no more than a few yards demonstrated he's an excellent tackler. Vardy, too, was denied by his England team-mate, this time courtesy of a fine stop with an outstretched boot. 

Leicester are the best side in the league; they are not the best players.

Tales of how Vardy was wearing boots made from stale bread and strawberry laces just a couple of years back, and how Mahrez had only previously played with a ball made up of a cabbage in a sock before arriving in England, become more hackneyed with each retelling. Yet to be cynical about Leicester’s story says more about the cynic than it does the subject of their ridicule, however gentle it may be. 

There are zero illusions of grandeur in this Leicester side, which is something to behold. In an era when a middling Premier League full-back can own a watch collection worth more than a family-size home, that’s quite the achievement on the part of Ranieri, his backroom staff and the players themselves.

Vardy and Shinji Okazaki set the tone from the front.

Arguably the hardest-working strike partnership since Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish, the manner in which Leicester work from front-to-back is infectious.

Alan Hansen's description of Liverpool’s strikers in his autobiography A Matter of Opinion, at a time when the Merseysiders reigned supreme, equally holds true of Leicester's. 

"

The way Liverpool Leicester tried to make it difficult for opposing teams—by compressing the play in the other half of the field and denying the opposition time and space to settle on the ball there—involved all the players.

The strikers were important as anyone in this; indeed, in situations where Liverpool Leicester lost the ball inside the opposing penalty area, our front players, by being closest to the ball, were the starting point for this "pressing game".

I have never seen another team 'defend from the front' in this way more than Liverpool Leicester when they had Ian Rush Jamie Vardy and Kenny Shinji operating together.

"

Note Hansen’s suspicious use of inverted commas when discussing "pressing." It’s almost as if it existed before Jurgen Klopp invented it.  

Several supporters were still queuing for their doughnut when Vardy launched himself into his first challenge. Those in the belly of the King Power Stadium must have thought they had missed a goal, such was the level of appreciation the home faithful showed.

Ryan Bertrand lay sprawled on the turf as if hit by a dumper truck. Vardy pointed his blue wrist club cast to the sky in the manner of He-Man and the Sword of Grayskull. His tackle on Steven Davis just before half-time was agricultural to the point that Southampton's physio drove on to the field in a tractor. 

It's these things that can’t be measured by statistics.

How do you quantify the value of a shuddering tackle of controlled malevolence that makes the crowd rise as one, which in turn makes every player in that Leicester side believe that leaving the field anything less than spent to the point of exhaustion would be tantamount to treason?

Maybe it doesn't matter.

After all, the only numbers that are important are these: Leicester City will be 2015/16 Premier League champions if they win 12 more points from their next six matches. 

Updike may just have been right.

No shame for Spurs, but is a draw enough at this stage of the season? 

Premier League giant leaves it too late, Part I

 
Premier League giant leaves it too late, Part II

 
Premier League giant leaves it too late, Part III

 
Premier League giant leaves it too late, Part IV 

 
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