Premier League Preview: Will Leicester City Get the Job Done at Old Trafford?

Oddly, Old Trafford would make an apt venue for the climax of the most remarkable of Premier League seasons. Oscillating as it has on a fortnightly basis between the theatre of the absurd and the theatre of daydreams, on Sunday it could finally realign itself with its original self-styled moniker: The Theatre of Dreams.

Leicester City’s dream, but a dream nonetheless. 

Had the notion of three points on Sunday being enough to secure the Premier League title been mooted over the summer, it would have been deemed fanciful, if not quite fanciful enough to be dismissed as impossible.

Few thought Manchester United genuine contenders, even if Louis Van Gaal’s close season of lavish spending saw the club's accountant take to signing official cheques with his own tears. Ed Woodward hasn’t moved out of the foetal position since signing off £25 million for Memphis Depay.

As for Leicester, the bookmakers had 5,000 reasons why they wouldn’t win it. Had anyone suggested the Foxes as challengers, it is likely family and friends would have staged an intervention. That’s genuinely the position Leicester have come from. And now they’re more than likely going to win it. Three points on Sunday would get them over the line with two games to spare. 

Did you hear that? Leicester City are going to win the Premier League. This is not a War of the Worlds-style hoax. Leicester expletive City are going to win the Premier League. Do you compute? This is not a drill. Please do not adjust your set. The revolution will be televised (if you subscribe to Sky Sports).

Leicester City are going to win the Premier League. 

As a rule, football supporters as a mass of people are capable of splitting hairs in a manner perhaps only matched by General Woundwort’s despot reign of terror in Watership Down.

Yet even still, never before in the history of English football has a single season prompted the necessity to recalibrate what constitutes success all the way from top to bottom, from the haves to the have-nots.

The Premier League is suffering the biggest identity crisis since a fisherman pulled Jason Bourne from the sea. No wonder he always looks confused: "Leicester City are top, what the flying f…"

Tottenham Hotspur are as steely as they are stylish. Bournemouth have six fewer points than Chelsea and have been in holiday mode since March. West Ham United are fifth. Southampton are bidding for European football for a second successive season. Stoke City are pretty on the eye, but a soft touch.

Watford are toying with the idea of getting rid of a manager who has guided them to 12th in the league and an FA Cup semi-final in his first season. Arsenal and Manchester City trail Leicester by 12 points. Manchester United are 17 points off the pace, Chelsea an eye-watering 29.

Tony Pulis must look in the mirror these days and wonder whether he still exists. Who wants steady and stable, when Leicester have proved spectacular is achievable on a relative shoestring?

What Leicester have done is allow every supporter in the country, and beyond, to dream a little, and that’s going to be a nightmare for all Premier League managers.

In all likelihood it will probably go back to normal next season, but not before a number have paid the price for failing to find a Riyad Mahrez or Jamie Vardy over the summer, or not making that midfielder found in the cupboard Danny Drinkwater.

It seems deliciously appropriate that a Premier League campaign so odd it could have been scripted by David Lynch could reach its crescendo by crowning Leicester City its champion at the home of English football’s most successful club.

To win a first top-flight championship in a 132-year history by beating the 20-time winners would be poignantly befitting of Leicester’s wholly unique achievement.

Given Manchester United have agreed next season to hand out gum shields with all season tickets to prevent the gnashing of teeth inside Old Trafford, one could reasonably expect their record at home this term to be nothing to write home about.

On the contrary, it’s really rather impressive. Leicester have quite the job on, even if somehow, remarkably, it seems almost anticlimactic.

Whether it’s the fact Leicester have been top for so long—five months and counting—or reverse psychology has come into play, in that repeatedly being told Leicester are doing the impossible has made it seem the exact opposite thank you very much, there is almost a blase attitude prevalent with regards to what may actually unfold.

When Leicester dropped points to West Ham a fortnight ago, and Spurs battered Stoke, many aired the view Claudio Ranieri’s side might struggle to get over the line.

Obviously the mighty Spurs would take maximum returns from their remaining matches (that was never questioned), with many opining Mauricio Pochettino’s side would have won it at a canter had there been ten, as opposed to four games left.

Given Leicester have lost just three league games all season, at that point still held a five-point advantage, and had won their previous five without conceding a goal, to me at least, the Tottenham love-in seemed little more than wishful thinking.

Tottenham failing on the first occasion they had to play a game in the run-in with any genuine pressure, drawing with West Bromwich Albion at home, was washed over with a shrug. Leicester were given the title back as reward for waiting patiently, like a dog with a stick when its owner gets tired of throwing it.

Spurs have been great, and Pochettino seems as astute a manager as there presently is in Europe, yet there seems a condescending attitude creeping in with regards to Leicester.

If a club the size and stature of Leicester were doing the very same thing as Ranieri’s side in Spain, France, Italy, Germany or Uzbekistan, wherever, I’d bet a year's subscription to the Blizzard that the majority doing the sneering would have spent the second half of the season refreshing EasyJet’s site daily, in the search for cheap flights to witness a football miracle. It’s a funny old game, indeed.

Anyhow, back to Sunday.

From 17 home games, United have taken 37 points, winning 11, drawing four, and losing just twice (to Norwich City in December, then Southampton a month later). A win on Saturday would see them supplant both Manchester City (37 points from 18 home matches) and Leicester (39 from 18) as having the best home record in the whole of the Premier League.

Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool have all left Old Trafford pointless this season, while David De Gea has had to fish the ball from the back of his net just seven times.

If Leicester are to beat the league’s best goalkeeper, they will have to do so without Vardy. The man who has scored more league goals (22) than Anthony Martial (eight), Wayne Rooney (seven) and Marcus Rashford (four) combined, is serving an additional one-game suspension for being extremely rude to referee Jon Moss.

His replacement Leonardo Ulloa may find United's defence harder to breach than Swansea City's, which he did twice last weekend. If he can add his name to a list of Old Trafford goalscorers that reads Charlie Austin, Christian Benteke, Cameron Jerome, Mesut Ozil, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Alexander Tettey and Danny Welbeck, Leicester will have more than a fighting chance. 

That the majority of United’s games have been wars of attrition will not be recorded in the record books. Most United supporters sit through home games in a manner akin to a teenage boy willing to endure a rambling, indecipherable French film on the playground promise that a pair of actual real bosoms is exposed at some point.

The odd illicit thrill here or there is the pay-off for sitting through an hour-and-a-half of wondering "who is the guy to Van Gaal’s right he always turns to when Ryan Giggs is pretending not to have heard him?" along with regretting being able to ask the way to the swimming pool in baguette French, but not understanding any of the directions.

In the words of Cornershop, everyone needs a bosom for a pillow, and more often than not it has been Martial and Rashford who have stopped United supporters weeping into theirs.

A Leicester back four that has kept six clean sheets in the past seven matches will likely sit even deeper than usual to negate the threat of either running in behind. Four season-ticket holders in the front row of the Stretford End have been warned they may have to vacate their seats for at least one of the halves.

A five-point gap on Arsenal in fourth, with a game in hand, hardly looks insurmountable for United. Arsene Wenger’s side are currently demonstrating about as much fortitude as the rarely spoken of lovechild spawned by the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man, when Dorothy was shopping for ruby slippers.

United’s run of four wins from their past five Premier League games, all of which achieved via shutouts, will worry Wenger and Ranieri in equal measures. Cumulatively over the past six matches, Leicester (19) and United (18) have taken 37 points from the 42 available. Something will have to give on Sunday.

Manchester has proved a happy hunting ground for Leicester already this season. Newly crowned PFA Footballer of the Year Mahrez spoke recently of his belief a 3-1 win at Manchester City at the start of February, on the back of a 2-0 victory at Liverpool in the same week, was when Leicester’s players started to believe achieving something remarkable might not be beyond them.

"To score three goals at City is not easy. It was 3-0 and ended up 3-1. That was when we started doing something big," Mahrez said, per the Guardian. 

“In January we just said: 'Imagine?' We didn’t go into much more, we just said: ‘Imagine?’ But that was only for about 30 seconds and then we said: 'No, let’s stay focused and let’s see.' It was still a long way to go, maybe 15 games."

All season Ranieri has taken heed of the writer Aldous Huxley’s advice to "dream in a pragmatic way." Even in the Leicester manager's brave new world, the Italian has set his players short-term targets to be achieved before the next one is even spoken of.

"The manager keeps setting us goals," added Danny Simpson, per the Guardian.

"It was safety, get 40 points, then it was keep going, can we get into the Europa League? Can we get into the Champions League, then can we get into the Champions League group stages without playing a qualifier and then the next thing was: 'Go on then, go for it now'."

To win the title at Old Trafford would be particularly cathartic for Simpson. He started his career at Manchester United, as did fellow Mancunian Drinkwater, but failed to make an impression on the first team.

Simpson left the Red Devils in 2010 having made just three appearances. Drinkwater never got that far. Few would dispute Leicester's human metronome would start ahead of any of United's central midfielders at present. 

In any other season Sunday’s game would be pitting together the league’s biggest overachiever with its rankest underachiever.

United have been so bang average it is rumoured students will be asked to work out the United, median and mode on maths exams from the next school year. Yet still, United have not even come close to matching Chelsea’s annus horribilis. Perhaps it would be even more fitting should Leicester have to wait until the final game of the season to defrock, and subsequently dethrone champions Chelsea in their own backyard.

In normal circumstances it’s unlikely Jose Mourinho would be gracious enough to accept the wooden spoon his cameo this season richly deserves, but given how the summer will invariably pan out he may find it too useful an implement to decline.

For Ranieri to win a title at Stamford Bridge would be a fairytale even the biggest curmudgeon would struggle to dispute. One suspects though, he’s happy to dream pragmatically for now, which means three points on Sunday would do just fine.

Good luck, Leicester City.

Football an afterthought in a historic week for Liverpool and its people (Swansea City vs. Liverpool, Sunday at 12 p.m BST)

 
Chelsea vs. Tottenham Hotspur, Monday at 8 p.m. BST 

 
Arsenal vs. Norwich City, Saturday at 5:30 p.m. BST

 
Newcastle United vs. Crystal Palace, Saturday at 3 p.m. BST

Stoke City vs. Sunderland, 3 p.m. BST