Leicester City get ready for sports day at Manchester City
I tend to approach watching Leicester City games like I’m a parent watching their child at a school sports day - fingers crossed it goes well but basically I just hope they don’t embarrass themselves.
This is usually reserved for games against the bigger clubs away from home, but lately it doesn’t matter who we’ve been playing - we’ve still ended up face down with eggs and spoons lodged in various places. Of course, we also made a complete mess of the sack race. Now here comes a game I wish we could skip.
It’s Manchester City away.
Competitive dad
Most fear-inducing of all is the fact our brave boys will be facing competitive dad Erling Haaland, who’s clearly bigger and better than anyone else but is still determined to prove it.
I do have visions of him grabbing the ball after scoring and running back to the halfway line in his eagerness to get the next one, even at 4-0 up. Perhaps this actually will be like a schools football match and Haaland will be withdrawn after an early hat-trick to give someone else a go.
To take my mind off the prospect of us facing Haaland, I dipped into a couple of popular national football podcasts this week to find out what they thought about Dean Smith. Unfortunately all I heard were variations of the idea he’s a “nice bloke” and then jokes about how this weekend Haaland could beat Dixie Dean’s record of 63 goals in all competitions in a single season.
He’s currently on 45.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to think we’ll concede 19 goals to one player, I do fear conceding five or six in total to eleven.
But does that matter? Can we write this game off and look to Wolves next week?
Upsetting the apple cart
I remember being very tense when we played at the Etihad in May 2019, when Manchester City leapfrogged Liverpool with 20 minutes remaining of the penultimate game of the season. The outcome didn’t matter at all to Leicester. We were 9th with a vague hope of finishing 8th (those were the days).
So why so tense? Well, even if the other team don’t rack up a humiliating scoreline, I’d still prefer it if they also didn’t score an iconic goal that will be replayed for decades - the sort of goal that brings talk of statues.
I also love it when we’re upsetting the apple cart. That is what Leicester City is to me. We’re the fly in the ointment. We’re the spanner in the works. I love that when there are rundowns of Premier League winners, people have to include us. The media are in London and Manchester and we’re somewhere in the middle and for the past ten years we’ve been constantly getting in the way of narratives.
Unfortunately that’s been lost as part of our recent decline. The bigger problem is losing twice apiece to Southampton and Bournemouth, but we’re also a write-off away at big clubs - which is a shame. Having to completely write off football matches is demoralising.
These are two very different clubs. The only thing we’ve had in common with Manchester City this season is that we both look like competition winners - them because they could win up to three by the end of the season, us more as if we’ve won one to get to run around on the pitch each week.
The other side of the coin
Let’s placate the optimists raging away at all this doom and gloom, because we do have a new management team and it’s still eleven against eleven. We’re not plucky underdogs in a cup tie. Our players earn hundreds of thousands of pounds, and Manchester City would probably be up for buying one of them in the summer.
The photos and videos of the new regime have shown refreshing positivity, even if this was squashed somewhat by an underwhelming managerial appointment using his first press conference to say he was only 50/50 about taking the job after watching our last game.
Okay, maybe that was a joke. But it sounded more real than what we’ve been used to in managerial press conferences.
And on that theme - if we’re a Mini and Chelsea are a Ferrari, what on earth are Manchester City?
In fact, we’ve actually posed them some problems in recent years.
There was the 3-1 in the title season when Robert Huth was on a hat-trick. There was the 4-2 in the rain later that year when Jamie Vardy ran riot. There was the 2-1 on Boxing Day 2018 when Ricardo scored a belter. There was even a 5-2 win at the Etihad the season before last. Plus we beat them at Wembley. There are precedents there.
Bayern for blood
Alas, that 5-2 felt like last chance saloon for the prospects of getting at a Manchester City defence. Three of their back four that day conceded a penalty. Two days later, they signed Ruben Dias from Benfica for around £65million. Since then, Manchester City have won all four Premier League meetings between the two sides and in our only trip to the Etihad in that time, we lost 6-3.
Dias was just one of eleven who had a good game on Tuesday night when Manchester City blew away an elite European team. Bayern Munich couldn’t handle an attack that leaves you in a spin, a midfield that strangles you and a defence that eats you up. The goalkeeper isn’t bad either.
That was a faintly terrifying match to watch when you’re next into the ring. Without ever wishing serious injury on an opponent, it was one of those where you hope at least nine of the starting eleven pick up knocks that will keep them out for a week. In the end, although Kevin De Bruyne looked to be limping at one stage he’s not even orange on the Fantasy League app.
Meanwhile, we pick up yet more injuries of our own - this week we’ve got the usual mysterious one, Ricardo suddenly being out for a few weeks with a hamstring, and the more immediately apparent one that forced Harvey Barnes from the field last Saturday.
That’s two of our pacier players out of action so getting up the pitch at all will be troublesome.
On the bright side, at least we won’t have to try it carrying an egg and spoon.
