Taking one for the team: Leicester City are getting relegated
And now the end is near. And so we face the final curtain. My friends, I’ll say it clear. I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.
Teams get relegated in lots of different ways. We’re doing it the Leicester City way, which used to mean something positive - an underdog that dug in and never quit - but has recently become this weird sense of gradually letting yourself slip away without a fight.
We’ve certainly lived a life that’s full. We can enjoy the video compilations of the last nine years and shake our head in wonder at what our club achieved. And we can shake our head in wonder that those in charge let it all end so suddenly.
Regrets? We’ve had a few. Could we have done anything to prevent this bizarre act of self-sabotage? Probably not. But we cling onto what we can.
So while Leicester City won’t stay up with a rallying cry, the final desperate hope lies with this: the fake surrender; playing dead; premature acceptance. The words that will look ridiculous if we go and beat Liverpool tomorrow night.
That’s right. I’m taking one for the team. If there’s any reason we’ll stay up it’s because I’ll take the time to lay out exactly why we won’t.
Because we won’t go and beat Liverpool, nor Newcastle and probably not even West Ham either.
Precedent heartbeat
Scratching around in the recent past for a Leicester City team that fought for a result it needed, I can only really think of three examples: Rennes, when a vociferous home crowd was roaring its side on; the FA Cup final, in which we played poorly but scrapped for every ball; Liverpool at home last season, when a weakened team put its dukes up.
Those were all games where we found some fortune, which has deserted us this season. But they were also games containing some heroism from Kasper Schmeichel, while you could argue the other hero in the rearguard action at both Rennes and Wembley was Wesley Fofana.
Now you look around at the lack of leaders and the lack of fighters and wonder who’s going to step up if we need to dig in. Daniel Iversen’s Schmeichel-esque performance against Everton offered a glimmer of hope before he followed up with a shocking error within minutes of kickoff in the very next game.
Funnily enough, while I’ve been clinging on to the hope that a team containing James Maddison and Youri Tielemans couldn’t possibly be relegated, they didn’t both start any of those games.
We had all sorts of makeshift midfields - Ayoze Perez in there at Wembley, Hamza against Liverpool - and maybe the truth is that’s why there had to be such a rearguard action. But you still can’t escape the idea that this team and these players aren’t cut out for a relegation battle.
That chasm was clear when the display at Fulham last Monday was immediately followed by the kind of effort Everton put in at Brighton. This is the time when you assume everyone at the bottom of the table will be fighting. It should be a given.
When the pressure’s off
Before the Everton and Fulham games I tried visualising a comfortable 2-0 win where Maddison and Barnes get the goals and we exert an element of control to see us through to the final whistle. You’d think the law of averages would mean we’d have a game like that eventually. We used to have them all the time.
In the Fulham game Maddison and Barnes did get the goals, but we were already 5-1 down.
We had the same feat of illusion at Manchester City. I don’t think it counts that much if you show something in a game when the opposition are 5-1 up or have had cruise control mode on for so long they’ve substituted all their best players.
We try to find hope and optimism in these belated efforts but they’re really just more evidence that this team can only perform when the pressure’s off.
Because we’re frustratingly good when the pressure’s off. That’s why we can run in another couple of goals if we’re 2-0 up but we’ve only won one game by a single goal all season. The pressure is now sky high.
Our record against top five teams and in particular the nature of the previous defeats against Liverpool and Newcastle show the problem with needing a result against either of them now. We demonstrated inferiority in the first game back after the World Cup against Newcastle and absolute calamity in the defeat at Anfield.
The statistics would be shocking even for a newly-promoted no-hoper, never mind a team that was in Rome a year ago. The last time we scored first in a home league game was 20th October. We’ve only scored first in one game this calendar year. Clean sheet? Forget about it.
Picture it
It feels like we’ve been relegated five times already. We’ve had about six games that felt like must-wins and we’ve won one of them. And we’ve had all kind of relegations in that time - slumped on the pitch (Bournemouth), the don’t-know-how-to-react (Everton), the complete implosion (Fulham).
We’ve failed to win all sorts of games in all sorts of ways. Eventually, even when you’re two points from safety you just feel like you deserve to be relegated.
And that’s arguably the most damning thing of all. Looking at the reaction of the fanbase to the defeat at Fulham, this team has managed to take a bunch of people who would do anything for Leicester City to be successful and pummel them into submission to the point where we shrug our shoulders and say: we deserve this.
When you’ve been having an inquest almost every week all season it makes the eventual, actual inquest so much easier to visualise.
You can see the things you’ll look back on as they’re happening - both things on the pitch like Maddison’s penalty against Everton and the decisions taken off it like continuing to play Soumare and Tielemans in midfield after the Everton game.
And this is just from the past couple of weeks. Not replacing Schmeichel properly both as a goalkeeper and a leader - you could see it being something we’d look back on. There are tons of things like that. Tons.
So in the past week it feels like we’ve been mentally preparing ourselves for the slog of being a supporter of a Championship club. It’s a gruelling division to be relegated into.
Just when you think you’re sick of watching your team and you’re looking forward to a summer at Grace Road or Glastonbury or Guadeloupe, you realise there are another eight games next season.
That takes some processing. This week has been helpful in that respect. I feel a bit more ready for it already.
Scrambled or fried?
Of course, the get-out-of-jail free card is that it doesn’t matter if we’re wrong. If we talk about Plymouth on a Tuesday night and meanwhile this lot somehow pull a result out of the bag tomorrow night, people dredge up our articles and our tweets, we won’t care. It’s a position of strength.
And if we do get out of this, not only will we not have to bother with the Championship but we’ll also have at least one of the most wonderful, life-affirming moments in the football club’s history.
I wouldn’t go as far as what Jamie Vardy said in midweek. Getting out of this now wouldn’t feel on a par with the title win, but when you picture how it would feel, it might be on a par with the FA Cup win.
Not in the sense of an achievement but in the sheer outpouring of emotion. We saw a glimpse of that after the Wolves game. After so many barren months that felt good. But it isn’t happening again.
So there it is. We’ve tried rallying cries and we always end up looking like idiots. If there’s any way I want to end up looking like an idiot now, it’s with people on the pitch, Dean Smith clenching a fist and me in the middle of it all with egg all over my stupid face.
