21 years later: Leicester City's second chance to replicate a Manchester City blueprint
The prospect of Leicester City following a Manchester City method to regain Premier League status has sent David Bevan back in time.
I've always loved wingers and attacking midfielders. They're the ones who get you out of your seat, onto your feet and ready to celebrate. They're the ones that quicken the pace of the game and quicken the heartbeat of the fans.
It’s to do with hope and possibility and opportunity. These are the players most likely to make something happen and there’s a buzz when they get the ball.
We have one of each who are in demand but instead of clinging to some desperate hope of them staying, instead I'm looking forward to them leaving so we can rip it up and start again.
There were so many problems with Leicester City's setup last season that it seemed churlish to complain about the attacking midfield areas of the team while James Maddison and Harvey Barnes were putting up the numbers, but it's the key area now ripe for a total reset and not just because of big name departures due to relegation.
For too long we've relied on individual brilliance when there appeared to be little in the way of an attacking plan. When our stars were firing, it worked well. When they weren't at their best, we had very little to offer. And there was precious little in reserve, given our refusal to sign Ademola Lookman permanently, a decent right winger, or practically anyone at all in those positions. Take a look at the depth chart now and you’ll see Maddison and Barnes, for now anyway, plus Marc Albrighton and perhaps some Academy players.
Regardless of the attacking areas of the team being decimated, it’s very freeing to have come to terms with the exits of star players a long time ago. The loss of Youri Tielemans barely registered because, after last season’s abject failure, we’re more interested in what comes next. Most of us are not fretting about bids or bluster from the Fabrizio Romanos of this world. We're already looking to the future.
The exhilarating thing when you look at what will be left is that we'll need a whole new approach to how we create chances. There are one or two wild rumours at the moment that Harvey Barnes wants to stay at the club. That seems highly improbable but even if he does, we’ll still have the rest of that area of the pitch to sort out. It's the best bit! It’s the exciting part! And we can design it from scratch!
This fantastic opportunity to reinvent ourselves has taken me back to the summer of 2002, when we’d suffered two years of steady decline after a period of silverware and success. Even an interim manager couldn’t prevent relegation. Sound familiar?
Back to the future
Then, as now, we had to start again. It felt like a new era, with a move to a shiny new stadium one of the main reasons for optimism. Another, fresh from scoring Filbert Street's final goal, was a promising young winger called Matt Piper. I remember also having hopes that despite missing the previous 12 months, Darren Eadie would shake off his injury troubles to play a big part in the club's revival.
It’s only natural to look at precedents. We can create the Leicester way, but it never hurts to take some inspiration from the success of others. Burnley's 101-point march to the Championship title under Vincent Kompany last season has provided one or two clues about what we’ll need to do.
In 2002, I also thought the team that had just been promoted as champions could offer a template.
That was Manchester City, falling just a point shy of the century mark. They were swashbuckling, scoring 96 times - 9 more than even Burnley managed last season. Their games were often televised on ITV, viewers able to enjoy the pace and panache of their players from the high camera position at Maine Road.
While Shaun Goater and Darren Huckerby both hit the 20-goal mark, the men pulling the strings in midfield were the twin schemers Eyal Berkovic and Ali Benarbia. A young Shaun Wright-Phillips caught the eye too. The manager overseeing this revolution? The swashbuckler-in-chief: Kevin Keegan.
It was a blueprint of sorts.
A fresh start
I turned 18 in the summer of 2002, and moved to Leicester to start university. Well, to be truthful, I moved to Leicester to watch the football club I’d fallen in love with a decade or so earlier. It would be our first season on Filbert Way and my first season ticket.
Everything felt fresh and new, and I had a grand vision of how it would all play out, with Leicester following the Manchester City blueprint: Eadie on one wing, Piper on the other.
Of course, I was being hopelessly naive. What actually happened was that neither played for the club again - Eadie due to the injuries that eventually forced his retirement the following year and Piper because he was sadly sold to Sunderland.
Instead, Micky Adams went physical and we prospered with Brian Deane and Paul Dickov up front and targetmen even deployed on the wing - usually James Scowcroft; sometimes Trevor Benjamin.
It wasn't always the greatest to watch but the main thing is that it worked. Portsmouth won the title playing an attacking brand of football and we merely got the job done in second place. We'd just have to wait a bit longer for an exciting side.
On the day Leicester were promoted back to the big time, Lazio beat Piacenza 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico. The Piacenza side that day featured 23-year-old Enzo Maresca, on loan from Juventus. His footballing odyssey, which had already taken in West Bromwich, would continue via Italy, Spain and Greece back to England with Manchester City in 2020.
Now he's arrived at Leicester with the same basic target as Micky Adams in 2002 - get promoted. Adams achieved his goal, but Maresca won't be instructing his side to play many big scary diagonals.
Enzo’s way
Football has moved on over the past decade or two. So the Championship may retain a reputation as a physical league but plenty of teams now like to try to play out from the back in a way they didn’t 20 years ago.
In that time, there have been innovators in the lower leagues. Roberto Martinez arguably started the trend for more attractive football with his Swansea City side that eventually reached the Premier League under Brendan Rodgers. Another Swansea manager of that era, Paulo Sousa, memorably tried to introduce the style to Leicester with disastrous results.
But arguably the most important man in the widespread tactical transformation throughout English football is, of course, Pep Guardiola - the man who has been mentoring our new manager for the past twelve months.
Vague links to members of Manchester City's youth teams have already started. Whether we actually end up signing the likes of Oscar Bobb, Carlos Borges or Adedire Mebude, Maresca will be gradually implementing an attractive brand of football involving players who will energise the crowd.
He'll be drawing on the experience of working at Manchester City and he'll soon have his own ideas about which of our current players are up to the task and identifying the gaps in the squad to implement his vision.
We’re going to need to add pace, invention and workrate. The players won’t be as good as the ones we’re selling, but they still have the chance to make themselves heroes. That never changes, whatever division we’re in.
And we may have to be patient. And we may lose games early on. And if we don’t hit the ground running there will undoubtedly be some calling for Maresca’s head by September, given the stratospheric expectations.
But I was driving through Leicester recently and when I got near Filbert Way I felt a buzz of excitement. I could feel the anticipation jolt through my body, looking forward to the new season and watching something fresh.
It’s a feeling I’d almost forgotten, trudging to home games over the past twelve months. That may sound spoilt after the times we’ve had in the past few years but you can’t help the way football makes you feel. There’s unquestionably been a bad vibe around the place for a while now.
Clearly, we might not have reached rock bottom yet. There might be another slump coming if things don’t work out. I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. For now, the prospect of a new-look Leicester City and feelings of hope and possibility and opportunity are making me feel 18 again.
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