Leicester City are top of the league - but how far up the Marescalator?
Exactly how good are Leicester City, and how good could we be in a few weeks and months? Progress is a tantalising prospect when you’re already at the summit.
A pattern is emerging. Leicester City play. Leicester City win comfortably. I don't think they played particularly well. Then a highlights reel emerges, showing some of the best football you've ever seen from a Leicester City team - all from the game where I didn't think they played particularly well.
Great expectations
Either a perfect storm has been created involving a bunch of players too good for the Championship, a manager too good for the Championship, a cutting-edge playing style and a hangover from the kind of expectations set by regularly beating some of the biggest clubs in the country, winning trophies and playing in Europe - or I'm an idiot.
Probably a bit of both.
It’s a humbling experience, but we’re getting used to those as we begin to place all our trust in a manager who has worked wonders with players we had written off. The nature of our performances and results is forcing me to rethink what I mean by "not playing well". After all, on Sunday we conceded a stupid goal, gave the ball away repeatedly and made some pretty poor decisions with the final pass, cross or shot.
But on the flip side, we're barely conceding any goals - we can forgive the odd stupid one.
As for giving the ball away, Enzo Maresca acknowledged in his post-match interview that there was a period after half time when Blackburn wrenched the game from our grasp. The level of control Leicester exert for the majority of matches makes this occurrence feel strange, like it shouldn't happen. But it's unreasonable to expect even an excellent, possession-based team to retain control for the full 90+ minutes, especially away from home.
That's probably on me, and maybe some other fans, to revise our ideas slightly from expecting to control the entire game to the current situation whereby even when the other team is on top, we limit their opportunities and slowly wrest things back before taking advantage of our new latter-stages superiority.
Making good decisions with the final pass, cross or shot? Well, maybe if you’re a bit iffy in the attacking third and still score four goals then it doesn’t mean you’ve played poorly. It just means you’re showing so much potential that some of your fans are getting a bit carried away with what the team’s ceiling might look like. It’s difficult not to get carried away with the tantalising idea of improving from a near-perfect record so far.
Playing the Enzo way
The Blackburn game provided a good example of why we should change how we evaluate our players’ individual performances within this new style of play.
Stephy Mavididi had a quiet game by the standards of an impact winger expected to produce goals and assists, but he still played a frighteningly good crossfield ball that was integral to Jamie Vardy's goal.
As we expected, the two attacking midfield positions are starting to show real threat. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall conjured a wonderful finish late on without bossing the game from start to finish, while Wilfred Ndidi's superb ball for Vardy's goal was another tick in the box for his new marauding midfield role.
As long as players are buying into Maresca’s vision and helping to turn it into reality, he will be happy with them. The obvious benchmark here is the Blackburn goal, and, for all the understandable misgivings, there are already huge numbers of Leicester fans making allowances for Mads Hermansen's error because they see the long-term benefit of playing out from the back. It was the same when a similar scenario led to Norwich's Kenny McLean hitting the bar at Carrow Road. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that level of risk-taking but I'm looking forward to finding out whether that changes over the course of the season.
One hugely noticeable aspect of the campaign so far is a reduction in the overall level of jeopardy, as we know we won't have a run of fixtures against the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal. There are still certain sights that would have had most of us reaching for the panic button last season - those 50-yard balls along the ground from goalkeeper to striker, Ricardo vacating right-back to move into midfield, Jannik Vestergaard. But it feels like we're pushing the boundaries within a safe space.
The next piece of the puzzle
The big question is how far we have travelled up the Marescalator. What level is this Leicester team capable of reaching, if we truly aren't playing that well but winning away comfortably? It's a frightening prospect for opposition teams to consider.
Because the players are still learning the system and we're adding pieces to the jigsaw all the time. A few weeks ago, it felt like the strikers weren't contributing much but Jamie Vardy scored from open play in both of the 4-1 away wins and the way he dispatched his penalty against Bristol City was the ultimate sign of confidence. His goal on Sunday was peak Vardy, making a half-chance look routine.
We're also already conceding far fewer chances in transition than we were in the first couple of weeks of the season. The balance feels better, and the strength of the squad means it's not a disaster when we lose players through injury as we have with Callum Doyle and Kasey McAteer.
Of course, Leicester fans have bitter recent experience of how unforeseen circumstances can derail a season that seemed certain to end successfully. But in the short-term, we are just waiting for the game when it all clicks - putting together the dominance of the Bristol City game, the grit we showed at Norwich and the kind of finishing on display at Southampton and Blackburn.
Someone's surely in for it soon, and when that happens we're going to need a longer highlights reel.
