Quelle surprise: What surprise at Leicester City?
The most surprising thing at Leicester City this season is that anyone is still surprised. The club continues its amateurish Sunday League-esque stagger through life with an unerring knack of walking into every trap it encounters.
Knowing nothing about the club, you’d perhaps be surprised that we signed Odsonne Édouard to understudy Jamie Vardy. But if you follow these things, you know. He was a player we allegedly looked at in the same transfer window we bought Patson Daka. That other striker we don’t use. It’s just what we do.
In ignorance, you’d be surprised that a squad containing Jamie Vardy, Jannik Vestergaard, Harry Winks, Conor Coady and James Justin would be judged as lacking Premier League experience. But you’d also be wrong.
Then there are the six-pointer capitulations that have been so meek they bring to mind hungover pub teams. There’s Vestergaard’s dog traipsing around the training ground and the Copenhagen Christmas, complete with tribute to a former manager whose spluttering team has just walked all over us. Timely, as we’re likely to witness a repeat again this weekend.
There’s needing a goalkeeper (after Mads Hermansen’s easy player of the year run was put at risk by injury) and then willingly selecting the one who got us relegated two seasons ago, who goes on to concede six goals in a match and a half. There’s doing that and then there’s admitting to not knowing, and of not being warned about the potentially calamitous consequences of that decision.
Plus yet another transfer window in which “there is money to spend” – just not enough to buy more than a back-up right back despite the glaring gaps in the squad. But here’s the kicker: Is anyone surprised? Really?
So the “surprise” I’m going to highlight surrounds our GOAT.
How on earth is Jamie Vardy being given so much game time in the year 2025? He’s not scoring – one league goal since December 8th – he contributes little to overall build up play, he doesn’t press, but then he’s 38. In a team who are failing to do much in the final third, it’s not working.
Yet we’ve played eight league matches in 2025 and Vardy has been on the pitch for every single second in six of them. He’s been subbed on the hour in one and hooked at 77’ in the other.
This team – as previous City sides have done - insist on playing out-balls to his head, seemingly oblivious to the fact he’s usually being marked by a centre back who’s six inches taller. But Captain Vardy keeps his place.
There are three good reasons for that: Patson Daka; Tom Cannon; Odsonne Édouard.
Whatever Daka does at Seagrave, it can’t be endlessly practising his first touch and his finishing. He arrived bursting with promise and potential. But his lack of development condemns successive managers and coaches at the club. And it condemns Daka himself, for failing to self-improve or capitalise on the chances he has been given.
Cannon on the other hand, has never been given a chance. His Leicester career seemingly over the day he arrived with a back injury. And we all know the Edouard story. The seemingly unplayable new signing sat around twiddling his thumbs, earning the big bucks.
So Vardy endures. A shadow of his former self. A ghost from the good times past. A constant reminder that Leicester City has no plan for the future. Of anything. Even the long-expected retirement of our best ever player. And no-one who knows the club is in the least bit surprised.
Can anything that happens at the club be fairly described as a surprise? When the most reliable way to forecast events here is to think of the worst possible outcome and then just wait for it to happen?
Nothing surprises any more. Fact.
I’d argue that the most shocking episode unfolded in December.
Cast your mind back to December 14th. Ruud Van Nistelrooy has two positive results under his belt since being appointed. A win and a draw. But it’s half time at St James’ Park and Newcastle are murdering us 1-0. It’s a bonus to be still in the game. Somehow.
But hang on. Our brilliant keeper Mads Hermansen is injured. The bench keeper is…one Danny Ward. On he comes. Fifteen minutes later the score is 4-0.
A week later we have a relegation six pointer. We have a five point lead on Wolves and if we beat them, well eight points is a lot of ground to make up.
As Ward fumbles around like a learner keeper we’re 3-0 down by half time. The match is over. Ruud’s new manager bounce is over. The season is over. Ward’s career is finally over (Ed’s note - given the theme of this article, would it be that surprising to suddenly throw a new one year deal his way?)
After his glaring inadequacy was exposed in 2022-23, Ward should not even have still been at the club. That is surprising. With Stolarcyk still in injury recovery, Iversen was the obvious number two to Hermansen. So Ward shouldn’t have been on the bench in the first place.
And the fact that we still played him in a crucial match in a knife-edge season after all we know about Ward’s competence from the Rodgers’ relegation, reinforced by his performance against Newcastle, beggars belief.
Call it a surprise.
