This one’s for the underdog: Leicester City in 2024
One point from the first three games of the season leaves the Foxes sitting 15th in the table going into the international break. Jamie Thorpe dives into what this means for our standing in the world.
Kasabian said it best with a song that, I like to think anyway, was written as a nod to the classic underdog stories that their club had rather famously written.
Think about it, we have always thrived with the underdog tag. The Great Escape, the ridiculous Premier League win, our remarkable European tours, even the FA Cup and Community Shield finals Leicester headed in to as second favourite.
Last season, however, was something of an adjustment for us all.
Underdog no more, we were now a veritable Clifford in a park full of chihuahuas, overwhelming favourites to win the league in a season where one of, if not the biggest challenges was managing the weight of expectation.
Expectation to not only win but do so comfortably, all whilst playing attacking football. “Gerrit forward” some of the masses would yell, a vocalised example of the self-imposed pressure we were under.
Feels like I’m lost in a moment…
Heading into the new Premier League season the tables have turned, dramatically. Some of our fanbase are, understandably, struggling with our new place in the footballing food chain and, generally speaking, there are two adjustments at play here.
Firstly, we are the bookies favourites to yo-yo straight back into the Championship. We started the season with an arguably weaker squad than we ended the previous one, making us odds on for the drop with several bookmakers. It’s hard to disagree with them.
Secondly, it’s not that long ago that we were rightly held up as the “best of the rest”. That is, the club that could most feasibly challenge the Big Six monopoly at the top of the league. The perfect antithesis to the Super League nonsense, almost to the point that we were several fans’ second club. Astute in the transfer market and canny with our player development, all whilst performing on the pitch – the perfect combination.
Now we are taking Brighton’s best youth prospects on loan, signing Crystal Palace’s squad depth and being outspent by Ipswich Town.
The change in our situation could not have been starker on gameweek 2. Fulham cut through us seemingly at will, and whilst there was no doubting our effort levels, the quality of Emile Smith-Rowe, Alex Iwobi et al could not have been more of a contrast to our own Bobby De Cordova Reid and Jordan Ayew. Some struggled with this. “Fulham are a team we should be beating” was the general sentiment of some fans.
But are they? Is this strictly accurate, or are we in need of a reality check of sorts?
Fulham are by no means whipping boys, or potential relegation candidates. Since their promotion in 2022, they have finished 10th, 13th and 10th again. They have a progressive manager and operate astutely in the transfer market, at the moment we could only dream of attracting the likes of Smith Rowe, Joachim Andersen and Sander Berge to the King Power. Sure, they have lost Joao Palhinha (after making about 100% in profit on their rumoured £40m+ sale to Bayern Munich) but realistically, this is an established Premier League side.
What right do we have to expect to win there on reputation alone?
In short, we have none. Past glories are just that, in the past, and the sooner we realise this as a collective, the better.
Siege mentality
I want to contextualise this by saying I agree with many comments about our current predicament. The mismanagement, whomever you choose to blame, is obvious, and in reality the relegation and PSR failings have put us back several years. It is particularly depressing to be going to Craven Cottage, a stadium that in olde English could literally mean Coward House*, and see us play second fiddle in almost every department.
But, this is the way of the world for us this season. This is how it must be. This season is one of survival, of scraping through and resetting, not about getting back to past glories at the first time of asking.
It is not all doom and gloom, dear reader, oh no. In fact, there is a definite upside to all this. Those of you present for the Spurs game will know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that the role of the underdog is one we can thrive in.
Sure we rode our luck in the first half (like our defence was going to keep one of the most attacking teams in the league quiet), but that team fought tooth and nail. Wilfred Ndidi going full-on go-go gadget legs to stop a certain goal was a sign that all is not lost. But that second half, my lord.
They didn’t just come out swinging, this was measured, contagious aggression: challenges flew in, second balls were only ever won by a blue shirt and 37 year old Jamie Vardy sniffed around, poised, waiting for his moment. When it came that beautiful, Red Bull powered man made absolutely no mistake.
The best thing of all this was the synchronicity between the team and the crowd. The King Power faithful responded gleefully to their side’s performance, the noise level ramped up to levels that I haven’t witnessed in a long time. It felt like Leicester City of old. We know were are up against it, and frankly, we couldn’t give less of a s**t about it.
It felt like we weren’t there to follow a script, we weren’t there to give Spurs their moment but we were there, in fact, to do everything in our power to upset the apple cart and scrap hard for an unlikely, improbable, but thoroughly deserved point.
This is how we need to be this season. We are unlikely to be favourites in many games. We have to accept that the Brightons, Fulhams and Aston Villas of this world will be looking at us as a game where they really should be taking three points, and roll with it. Celebrate every point in those games, stick behind the underdogs and urge the team to win in the ones that really, really matter – Ipswich, Southampton, Forest and Everton, for example.
We’ve had a decent transfer window in the end. There are players who can produce moments of quality and there are players who don’t mind the dirty side of the game – the ideal mix for an underdog season to top all underdog seasons…maybe.
*yes yes I know, it was named after the 6th Baron Craven who built a cottage on hunting ground back in the late 1700’s but this doesn’t fit my particular narrative so just go with it, alright?
