All the pressure's on Man City in riches v rags clash against Leicester
‘The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong — but that’s the way to bet.’
So said Damon Runyon but, while I would normally defer to the wise one on anything to do with gambling, there is increasingly compelling fresh evidence that sometimes the counter-intuitive approach — or, to put it more accurately, the mug punter’s mad flutter — can pay rich dividends.
A case in point: as the mug punter the other mug punters call ‘The Guvnor’, I suddenly find myself very tempted to plunge whatever spare change I can find down the back of the sofa on Aston Villa winning the Premier League next year.
Yes, that’d be the hapless Villa who are currently propping up the same division, six points behind their nearest relegation rivals Sunderland.
And, yes, I know their situation looks pretty grim but, looked at another way — and here’s the counter-intuitive bit — there’s an argument that they are now perfectly poised to turn a corner, start picking up precious points and thus generate the kind of unstoppable momentum which will not only keep the drop at bay but carry them through the summer and into the new season on a wave of confidence and optimism which will culminate in a gloriously improbable title triumph in May 2017.
It won’t happen, of course, but I can’t help wishing I’d felt a similarly deranged urge late last season when Leicester City were in freefall and everybody’s certainties for the drop — that is until they embarked on an astonishing 11th hour rescue mission, taking 22 points from their final nine games, to pull off the most celebrated of great escapes.
In fact, never mind last season: before a ball was kicked this time around, and when all participants were theoretically equal, you could have had the Foxes at 5,000-1 to win the Premier League — the kind of odds the mug punter finds simply irresistible but, sadly, only many months later when he can pass the long nights by torturing himself with exquisitely painful fantasies: “Two euro! If I’d only put on two bleedin’ euro!!”
Of course, there were sound reasons — or so they appeared at the time — to think that Leicester City would find this season an almighty struggle, not least the close season changes at the club which hardly seemed designed to maintain the upward movement they’d begun to generate at the end of the previous campaign.
Nigel Pearson might have had his oddities but given that he was the man who eventually steered Leicester out of the doldrums, it hardly boded well when he departed and was replaced by a manager whose latest addition to a comparatively modest cv had been ignominious failure with Greece.
But Claudio Ranieri looked at what Pearson had achieved, saw that it was good, and prudently concluded that, even with the loss of the club’s player of the year Esteban Cambiosso, there was no need for radical surgery at Leicester, just more of the same, please, with a modest amount of tinkering here and there.
And while I’m sure that his side have far exceeded even his most optimistic expectations, Leicester’s top of the table position going into today’s potentially defining clash at the Etihad is stirring proof of what can be achieved with sensible management, good organisation, committed players who know their jobs, seasoned with that vital little sprinkling of magic dust, and everyone else at the club, from the boardroom to the stands, pulling in the same direction.
And it was Leicester’s two leading magic men who combined on Tuesday night to break the deadlock in an wildly open game against Liverpool which ended with the home side deservedly winning 2-0 and going three points clear at the top.
The extravagantly gifted Riyad Mahrez, one of the most creative attacking talents in the league was — typical of how Leicester defend and attack as a unit — well inside his own half when he spotted an opportunity to give Jamie Vardy a run at the Liverpool defence.
His pass was of the kind that gives ‘long ball’ a good name, and his like-minded striker partner, seeking to complete the quickest route to goal, wasted no time unleashing a dipping half-volley from fully 30 yards which caught Simon Mignolet off his line and flew into the net.
The spectacular finish encapsulated the liberated, fearless, and almost gleefully confident way Leicester are playing, just as Vardy himself — non-league boy made great — personifies the club’s romantic ascension to the top.
With his pinched face and whippet-lean frame, Vardy is rather more Alf Tupper than Ronaldo, so much so that you half expect to hear that, like the famed ‘Tough of the Track’, he favours a fish and chip supper on his way home from the match.
But, right now, Vardy is top of the goal-scoring charts in the Premier League, looking down on all the rest, including the brilliant Sergio Aguero, with whom he will face direct comparison this afternoon.
As Leicester were seeing off Liverpool in some style but with customary spirit on Tuesday night, Aguero was yet again the one making the difference for a City side which spent a good part of the game under the cosh at Sunderland, the striker creating a sliver of space and stabbing home the winner even as he took a nasty rake of studs down his calf muscle.
With confirmation that Manuel Pelligrini now finds himself in the strange and trying position of endeavouring to win trophies while simultaneously keeping his seat warm for Pep Guardiola, the contrast with how Leicester are going about their business could hardly be more stark.
In a Premier League awash with moolah, where no club can convincingly plead poverty, Man City v Leicester is probably as close to a riches v rags contest as we’ll get.
It also has the feel of a project playing host to a team, which is not to say City — given the stellar playing resources at their disposal — are incapable of rudely deflating Leicester’s bubble, although the loss of the superb Kevin de Bruyne could yet prove a wounding blow to City’s own ambitions.
But one thing’s for sure: in this compelling tale of two cities, the pressure is all on the home side today — and for Leicester, it’s only likely to reach critical mass should they find themselves still firmly in the title hunt as the season goes down to the wire.
By the way, I was only joking about having that bet on the Villa as next year’s champs.
I mean, that way lies madness.
But I do have this hunch about Newcastle… (Abandons laptop and strides purposefully towards sofa).
