Arsenal v Leicester City: 6th vs 8th (according to the pundits), with added videos and scandal.

by Bulldog Drummond.

OK before we begin, Leicester at home can only mean one thing – the greatest ever match to have been at, which those of us who were there will never ever forget

Ah, the good ol’ days.  More video footage anon, but first yes Arsenal are being tipped to end the season 6th, and Leicester 8th, according to all those people who know everything and write about it in the wild and wacky newspapers.  Except the bits they don’t know of course.

Last season away from home Leciester were not that hot: here is the league table just recording away games…

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
11	Stoke City	19	4	5	10	17	32	-15	17
12	West Bromwich Albion	19	3	7	9	16	29	-13	16
13	AFC Bournemouth	19	3	6	10	20	38	-18	15
14	Swansea City	19	4	2	13	18	36	-18	14
15	Watford	19	3	3	13	15	39	-24	12
16	Middlesbrough	19	1	7	11	10	30	-20	10
17	Leicester City	19	2	4	13	17	38	-21	10
18	Sunderland	19	3	1	15	13	35	-22	10
19	Burnley	19	1	4	14	13	35	-22	7
20	Hull City	19	1	3	15	9	45	-36	6

Yes, only Sunderland, Burnley and Hull had worse records than Leicester away.  Quite how they are going to improve on that we have not yet been told by the all-seeing pundits.  But apparently they will.

At home, in contrast, Arsenal were not too bad

Then upon returning from foreign parts they played thus:

• 26 July: Luton 0 Leicester 1
• 28 July: MK Dons 0 Leicester 0
• 29 July: Woverhampton Wanderers 1 Leicester 0
• 1 August: Burton Albion 2 Leicester 1
• 4 August: Leicester 2 Borussia Monchengladbach 1

Of course you can’t tell much from friendlies pre-season, but we might perhaps note that Leicester scored four goals in those five games, having scored 12 in the last 10 of last season, so we might therefore also be looking for them to buy some attacking forwards.  Let’s see what they got…

Date	Position	Name	From	Fee
1 July 2017	CB	Sam Hughes	Chester	Free
1 July 2017	CB	Harry Maguire	Hull City	£17,000,000
6 July 2017	DM	Vicente Iborra	Sevilla	£15,000,000
19 July 2017	GK	Eldin Jakupović	Hull City	Undisclosed
3 August 2017	CF	Kelechi Iheanacho	Manchester City	£25,000,000
8 August 2017	RW	George Thomas	Coventry City	Undisclosed

So yes they bought a centre forward for £25m.  He played 20 Premier League games last season for Man C, scoring four goals.  He also played nine FA Cup, League Cup and European games and scored a further three goals, making 29 games and seven goals: one goal in every four.  As for departures they released a number of free agents and sold goal keeper Ron-Robert Zieler to Stuttgart.

The club is 250-1 to win the League in some quarters but 1000/1 in others.  Arsenal are 14/1.  Manchester City are favourites.

Here’s the February 2016 game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXXoQKcjaIc

And now here’s a thought: in the last 27 years Leicester have had 18 different permanent managers.

In 19 out of those years, have either been promoted, relegated, just avoid relegation, played in the play offs, won a trophy (they don’t do “not a trophy” in Leicester) or lost in the League Cup final.

To celebrate what WS Gilbert in his librettos would have called “Topsy Turvey Land” they are very much into free hats, free clappers and Vardy masks.  Indeed they have been at this topsy turvy stuff  for so long that eventually it plunged them (perhaps one might say inevitably) into an existential crisis.

For this summer, lo and behold, Leicester’s owner, King Power, was accused of £327m corruption in Thailand.  King Power let it be remembered is owned and run by the Leicester chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, and his son Aiyawatt.  Untold twice before this seismic event covered the stories concerning the strange workings of their marketing company, and suggested that there were a few questions that perhaps could be answered to make things a little clearer.

Of course not everyone agreed, and some abuse came forth, but those questions about where the marketing money came from are still there.   And of course it wasn’t just us, for the Guardian also ran the headlines