- Football under the cosh as media discovers something’s not right
- 3 PL clubs may be fined and staff threatened with prison over shirt sponsors
By Bulldog Drummon
Leicester City have won one, drawn one and lost eight of their last ten league games. The draw was on 8 December at home to Brighton, the victory (rather amusingly I thought) was away to Tottenham on 26 January, and the rest were all defeats. In those ten league games, Leicester have scored six goals, and conceded 25. They are currently 18th in the League.
As such they are thus one of just six clubs that are actually lower than Tottenham. However as the table below shows, really it is the bottom four who are adrift and the relegation clubs already look to be Southampton plus two from Wolverhampton, Leicester and Ipswich. Since the bottom three were promoted last season, this does emphasise the difference between the Premier League and the Championship.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Everton | 24 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 25 | 30 | -5 | 27 |
| 16 | West Ham United | 24 | 7 | 6 | 11 | 29 | 46 | -17 | 27 |
| 17 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 24 | 5 | 4 | 15 | 34 | 52 | -18 | 19 |
| 18 | Leicester City | 24 | 4 | 5 | 15 | 25 | 53 | -28 | 17 |
| 19 | Ipswich Town | 24 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 22 | 49 | -27 | 16 |
| 20 | Southampton | 24 | 2 | 3 | 19 | 18 | 54 | -36 | 9 |
This is quite a change from the end of last season which saw Leicester win the league with 97 points, but the current dire straits of all three promoted teams this season suggest that the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is becoming insurmountable, making the current arrangements of promotion and relegation rather pointless. The promoted teams have lost interest in buying multiple players to try and stay up, since the financial dangers if they subsequently go down, are too great. So they get the promotion, take the extra payments from the Premier League and use that to pay off past accumulated debts. Here’s a reminder of last season’s end…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leicester City | 46 | 31 | 4 | 11 | 89 | 41 | 48 | 97 |
| 2 | Ipswich Town | 46 | 28 | 12 | 6 | 92 | 57 | 35 | 96 |
| 3 | Leeds United | 46 | 27 | 9 | 10 | 81 | 43 | 38 | 90 |
| 4 | Southampton | 46 | 26 | 9 | 11 | 87 | 63 | 24 | 87 |
The point is that Leicester have dropped from 1.93 goals a game last season to just 1.04 goals a game this season. Which means of course that when they play teams like Arsenal they simply put 11 behind the ball and hope for a break. But they can on the odd occasion score more than one goal a game, as in fact they did against Arsenal on 28 September (although Arsenal won 4-2).
Arsenal have beaten Leicester 73 times and lost 33 times with each of the last six matches in the Premier League all being Arsenal victories. The goal total for these six games is 16 for Arsenal and five for Leicester, making the likely outcome of the game on Saturday to be something like Leicester 1 Arsenal 3.
Meanwhile, the injuries…
Arsenal are eighth in the Premier League injury chart with six men down. You’ll probably know all about these because of late the media has dropped talking about the number of red cards Arsenal get (their previous favourite topic) and now talk primarily about Arsenal‘s alleged failure to buy a forward.
But just in case you missed anyone, Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Ben White, Gabriel Martinelli, and Takehiro Tomiyasu are injured. And what I find particularly interesting is how much the media goes on about Arsenal’s injuries but doesn’t do that very much with other clubs.
OK we probably don’t care much about Tottenham Hots having 11 men out, nor the other clubs that have more men down than Arsenal, but I suppose that is just par for the course. Although we might notice that Manchester C only have three injuries so they have no excuse for the way they are playing. And in case it is of any interest, Leicester have five men out.
So far this season Leicester have beaten Southampton and the mighty Tottenham, away from home, plus West Ham and Bournemouth at home. Each victory was by one goal except the 3-1 home win over West Ham, of whom it has been said.
In the 2000s Arsenal have played Leicester 25 times in the Premier League, and Leicester have won four. Arsenal’s biggest wins were 6-1 on Boxing Day 2000, and 2-5 away in September 2015.
So far this season Leicester have four wins, and five draws, scoring 25 goals and having a goal difference of -28. The last time they were in the top division (ie two seasons ago) they ended with nine wins, and seven draws, scoring 51 goals and letting in 68 with a goal difference of -17.
So this does look like a worse team than the one that played in the Premier League last time around, and the odds are probably still in favour of a Leicester relegation.
Indeed in the last 20 years, Leicester have spent ten in the top division, nine in the second tier and one in the third, so their current position is historically fairly average for the club.
Next up it is the referee.
