What is the Correct Way to Leave a Club?

May 1981, Paris, and Ray Clemence sat in the dressing room at Parc des Princes and contemplated his third European Cup success.  Most players never even play in a European Cup Final, let alone three and here was Clem with his third winners medal.  This would go nicely with his two UEFA Cup medals, five league championships and an FA Cup win.  As he sat there watching his teammates celebrate victory over Real Madrid, Clemence had an uneasy feeling inside.  This was yet another success with Liverpool but for some reason it just didn’t feel the same.  He’d kept another clean sheet but it just wasn’t enough anymore.  He wanted a change.

When Ray Clemence told the club he wanted to move everyone was shocked.  He’d not given any inkling of being unsettled and perhaps he hadn’t quite realised it himself, but he felt he needed a new challenge.  So after almost thirteen years and six hundred and sixty-five appearances he moved to Tottenham.

The following May saw Clemence return to Anfield for the first time in his new colours.  Defending the Anfield Road end the crowd kept chanting “England’s number one”, but it was the reception he received when he came out for the second half which took his, and many watching, breath away.  As he ran towards The Kop the whole stadium was on their feet.   

Clemence still says this was the most emotional he’d ever been at a football ground.

But why should Clem receive such a warm reception from supporters he’d walked away from?  He’d given the club his finest years.  He made three hundred and thirty six consecutive appearances between September 1972 and March 1978.  The club was successful and had a worthwhile, if yet unproven, replacement waiting in the wings in Bruce Grobbelaar.  The general feeling was that he’d given us his best and he left with our blessing.  He also announced he was leaving during the summer, which didn’t affect any momentum we might have built up during a season.

The 1981-82 season was a pivotal one for the club as players such as Clemence, Jimmy Case, Ray Kennedy and Avi Cohen all left, with also David Johnson and Phil Thompson moving on during the season.  Liverpool usually only replaced one or two players at a time so to replace five was quite a risk.  They needn’t have worried as the club’s thirteenth League title was secured with that win over Tottenham.  The replacements Grobbelaar, Mark Lawrenson, Ronnie Whelan and Ian Rush soon became legends in their own right, so the succession was seamless.

Maybe there lies the key to whether a player who leaves a club on his own volition, is given the blessing of the fans.

This article, if you hadn’t guess already, has been inspired by the latest goings on surrounding Philipe Coutinho.  It now appears the club has been successful in keeping him, as he is now blaming his ‘advisers’ for the reason he’s made himself unavailable so far this season.

Coutinho’s career was floundering at Inter Milan when he signed in the January 2013 transfer window for a bargain price of £8.5m.  During his three and a half seasons he has become an important member of the team with last season arguably his best.  Barcelona has come calling and for a Brazilian who was spotted by Inter as a sixteen year-old at Vasco da Gama, he may find the lure too irresistible.

The club didn’t want him to leave, the supporters didn’t either but if he had have gone why should it hurt so much?

He signed a new five year contract in January giving us every indication he was going to be an integral part of the brave new world Jurgen Klopp is attempting to build at Anfield.  In pre-season we got a glimpse of what we might be able to look forward to when he combined well with new signing Mo Salah on numerous occasions. The prospect of Coutinho unleashing the pace of Salah and Mane was beginning to water mouths.

Yet on the eve of the new season he puts in a transfer request.  The suggestion was that FSG did not want to be seen to be keen to sell him and so engineered the player into this position to save face.  It would suit the owners if the fans had turned against Phil, as they had begun to and so Coutinho could move into the box marked ‘snake’.

But how can a player avoid this? Is there a right way to leave a club?  Can you blame players for wanting to challenge themselves? Can you blame players for wanting to play in front of over 100,000 people at the Nou Camp?

This hurts us supporters each time.  I was gutted when Luis Suarez left.  I felt proud the club refused to sanction his efforts to leave the previous season, yet you can’t knock the player who did his utmost to try and get us the league title twelve months later.  Some fans still harbour a grudge, but for me Suarez is such a magnificent player he was always likely to want to move to somewhere like Spain.

Coutinho is no Suarez though.  You always knew what you’d get with Suarez. You knew he’d influence each and every game.  But Coutinho goes missing in matches.  In amongst some magic moments there has been some average performances.

But what right do we Liverpool fans have to expect players to stay at the club?  After all, they invariably have come from somewhere else.  Did we consider how PSV fans felt when Suarez left in January 2011?  What about Roma fans having just witnessed twenty nine goals in two seasons from Salah only to see him return to England?

Of course we can’t ignore Southampton who have endured a raft of players moving from the South Coast to Liverpool.  In fact as I write this the ongoing saga of whether Virgil van Dijk will leave St. Mary’s for Anfield continues to rumble on.  I’m sure Southampton fans would’ve loved to have seen more of Lallana, Lambert, Lovren, Clyne and Mane, but they’re Liverpool players now and we want them to do well for us.

It’s not easy being a football supporter but your club is bigger than any player and will exist long after those players have retired.  We’ve lost players before, some of whom I struggled to get over such as Keegan, Souness, McDermott, Beardsley, Alonso and Suarez.  There have been numerous I’ve said good riddance to, Owen and Sterling for example. 

There are also plenty the club has decided to move on and it’s this point where you can see the players’ side of things.  They could give their all for a club but if the club decides in a change of direction then they could be sold anyway.  Coutinho may well have signed a contract but the club could still decide to sell him whilst he’s under that contract. 

Van Dijk is under contract at Southampton and appears to have decided he’s leaving. This saga has been dragging on since virtually the end of last season with the player effectively downing tools. What us fans never really consider is that we’re happy to have a player who has cheated his previous club, preferring to ignore the fact he may very well cheat us.

Do we really think Salah will stay longer than a couple of years?  What about Firmino? He’s twenty six.  Will he still be here in three years time?  These are not Liverpool-born players, it’s not particularly clear whether they’ve been lifelong Liverpool fans so should we expect them to stay here no matter what?

It’s pretty clear these days that players hold most of the cards, although maybe that should be corrected to agents hold most of the cards.  What shouldn’t be forgotten is that Coutinho’s agent is none other than Kia Joorabchian, a name which still strikes fear into many football supporters hearts and who has been effecting transfers worldwide for years since the Tevez affair in 2008.

After all this there are only a few examples of clubs successfully holding onto players when they’re being courted by other clubs, with Suarez and Gareth Bale being recent examples.  Although in both cases it seems they were persuaded to give one more season before their moves were sanctioned twelve months later.

So perhaps we’re to endure this charade again next summer so let’s hope the story follows a similar path to Suarez and Coutinho gives us his very best for this season and we’re challenging for the league title again.  What does seem to be clear, though is that the club were not planning to re-invest any transfer fee (which may have been as much as £130m) back into the playing squad.  The squad needs improving and £130m would’ve gone a long way to helping with that.  But the club was quite happy to pass up the offer as if they don’t really need the money.  Although it could be argued the team would’ve been poorer for the absence of Coutinho and would £130m have replaced him without disruption?  Another question is that Barcelona were offering as much as they were because their coffers had been filled by the Neymar transfer.  Will they still have that much money next summer?  Will any team?  If Coutinho is unsettled again next summer will the club have to accept a lower offer than they would’ve been able to obtain this summer?  It’s a risky strategy in a game where players and agents are holding many of the best cards.

As supporters we’ll go on falling hopelessly in love with our heroes even if they do eventually leave for other admirers.

So Far, Sehr Gut

We’re only six matches into Jurgen Klopp’s first full season in charge at Anfield and already there’s a buzz, a murmur, a fever, an expectation around the place.  We’ve been here before, of course.  For those of us who were there at start of Paisley’s reign it’s easy to forget there is a whole generation of Liverpool fans who have only known cup success, albeit as many trophies as Arsenal since 1990.

Klopp arrived at Liverpool on a metaphorical donkey with many keen to hand him their bread and fish in the hope he could work a miracle.  After the initial euphoria of wins at Chelsea and Man City came the pathetic Sunday lunchtime fare served up at Vicarage Road.  That game was a huge slap in the face of reality as we all struggled to resign ourselves to the fact this squad just wasn’t good enough.  We were in tenth place when he joined and only managed to move up two places by the end of the season.  There were two cup finals to look back on, but still no silverware.  After forty-five minutes in Basel, Liverpool were 1-0 up and well in control against Sevilla.  Twenty-five minutes later and the dream was over. 

At the end of the season there was great expectation the new campaign would bring more hope.  Personally I was a little disappointed with the transfer window.  I had doubts about Mane and Wijnaldum and wasn’t convinced we’d moved enough players on.  It has taken just a few games for those fears to be completely allayed.  .

The transformation has been huge.  Already we’re playing some of the most exciting football this side of Beardsley, Barnes and Aldridge. 

The mention of those three is what has prompted me to write this.  I have wonderful memories of the Dalglish’s 86-91 team with the years between 87-89 seeing us play some of the best football I’ve ever seen.  Paisley’s late 70’s side was the most efficient and fully deserved the title “the red machine”.  Effective, efficient and almost impossible to stop.  But that late 80’s side played the more exciting football, in my opinion.  Not better or worse, just different.

Watching some of those matches again you can be forgiven for forgetting what a complete force they were in attack.  Not a wave, more a tsunami.  There were players attacking from everywhere.  Because of the attacking instincts of the midfield Rush and Aldridge played a different role.  Unlike every other striker around then they would drop off and create space for Houghton, Whelan and McMahon to burst into.  Added to that there was Barnes and Beardsley who also attacked from deep.

Watching Liverpool so far this season reminds me of this team.  We attack from all areas.  Henderson, Wijnaldum and Coutinho along with Lallana, Firmino, Sturridge and Mane.  Add to that Clyne and Milner attacking down the flanks and you get the feeling opposition teams must struggle to work out where the next attack is coming from.  Joel Matip also appears to want to bomb forward in a way Alan Hansen used to.  Chelsea discovered how all-consuming this is and how difficult it is to repel. 

They hunt in packs, they press with ferocious authority and they pass the ball with an alacrity which makes you wish the ability to pause live football was not just for those watching tv. 

Henderson’s wonder strike at Stamford Bridge has also added a further facet.  If you defend deep in the hope of smothering the attacks then this will leave space for someone like Henderson or Coutinho to fire one from long range.

To make up for the lack of big signings Jurgen Klopp has improved a number of players to give us the effect of new introductions.  Milner has been moved to left-back to solve the problem of the madness that is Alberto Moreno.  He has been immense this season.  Always a hard worker, Milner can cross a ball as well as anyone and his ability to understand midfield play has enabled him to support that part of the play with more intelligence than most full-backs.  Clyne on the other flank also offers a great attacking threat which is currently more potent than any other full-back in the country.  The difference between him and Kyle Walker is his willingness to take players on.  This was fully evident to all except the England manager in the summer, it seems.  The current national boss would do well to consider both Liverpool full-backs for his qualification campaign too.

Time could well serve to consider Klopp’s conversion of Milner into a left-back as incisive and forward thinking as Paisley’s conversion of Ray Kennedy from attack to midfield.  Kennedy became one of the most revered players of his generation throughout Europe.  Whether Milner will reach those heights remains to be seen but his value to this team already this season is almost impossible to calculate.

Mane has really impressed me.  Always busy, quick feet and constantly scurrying in a manner Suarez used to.  He doesn’t have the skill and nous of the Uruguayan but this team seems more suited to his style than where he moved from.  The same can be said for Wijnaldum.  He seemed lost at Newcastle and lacking the stomach for the fight, but under Klopp he now has a purpose, a role and is flourishing under it.

Another improvement Klopp has brought is to bring competition for the goalkeeping position.  He bought Loris Karius from his old club, Mainz, but he unfortunately picked up an injury during pre-season.  We were then back to Mignolet for the start of the season.  He can be categorised as ‘decent’ rather than ‘outstanding’.  More a shot-stopper than a modern day keeper and although we’ve had shot stoppers before such as Clemence, Grobbelaar and Reina, Mignolet just doesn’t command his area in the way those three did.  We have also missed Reina’s ability to put us on the attack as soon as he picked up the ball.  But Mignolet now knows he has to fight for his place and that can only be healthy for the team.  The same for Emre Can who increasingly looks as if he could be as important to the team as a Gerrard, a Molby or a Souness.  But injury has seen him have to fight for his way back in and with standards already being set incoming players soon know what level of play is expected of them.

Jordan Henderson is another player who is really flourishing under Klopp.  Now club captain his role in the middle of the park seems to really suit him.  His passing is improving and he isn’t afraid to have a shot, as Chelsea found out, and he also seems to be benefiting from the players around him.  Watching him this season I can’t help but still feel a tinge of regret that Steven Gerrard wasn’t a few years younger.  He’d love playing in this team and he’d definitely love playing under this manager.  But there you are.

It is early days but the performance against Hull City this weekend certainly soothed some people’s fears we can often perform well against the big clubs but come unstuck against sides we really should be putting away with ease.  There’s an enjoyment in the football the players are exhibiting and they seem to have completely have bought into it, in a way mirrored at Man City.

I thought Klopp’s reaction to the Hull game was very poignant.  He could be seen on eighty minutes clearly reminding the players there were ten minutes still to go and he was visibly frustrated the performance had dropped.  He confirmed his frustration after the match and I was taken by the intensity and attention to detail from our boss.

If Man City continue in their current form, along with one or two other clubs, then goal difference could well be a factor come May.  Far better to go into the final game of the season knowing a win could secure the title rather than find three points is not enough as we’d need to win by seven or eight goals to stand a chance.

I realise Liverpool fans won’t want Ferguson’s name mentioned in an article such as this, but it was something he was intently aware of during United’s title years, as he would often lambast the players during the season to keep going and try and get that extra goal.  In 2012 they lost out on goal difference to City by eight goals.  Surely they could’ve found an extra eight goals from their thirty-eight matches?

You get the impression Klopp will never let his players rest on their laurels.  That is one of the major factors which makes him a perfect fit for this club.  It has all the hallmarks of the belief system so strongly instilled in the club by Shankly, Paisley, Fagan, Moran, Evans and Dalglish.

For now, things feel good. In a way similar to the heady days of 2013-14 we now look forward to every match in the belief of being entertained in a way we all feel football should do.  Clearly nothing has been achieved yet and we are barely into the new season but what is sport if you cannot dream?

Now You're Gonna Believe Them

“You must’ve cheated”
“I didn’t”
“Yeah, don’t give me that. You’ve changed the database to add some big players who wouldn’t ever join your club”
“No, no I didn’t.  Here, have a look at my squad. All these players are those who weren’t wanted by other clubs”
“Ok, well then you must’ve manipulated the scores. Each time you went behind you turned it off and started again”
“Well…..we were hardly ever behind so I didn’t need to”
“Ok, well bless you, you enjoy your fantasy.  It would never happen in real life”

This is a scenario that’s gone on around the world for any of us who’ve played Football Manager and published blogs of our progress.  One of the ultimate addictive facets to the game is the ability to take control of a ‘little club’ and guide them to glory, dreaming of press conferences, awards and team talks where you get to pit your wits against Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid.

What we have just witnessed in English football is an achievement of Football Manager proportions.  These things weren’t supposed to come true, in these days of clubs as behemoths burning more money than some countries GDP, football looked for all the world as though without money no club could hope to succeed.  Maybe in cup competitions the minnows could progress, mainly through luck of the draw as the bigger sides knock each other out, and maybe through the luck of timing.  A little club could come up against a big side who field a side to protect their stars as they are days away from a crucial European match.  Plus, cup competitions may only require you to negotiate six or seven matches.  But a league competition?  Surely that goes on too long for a lesser side to prevail?

But Leicester City has defied all the odds and overturned considered convention. 

There are plenty of reasons, or maybe even excuses, clubs can identify to suggest why they’re not currently winning titles.  Maybe they don’t have enough money to buy the quality of player to win trophies, their ground isn’t big enough to bring in enough revenue to afford these players’ wages.  They’ve given youth players a go but they’re struggling to come to terms with the higher standard of play.  All their best players get poached by bigger clubs.  They need a quality goalscorer, or a quality centre-half or a talented goalkeeper.  All those cost money and none of those players are interested in playing for clubs who don’t compete in European competitions.

Leicester has just blown all those excuses out of the water.  They ripped up the rulebook and laughed in the face of “it cannot be done”.  Of course there are a number of factors which have helped them achieve this, mainly the abject performances of other clubs who really should’ve won a league title when only 77 points were required for success.

It’s not just the big boys who’ve had their noses put out of joint and given homework for the summer to work out how they take on Leicester, but clubs who were above The Foxes in early 2015 are all now going to reassess their goals and aspirations.

DREAM BIG

There is a story often given by positive speakers about fleas in a jar.  If you put fleas in a jar and put the lid on, the fleas will jump up and hit their heads on the lid.  They keep doing this for a while until they work out that if they jump just below the level of the lid then they don’t get a headache.  They condition themselves so well they keep on doing this.  If you then remove the lid what happens?  The fleas keep jumping to the level of just below the lid as they’re not aware the lid has been removed.  You can keep them in that jar with the lid off for ages as they’ve been conditioned to believe that jumping any higher will bring them pain.

This is where many clubs who would consider themselves on a par with Leicester, now find themselves.  The lid has been lifted but have they got the ability to realise or the dreams to be able to jump higher?

Some clubs appeared to start the season with acceptance of a relegation battle.  They only really got to work once the drop was a very real possibility and suddenly they put in big enough performances to get them out of the mire.

Leicester’s success isn’t a fluke.  Although it is true this should give many people confidence in aiming to achieve the impossible, you can’t just turn up with a group of players, run around a lot and hope to win the league.  Leicester’s success may actually have been a perfect storm.

Will there be another season when Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea all lose a total of 38 matches between them?  Compare that with last season when they lost a total of 25 between them.  That is not to belittle Leicester’s achievement, it’s not their fault those big four clubs all had a meltdown at the same time.  One of the benefits for Leicester for next season is the panic which now pervades the boardrooms of all four clubs to try and work out how to re-arrange their business plans.  Already two of them have announced new management, with another one rumoured to, and the fourth resisting the urge for now. 

There is no single factor which has contributed to Leicester’s stunning title win and in a way what this has proven is that money alone cannot win you a title, but then Manchester City are evidence you need a little more than just money to win league titles.  The fact Leicester staved off relegation last season from a seemingly desperate position will have gone someway for them believing they could achieve anything.

Leicester fell to the bottom of the Premier League at the end of November 2014 when they lost 2-3 at QPR.  It was their seventh defeat in the first thirteen matches of the season, and began a run of six straight defeats.  They ended it by beating Hull City but on New Year’s Day they were still bottom of the pile

The table on New Year’s Day morning makes interesting reading.  Leicester were bottom, with Burnley and then Crystal Palace three points above them.  The fortunes of those bottom three eighteen months on is interesting.  Leicester are now Premier League Champions, Crystal Palace are in the FA Cup Final and Burnley have just won the Championship title.

When Leicester lost at Tottenham in late March they were seven points from safety with just nine matches to go.  The proceeded to lose just one of those nine, at home to the eventual champions Chelsea, and drew at Sunderland.  All the rest they won.  Back-to-back wins against West Ham and West Brom saw them finally drag themselves from the bottom of the table in mid-April.  Those remaining seven matches are enlightening when looking back now.  They only conceded in two of those matches, the Chelsea defeat and the final game 5-1 thrashing of QPR.  Fast forward to this season and they have kept fifteen clean-sheets.  More tellingly twelve of these have come in the second half of the season.  Between the Boxing Day defeat at Anfield and the 2-2 draw at home to West Ham in mid-April, they played fifteen matches and only conceded in four.  They lost just once, at Arsenal and the consistency is one huge reason for their success.

WORK ETHIC

They have a work ethic, as so many have identified, and this where they work so hard for each other.  They swarm all over sides.  They don’t need to worry about possession of the ball as they’ve proved their ability to retrieve possession, they lead the league in interceptions, and then counter attack at pace.  They possess a striker, Jamie Vardy, who never stops running and has scored 24 goals.  He also broke the Premier League record for consecutive games scored in.  They’ve identified their strengths and worked them thoroughly.  Not worry about not having the ball as long as they can nick it when their opponents are pushing forward, get it up the pitch quickly and then have a striker who can convert more often than not.  Largely Vardy has made the same run time and again every game, all season and yet sides have still to combat it.  They have a greater conversion rate of chances than any other club in the league.

There is also a fascinating synergy between the last two seasons.  They’ve been crowned Champions after 139 days at the top of the table.  Last season they were at the bottom for 140 days.

Claudio Ranieri deserves all the plaudits heading his way, so do the owners for choosing him against others better judgement.  But the groundwork within the club set up by the backroom staff and Nigel Pearson last season, is what has gone a long, long way towards their success.  The medical staff have found a way of preparing and looking after players who have been able to survive the rigours of a 38-game season without a soft-tissue injury anywhere.  Many felt sorry for him when a re-financed Chelsea ditched him for Mourinho in 2004.  Leicester is his sixth club appointment since then and he came from a less than auspicious experience as manager of Greece.  He was not to know of the turmoil behind the scenes within the Greek FA and was only in charge for four matches.  In nearly thirty years of management this is his first league title.  Few begrudge him that.

Have they been lucky? I think they have, but then again they’ve seized on an opportunity and run with it.  They’ve lost three games all season, with only two clubs ever getting the better of them (Arsenal, twice, Liverpool, once).  Chelsea lost just three last season, which puts that into perspective.  They have been clear of injuries, but then as has just been mentioned, they have created their own luck in that department.  They didn’t seem to suffer from any contentious decisions by officials, possibly until the Vardy sending off against West Ham.  They didn’t have many goals chalked off or many goals given against them where replays suggested otherwise.

What Leicester has proved is that there is no substitute for hard work, planning and preparation.  Ranieri didn’t make too many adjustments to the 2014-15 side but the changes he did make were crucial.  There are all sorts of stats about how little they’ve spent compared to the bigger clubs in English football, but what they have generated is a fantastic team spirit where the players are prepared to sacrifice themselves for each other.  There are no huge egos at the club, no big names.  At the end of last year I read a comment from someone about how Leicester would struggle to keep hold of players like Vardy and Mahrez.  Now I’m sure the club is looking forward to barging in on their rivals transfer negotiations, saying “don’t go there, they haven’t got Champions League football”.

PREDICTIONS ARE USELESS

I tweeted towards the end of November about the incredibly tough run of fixtures they had coming up.  They’d just won at Newcastle and gone to the top of the table after thirteen games.  Their run was Manchester United (h), Swansea (a), Chelsea (h), Everton (a), Liverpool (a), Manchester City (h).  My argument was they’d gained a lot of points against weaker opposition.  They’d only picked up two points from games against Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United.  I, like many others, expected them to fall away.  I expected them to find the going tough, players would pick up injuries, etc, etc.  .  Most people were likely to have agreed with me about Leicester’s chances, although there was one chap who reckoned they’d get “12 points there easy”.  Take a bow Ross Bell (@RossBell1984), you were almost on the money.  They picked up thirteen points, winning three, drawing two and losing just one of those six matches, at Liverpool.

When they lost at The Emirates in mid-February many people expected Arsenal to go on and take the title.  They were two points behind Leicester and with a supposedly far superior squad and a manager who’d experienced a title win.  But from there Leicester really hit a rhythm, gaining nineteen points from a possible twenty-one over the next seven games, conceding in just one.  A series of 1-0 wins took them further ahead of the pack.  In contrast, Arsenal’s seven matches earned them just nine points.  In the days of George Graham at Arsenal the fans frequently sang “one-nil to the Arsenal”.  All these years later they’d been “out Arsenal-ed” by Leicester City.  58,000 is the average attendance at Arsenal, whereas Champions Leicester only house 32,000 every week.  Even Aston Villa command a higher average attendance.

NO COMPARISON

Was this the ‘greatest story ever told’ in football?  There have been a couple of contenders to challenge this.  Ipswich winning the title in 1962 a year after winning the Second Division title.  Nottingham Forest won the league in 1978 a year after finishing third in the Second Division.  They then went onto win back-to-back European Cups.  The Forest side is a decent comparison with Leicester in that they didn’t have any superstars, until Brian Clough signed one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Peter Shilton.  But other than that they had a lot of players who inidividually weren’t necessarily anything special, but collectively were very hard to beat.  Liverpool had just won back-to-back league titles and also the European Cup, a year after the UEFA Cup.  They contained internationals such as Clemence, Neal, Hughes, Hansen, Thompson, Souness, Dalglish, McDermott and Ray Kennedy.  They won the league by seven points which is the equivalent of ten points today.

In the sixties the league was won by eight different teams.  In the seventies six different clubs won the First Division.  In the last ten years just three different clubs have won the title.  This is not to denigrate either Ipswich or Forest’s achievements but money has changed everything, especially expectations.  

WHAT NEXT?

Leicester may do quite well in Europe, particularly as their brand of football should be very difficult for foreign teams to contend with as they rarely come up against it.  The key could be to keep the same group of players.  It will be important for them to recruit well, paying particular attention to attitude and temperament.  All the talk coming out of the King Power Stadium is they intend to do just that.  What remains for them next season is anybody’s guess.  So many, including their own supporters, got this season wrong so it seems churlish to try and predict anything further of this wonderful story.  Personally, I’m going to just sit back and enjoy it.  One of the most popular successes for many a year.  Let’s hope that success doesn’t ruin the players or the team spirit.