What we can learn from Leicester’s chemistry lesson

Paul Derby 04/05/2016 31comments  |  Jump to last

Watching Leicester City’s players celebrate becoming champions of England, my overriding feeling was ‘good on them’. An unfancied team from the East Midlands, assembled on a modest budget, featuring unheralded players and led by a quietly respectful manager, proved that competing not just for the top four but winning the title itself was not an impossible dream.

Leicester’s squad cost something like £57 million, or to put it another way, one Anthony Martial or one Kevin de Bruyne. Theirs is a triumph of recruitment, man management and teamwork, which at the same time rams home the scale of our own shortcomings: the tactical ineptitude, the fitness issues, the lack of ‘chemistry’, the mental weakness and the continued under-performance of talented players.

What Leicester and to an extent Spurs have proven is that there are no excuses. Yes, financial clout matters, but of greater significance is the ability to mould a group of players into a sum greater than their parts – the polar opposite of our desperate performances in recent times. This is my take on the lessons Everton could learn from Leicester’s achievement:

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The art of defending

The centre-half pairing of Robert Huth and Wes Morgan would be unlikely to threaten a World 11, but it is ultra-effective and demonstrated that stopping goals and a willingness to win the physical battle are the bread and butter of how you give yourself a chance to win matches. The work rate of Leicester’s starting 11, not just Kante and Drinkwater, but throughout the team simply overwhelmed many opponents and they were prepared to put in the hard yards without the ball. They defend as a team and nobody ever stands still or leaves the dirty work to a team mate. In this regard, they shame us.

At the start of the season Leicester leaked goals, but after Christmas they kept 11 clean sheets in 17 matches and won plenty of tight games. This ability to see out close-fought victories would have been impossible without defensive solidity and a well drilled team shape. Not hard to see where we might pick up a few tips on this score is it?

It’s what you do with possession that counts

One of the biggest criticisms of Everton during the tenure of Roberto Martinez has been the ponderously slow ‘possession at all costs’ mantra, which has sucked the life out of our identity and left many fans cold. Our best performances have come when we’ve played at pace: Southampton away this season; the success on the road in last season’s Europa League... although these are increasingly fleeting memories.

Leicester averaged about 45% possession in 2015-16; in itself, this is a startling statistic because no team in the past decade has won the league with a possession percentage below 55%. Instead Leicester relied on lightning counterattacks led by Vardy and Mahrez and they played better in ‘transition’ than anybody else. While we might not want to copy these tactics precisely, surely there is a lesson in the art of possession with a purpose?

Chemistry

Leighton Baines says we don’t have it, and that it’s been missing all season. Roberto Martinez believes we have phenomenal amounts of it, while the rest of us are left wishing that the men in white lab coats would come and take us away until the start of next season.

Call it what you will – chemistry, team spirit, camaraderie – it is sorely lacking at Everton and positively bubbling over at Leicester and not only since they’ve been top of the league. Far too often we give the impression of a group of strangers whose energy has been sucked out by the straitjacket of playing sideways passes. Without straying into yet another critique of the manager, chemistry is not just about winning matches, it stems from a system that everyone believes in, plus the tactical flexibility to implement a Plan B. Patently, our players don’t believe in the system and the designated Plan B is more of Plan A.

Hope for the future

So, in short well done to Leicester for proving that anything is possible. They have shown that speed of thought and speed of movement can overcome so-called better players and vastly bigger wage bills. Amid the wreckage of this season, there are many lessons we need to learn, from the boardroom to the pitch. A swift glance in the direction of the King Power Stadium wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

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Darren Hind
1 Posted 05/05/2016 at 05:14:46
Leicester where a very good side in the second half of last season, they were already showing Champions League qualification form.

The "Tinker man" hardly tinkered at all he simply took an already improving side and improved them some more. He has managed this season quite brilliantly. Every team/manager in the world will be trying to emulate him/them next season.

One question though: it's been blindingly obvious for 6-7 weeks that Leicester were going to win the title... so why is everyone acting so astonished now?

Matt Traynor
2 Posted 05/05/2016 at 05:46:16
Darren, I don't think it's a case of everyone being astonished now, the media have just been waiting for it to become official before falling and fawning all over them. Most bookies fell over themselves to offer early cash-outs on the 5000/1 odds, but many of them were still offering 500/1 at Christmas, when it was pretty obvious to all that this was a team on a roll – the bookies do get it wrong then... Hope for Phil et al!

You are right they carried on from where they left off avoiding relegation last season – a lot of people have said Nigel Pearson deserves some credit, as he was arguably sacked for (in part) off the field activities by some players, including his own son and (get this) not getting on well with the media...

The good thing is, if you believe it, the "rising tide lifts all ships" argument comes into play, whereby rather than assembling a collection of high priced players, the skill of the coaches in getting that extra out of them has come to the fore.

Finally I had to laugh at Richard Scudamore praising them. My god his teeth must've been gritted. Unless Leicester make it to the knockout stages, then it's likely going to be another fall in the Uefa coefficients to mean Italy get closer to taking that 4th slot off us. To be fair, Man City finally hit par this season after a few years of dragging it down. He's probably praying for the RS to win the Europa (and qualify for the Champions League).

Ernie Baywood
3 Posted 05/05/2016 at 05:49:35
I'm not sure that the lessons are as simple as play fast, run hard, defend hard. We should be very wary about following any example – following is a good way to limit your potential. I think it's about playing a style that suits your players and your aims. No-one can doubt that Leicester's players are perfectly matched to the way they play. There's a bit of good fortune and done excellent management with Ranieri there.

The frustrating thing is that Roberto tells us that he believes in all of this. He's a proponent of aligning your players behind a style of play and committing to it.

Unfortunately, he's got the wrong style for these players (or the wrong players for his style) and he seems to have difficulty converting his vision into reality. Or maybe with adding a dose of reality into his vision.

Basically he's caught between two roads – the one he was on and the one he'd like to be on. And he has no idea what to do.

Leicester's title win is exceptional in the fullest sense of the word. Recent history tells us that it's unlikely to be repeated next year. They did have fortune with lack of injuries in a squad that will be severely tested next year. Teams will be looking at ways to beat them – ie, not taking leaping swings at a counter puncher. I'll bet, though, that their manager is contemplating this and what direction they'll take now. In the meantime we're drifting.

Paul Andrews
4 Posted 05/05/2016 at 06:15:41
Two centre-halves who take it personal if they concede. Out and out defenders.

Not the most fashionable of names in Huth and Morgan. But give me that type of centre-half every day of the week.

Jim Bennings
5 Posted 05/05/2016 at 08:18:25
Another very key factor in the difference between Leicester and teams like ourselves is they have rarely conceded a "self-destruct goal" all season.

When you watch them they make fewer mistakes than most, whilst at Everton the amount of schoolboy goals we have gifted to teams is embarrassing.

Half the goals conceded by us this season you would struggle to see replicated on a playground for under-10s.

Leicester are more than just running and good organisation, some of the games this season has seen them completely outplay opponents with fantastic football.

It's a sporting story that's unlikely to ever be repeated though and what a time to be a Leicester City supporter, just winning the Championship to get promotion must have felt amazing two years ago but to then win the Premier League????

Simply out of this world.

Just goes to show that relegation doesn't destroy every club, since we last won a trophy in 1995 we have been a top flight club every season but Leicester, relatively a yo-yo club have won THREE trophies in that period.

Geoff Evans
6 Posted 05/05/2016 at 08:43:08
it's called passion and hard work, no secret.
Martin Nicholls
7 Posted 05/05/2016 at 10:11:53
Matt#2 - not so sure it "was pretty obvious to all" at Xmas or we'd all have bitten off the bookies hands for the 500-1 on offer!
Nathan Rooney
8 Posted 05/05/2016 at 13:14:09
A very fair and accurate assessment, Paul, and I would say that Leicester are an example of a team being greater than the sum of their parts.

A team that is ultra-fit and will run through brick walls for the cause, defenders defending first (and chipping in with a few very important goals), midfielders knowing their jobs, doing the simple things well like passing to the same coloured shirts, and forwards not afraid to go past and commit opponents.

Amazing what a bit of training, organisation and tactical drilling can do for a side eh? I think its these simple things which makes our current situation all the more infuriating.

I particularly like your line “the art of possession with a purpose”, which perfectly sums up this Leicester side, and all successful football teams IMO, and heartbreakingly, is the complete antithesis of this current Everton team and our current managers core beliefs and principles, regarding how the game should be played.

I read Martinez's interview with the Daily Mail late one night, and couldn't sleep after finishing it! Carragher must have been pissing his kecks at the complete nonsense and drivel that spewed from Martinez's mouth after each question.

It has also been said that Leicester have been fortunate with injuries and suspensions, but I would counter that the sports science and physiotherapy team at Leicester deserve some credit for managing the squads injuries and looking after the group fitness wise – again, possibly a lesson that should be learned by the powers that be at Everton, when you look at the well-respected sports science department at Everton, which was systematically undermined and torn apart by our (alleged) fully qualified physiotherapist/manager, who seemed to know best?!

This also ties in with the fitness of the respective sides – our boys looking dead on their feet after 30 minutes (if we are lucky), the foxes looking like they can go again for another 90 mins at the full time whistle, and also scoring several massive goals and winning games in the dying minutes and injury time several times over the season. How many points have we dropped due to tiredness and concentration?

I do think that Leicester being knocked out of the cup competitions early and only having one game a week for much of the second part of the season has helped massively in winning the league, and did enable them to pick the same team for the vast majority of fixtures.
Saying that, I take nothing away from what they have accomplished this season, which is truly amazing and good for the game in general, and I stand to be corrected should they continue with their brilliant form next season, when they will have the glorious distraction of the champion's league (what a distraction!).

I remain clinging to the hope that Mr Moshiri will carry out a thorough review of everything that occurs at the club, both on and off the pitch, and any areas of weakness that are identified througout the club are swept away through some bold, brave decision making.

Jay Wood
9 Posted 05/05/2016 at 15:29:24
Some posters, not necessarily on this thread, have suggested Leicester 'got lucky' or even 'cheated' their way to the title.

(The latter is based on an extremely dubious and tenuous link to a story about a quack offering performance-enhancing drugs to athletes in which a couple of Leicester players were implicated. The report remains totally unsubstantiated and seems to have died a death.)

Read this excellent article on BBC Sport which reveals the science and methodology behind their success:

Leicester City: The science behind their Premier League title

The fitness levels, the fewest injuries (the NordBord for strengthening hamstrings, anyone...? Or a cryotherapy ice chamber to accelerate recovery from injury? BEETROOT shoots???!!!), the fewest players used, the power sprints the team use to give them the highest number of goals and shots on the counter attack ... it didn't happen by chance.

They have a very holistic and deliberate method to fitness and performance. A visionary club or manager would do well to study their methods.

A very enlightening read...

Eric Myles
10 Posted 05/05/2016 at 15:52:13
Beetroot shoots Jay?

I thought it was shots? Like tequila shots?

Tony Abrahams
11 Posted 05/05/2016 at 17:33:38
Thanks for that Jay, it was very interesting. It will also be interesting to see how Nigel Pearson, gets on in his next job, considering he's laid a lot of the foundations, on which Leicester have built there success.

I thought Ranieri's, decision to give his players a week off after they lost to Arsenal, was also a real master-stroke. It could have backfired, but it showed that he had a lot of trust in his players, and giving them the chance to get away from everything for a few days obviously worked, because they haven't lost since that game.

Trust, definately creates good chemistry, and the way they seem to involve the players, in most things, has obviously helped them reap their rewards.

Leicester City, I'm made up for yers!

Martin Mason
12 Posted 05/05/2016 at 18:15:12
I think another key thing is that when you have a fit, hard working squad that has the chemistry right then 4-4-2 can be a fantastic system. I can just see Lukaku with somebody like Vardy alongside him and fast service like that from midfield not that Vardy needs it. Ulloa and Okazaki are very good players in their own right.

I agree though that Leicester are cheats compared to Everton, they have a manager who is in tune with the needs of fans and club and not blinded by idealist dogma..

Ray Said
13 Posted 05/05/2016 at 18:36:32
Martin (12) I am with you regarding 4-4-2. When played well with the right players it is still effective and flexible. It is also a system in which the balance between defence and attack can favour either depending on the circumstances of the game.

I find RM's obsession with 4-2-3-1 is unbalanced as we play it as most of the time we have 6 of the 10 outfield players fannying around in our own half.

4-4-2 would give us 5 defending and five attacking.
Lukaku would benefit from having the right strike partner and I would have a target man ahead of Lukaku so Rom can receive the ball facing the opposition goal rather than playing with his back to goal.

Brian Hill
14 Posted 05/05/2016 at 20:14:44
Martin Mason "I agree though that Leicester are cheats compared to Everton"? Explanation please.
Xavier Spencer
15 Posted 05/05/2016 at 21:10:36
Cheats? Why because they get stuck in? Because they harass the ref? Because they play with passion? Fuck me, if that's cheating, then bring it on.

On a slightly different matter did you see Roberto's latest bout of insania when asked about Leicester's achievement? He now uses the word incredible instead of phenomenal and must used it eight times while managing to say absolutely fuck all. I have come to the conclusion that he actually knows nothing whatsoever about football and after six seasons he has now been rumbled.

Dick Fearon
16 Posted 05/05/2016 at 21:59:47
If you want to see what effect a decent manager can have on a team, you need only take a short walk across Stanley Park.
Robin Cannon
17 Posted 06/05/2016 at 03:36:28
"A team that is ultra-fit and will run through brick walls for the cause, defenders defending first (and chipping in with a few very important goals), midfielders knowing their jobs, doing the simple things well like passing to the same coloured shirts, and forwards not afraid to go past and commit opponents."

Before everyone gets carried away; that's the absolute minimum. Our problem is that we never even achieve that basic minimum.

There have been lots of smaller teams that have achieved these qualities in the Premier League era and have finished mid table, or at least escaped relegation.

While the Leicester model is one to follow, I genuinely don't think it's a case of them having noticed a trick nobody else was doing, or that it disproves that the norm is that money (and wage bills particularly) will almost always win out in the long run.

One interesting idea I read recently is that maybe there is MORE of a genuine opening for this kind of approach now, though; as the richest teams become more and more obsessed with big name players rather than team chemistry.

If this season was a one off then we missed our opportunity; an opportunity that would have put us in a better long term spot than Leicester because we have greater potential to advance from it. If it wasn't a one off, and these kind of opportunities are going to come up more often, then getting rid of RM becomes even more vital if we're ever to take advantage.

James Byrne
18 Posted 06/05/2016 at 05:15:48
Fantastic assessment Paul and although the Leicester story has been brilliant to follow, it just makes me want to cry at how awful Everton are under this fraud of a manager. In every department compared to Leicester we are worlds apart, as described in your review.

Let's be honest though, this Premier League is very average and has been for a few good seasons now, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that an "outsider" sets up to win the league.

For me there are two massive areas in our play that have contributed to the downfall of everything else. Firstly the obsession to play "possession football" to death with no Plan B has been suicidal. To think Leicester have won this league with the lowest amount of possession out of the whole league is incredible, but it puts to bed the Martinez theory.

The other area is defending... my boy is 10 and he plays at a good level; like most kids he started in defense and even at that young age they are drummed not to concede goals, coming off crying and devastated when too many goals have been conceded.

So when this gobshite of a manager is sitting there telling the likes of Jags and Stones that conceding goals is part of his master plan, what are they supposed to think – fuck me, Jags is the captain and he has to sell that to the other players. No wonder the chemistry went a long time ago.

I can't wait for the day this manager is booted out of this club once and for all and the new manager brings back some pride and a philosophy that the players can buy in to.

Anthony Jones
19 Posted 06/05/2016 at 07:26:22
Well said, without restating the same painful points over and over.

Martinez should give Spain a go. I think he could do okay there with the likes of Valladolid or Bilbao. I have seen a couple of extremely boring La Liga games that incited no frustration from the fans.

Martin Mason
20 Posted 06/05/2016 at 09:20:02
Brian@14

"they have a manager who is in tune with the needs of fans and club and not blinded by idealist dogma."

I was trying to be funny

Nathan Rooney
21 Posted 06/05/2016 at 09:59:55
Robin (#17) – It's not a case of getting carried away on my part, and I totally agree that this is the bare minimum we should be expecting from any player that pulls on the Royal Blue Jersey.

I was merely pointing out how shockingly far we have fallen from these simple basics, as the next sentence on my previous post highlighted.

I also believe that Leicester have a sprinkling of quality players mixed in with the basics of spirit/hard work/passion, which has delivered there success this season.

Again, it could be argued that we also have a sprinkling of quality players (Stones, Rom, Gerry, Ross), but the basic fundamentals of a good side are just are not evident, and this again has to come from our gaffer and his backroom team.

It pains me to say it, but look at our loveable neighbours and what they have been doing since Herr Klopp was employed – nothing special about it – fitness, workrate, desire/togetherness, organisation, decent flexible tactics married to a few quality players in the squad – everything we currently lack, and the main reason the race is run for Bobby.

Other posters on other threads have put the reasons for removing our manager from his position much more eloquently than I ever could, so I wont labour the point, and apologies for making this another Martinez out comment.

Unfortunately, my thoughts continue to lead me to the subject of our manager, each time I think about Everton and football in general at the moment!

The end to the season cannot come soon enough, as the current situation is undignified and unfair to Martinez, the players and the fans, but the silence from our board is deafening at the moment, which is making matters much worse.

Johnny Rainford
22 Posted 06/05/2016 at 16:38:47
Dick #16... Spot on mate. 21 years with no silverware and Kenwright has been in charge for 16 of those. The psychology he has brought to Everton is survival at all costs... Anything else is a bonus. This is reflected in his managerial appointments.
Jim Wilson
23 Posted 06/05/2016 at 21:12:08
Funny isn't it. Nearly everyone was saying you need money to win leagues. Suddenly it is about a good manager, good blend and chemistry and a settled team each week.
Football is a simple game messed up by young managers thinking they are clever who don't know the fundamentals.
Loko Sanchez
24 Posted 07/05/2016 at 03:38:12
What they don't have are players and their agents saying they are good enough for Champions League but couldn't even be in the top half of the Premier League. Most talented squad assembled in ages my arse!
Darren Hind
25 Posted 07/05/2016 at 06:19:43
Tony @11

Would you take a chance on Pearson ?

He's an abrasive fucker (nothing wrong with that) but he was the guy who got them promoted and while their small squad struggled with injures in the first half of last season, he had them showing CL qualification form in the second.

I'm not taking anything from away Ranieri, he did a fantastic job, but it cannot be argued that Pearson put this team together and that they were getting some amazing results before the Italian came along.

Not looking to start a debate here, because I just don't think Luvvie Bill could cope with such an err. . . plain speaker, but I've seen some names mentioned as a successor to Martinez that have made me shudder. Pearson certainly wouldn't be one of them.

I think Pearson will be a success wherever he ends up . .He'll certainly liven the place up

Peter Barry
26 Posted 07/05/2016 at 07:53:33
We learned that 'Good Managers created Good Teams'
Tony Abrahams
27 Posted 07/05/2016 at 08:50:28
Darren,

I was just re-reading this thread and was thinking about Nigel Pearson before I got to your post. I would have him definitely, but I think he will go to Villa.

It will be interesting to see if he can do anything with Aston Villa though, a club on its knees; it must be one of football's harder jobs right now.

How do you think Everton's squad would react to a character like Pearson, Darren?

Paul Andrews
28 Posted 07/05/2016 at 12:16:03
Nigel Pearson?

That would be an indication of where the club is heading if he was appointed.
No ambition if we start putting his name up.

We would have to bunk the queue of top clubs looking to appoint Pearson to get him.

Johnny Rainford
30 Posted 07/05/2016 at 13:50:22
Well since it's psychology we're talking about, Personally I don't think Kenwright can be trusted to choose our next manager since he will probably go for someone in his own easy-going image. Which has got us precisely nowhere.

Our next manager needs to be someone who is absolutely ruthless, and that psychology needs to spread through the club.

Someone once said that Everton win many friends but not enough matches. How true.

Matthew Mackey
32 Posted 09/05/2016 at 12:08:17
Leicester have achieved what they have this season by looking forward and not back. They haven't clung onto their "history" like someone learning to swim clinging to a float in a swimming pool. That's not to say they have sold themselves out or anything as I'm sure most die hard Leicester fans know their history like we know ours.

What I mean is that their emphasis is on looking forward – a good happy squad, a dam good man manager, an excellent back room staff, owners who can see the bigger picture and a nice new ground that is fit for 21st century football. Leaving the old Filbert street must have been a big thing to them but they have moved on and so the KIng Power stadium is now affectionately known as "home!".

These are all pieces of a jigsaw which when put together correctly produce a positive forward looking club. We at Everton have some nice pieces of the jigsaw. We now have a billionaire owner who seems prepared to invest in the right places. We have good training facilities at Finch farm, we have some good coaches, we have (believe it or not) a good squad of players.

What we don't have are the good man manager and the ground fit for 21st century football, which IMO are two key elements of the jigsaw. In short, the longer we dither over a new ground and the longer we allow ourselves to be managed by a man who simply doesn't have all the credentials to manage at the top level then we are just going to drift like a log on the ocean.

It really is time to sort this stadium issue out once and for all and then rebuild this club without forgetting our history. Only then can we have any realistic chance of competing with the likes of…………..Leicester City!

Matthew Williams
33 Posted 10/05/2016 at 14:13:26
The major problem has always been our chairman,a man who has the utmost respect for footy fans from every club apart from the only fans that truly matter.... Evertonians.

11 long years of failure under Moyes, then hires the next clueless gaffer after seeing his club go down & then can't be arsed sticking around to help them back up to the Premier League... you just couldn't make this shit up.

Only at Everton.

Btw: For the record, we were shite in his first season too!


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