Kamara: Wise Ranieri’s Leicester side have the energy to take title
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If Leicester can keep up the energy that they have shown so far this season, there is no reason why they cannot maintain their lofty position and challenge for the Premier League title.
That’s going to be the deciding factor. That energy, that desire and that fitness that everyone single one of them has shown is what makes teams tick.
They might not have the greatest players in the world in terms of ability, but they work as hard as any team out there and that’s what it’s all about.
They’ve got two stand-out individuals in Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy and with them on song anything is possible.
It’s been all about consistency for the Foxes with no team having had more players start every Premier League game this season than Leicester and that says an awful lot about the man in charge.
Claudio Ranieri has learnt this season that he doesn’t need to project this ‘Tinkerman’ mantra that he has become renowned for.
That’s the thing about management and the years you clock up, you become wiser with experience.
When you make mistakes it certainly helps you learn things and when you are given an opportunity again it’s down to you to not make the same mistakes many expect you to.
When he took over at Leicester the team virtually picked itself. It was a case of ‘if it’s not broken don’t fix it’, there was simply no need for the ‘Tinkerman’ to go to work.
To be fair to him he’s Manager of the Season so far by a million miles for what he’s guided them to this term.
Hopefully, from a Leicester point of view he can sustain that because I don’t think there is anybody who expected him to come in and do this.
Nigel Pearson did such a brilliant job to keep them up last season and to then see him replaced you have to wonder about how the players are going to feel about that.
When Ranieri came in he had a few hills to climb straight away and he’s done that.
I’ve seen a lot of pundits getting stick because they were sceptical about how Leicester were going to cope with Pearson gone, but that was just their opinion at the time, you don’t know how things will turn out.
Ranieri might not have been the obvious choice to continue the work the previous manager had done, but it goes to show that everybody should be given an opportunity to deliver and prove the doubters wrong.
He’s gone in and done it with a smile on his face, and got his team playing with an incredible amount of energy, and that deserves plenty of credit.
Players will want to play every game. Football becomes easy when you are winning matches. You feel like you have a new lease of life and you can run forever, that’s how it is.
The problem starts when you lose a game that you perhaps should win. All of a sudden, whether it’s a mental thing or not, the legs start to get a little more tired as the games go on.
Some might have earmarked the Chelsea game as the one the champions turn it around in and the wheels fall off the Leicester wagon.
The Chelsea team that beat Porto in their game previous looked to me like the Blues of last season, they looked as good as they have all term.
So they went into that Leicester game in the best shape they have been this season and for Leicester to do what they did to them it shows that if they can keep up that level of desire and hunger they have a massive chance to take the title.
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