The Foxes pulled off one of the most remarkable title victories in recent years, but their campaign was aided by the miserable form of English football's biggest clubs.
The Foxes pulled off one of the most remarkable title victories in recent years, but their campaign was aided by the miserable form of English football's biggest clubs.
This season will go down in history as the year Leicester City overcame the biggest of odds to secure an incredible title victory. But it will also be remembered as the season in which the Premier League's traditional superpowers all slipped up and gave hope to the rest of the division for years to come. So just how did it all go so wrong, so quickly, for English football's elite?ARSENAL
By Chris Wheatley
Arsenal fell by the wayside towards the end of the Premier League season yet again as underdog Leicester secured a deserved title win. Despite the Foxes’ victory it is worth noting that Arsene Wenger's side won both games against the newly crowned champion, scoring five goals at the King Power Stadium and edging the encounter at Emirates Stadium thanks to a last minute Danny Welbeck goal. It would be easy to say that Arsenal was better than Leicester on the basis that it beat the Foxes twice, but the Gunners couldn't come up trumps in matches against weakened Swansea and Manchester United teams.
The usual problems arose for Arsenal throughout the season. Defensive naivety, lack of an out-and-out goal scorer and failure to buy an outfield player in the summer transfer window have all cost Wenger's men this season. This was undoubtedly Arsenal's best chance to win the league and failure to pick up the club's first major domestic title in 12 years is something that will surely haunt Wenger for years to come. He'll be hard pressed to come back and win it next season in what is likely to be his final season at the club. Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte and potentially Jose Mourinho will certainly have a larger say on that.
CHELSEA
By Nizaar Kinsella
Abysmal, inexcusable and shambolic, Chelsea has proved itself to be the anti-Leicester City and it was the Foxes who put the final nail in the coffin of Jose Mourinho's Chelsea career at the King Power Stadium with a 1-0 win. He was subsequently sacked due to a "palpable discord" with his playing staff - as Chelsea found itself just one point above the relegation zone in December.
Never has a title defense begun as badly as Mourinho's in the Premier League era. He branded club doctor Eva Carneiro and team physio Jon Fearn as "impulsive and naive" in a televised interview in its opening match of the season against Swansea. This was for its response to an Eden Hazard injury as the former champion drew 2-2 draw at home, with Thibaut Courtois being sent off. This had huge implications for a dressing room that began to rip apart and turn against its once much-loved manager.
Cesc Fabregas admitted that Mourinho "trusted the players too much" and that he himself "forgot how to play football" during this period as the club was left one point above the relegation zone before Guus Hiddink returned to the club to steady the ship. It took last season's PFA Player of the Year, Hazard, until the end of April to score his first Premier League goal of the season.
Leicester, by contrast, was led by former Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri, who Mourinho once branded a "loser." He proved anything but as Chelsea imploded while the title winner was showing a togetherness, fight and team spirit that simply did not exist in west London. It says it all that Chelsea's highlight of the season was to deny Tottenham the title, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it is they who should be competing for silverware, not revelling in stopping its rival.
LIVERPOOL
By Melissa Reddy
For Liverpool, watching Leicester win the league was simply a question of 'What If?'
What if, following the horrid end to last season, Brendan Rodgers wasn’t offered a stay of execution and Jurgen Klopp was recruited then instead of eight games into the current campaign?
What if the German had a summer transfer window as well as a full preseason to condition Liverpool for 2015-16? What if 32.5 million pounds ($47M) wasn't spent on a striker, who was not a stylistic fit for the club, on the request of a manager who was on the back foot before the season even kicked off?
And what if the injury crisis that saw Klopp unable to field an unchanged line-up for 133 days since his October appointment never occurred?
As much as the league season will feel like a missed opportunity for the Reds, Leicester's achievement is also a source of hope. A team with a warm manager, with a clear vision, inherent belief and togetherness can actually win the title, regardless of wage bill, the odds and all the other such factors.
Liverpool ticks all those boxes, and has already shown how devastating it can be when properly implementing Klopp's full-throttle approach, so next season should see the club pose a more formidable threat domestically.
Despite Liverpool's transition and its lengthy treatment list, the club still stayed within a whisker of the top-four places for much of the campaign under the German. This has been a learning experience for him: assessing the conditions, the intensity, the opposition, what his players are made of and what the Premier League is ultimately all about. The squad, too, had to learn about the demands of the larger-than-life character in the dugout.
In 2016-17, Klopp will be looking to write his own fairytale, not reflect on Leicester's.
MANCHESTER CITY
By Sam Lee
It all started so well for Manchester City - winning its first five games and not conceding a goal - but its Premier League season quickly fell apart at the seams.
Its 10 league defeats to date are a result of a flaky mentality that has somehow meant it was capable of switching on in big European games but seemingly treating hum-drum league clashes with disdain. All the while, the specter of Pep Guardiola and his summer arrival loomed over their season.
Of those 10 defeats, at least eight have been resounding. Liverpool and Spurs despatched City home and away, and it may have only lost 2-0 at Stoke but it could have been five. Of course, there was the home defeat to Leicester itself that came at a crucial juncture. That effectively ended City's chances of winning the title and, as it progressed in the Champions League, its focus shifted.
The timing of the Pep Guardiola announcement is said by many to have had a destabilizing effect and, while there is some degree of truth to the theory, City's early season form was already long gone by the time Manuel Pellegrini told the press he was leaving. The fact it still managed to reach the Champions League semifinals as its title challenge fell apart points to issues that cannot be pinned on Guardiola.
Leicester has been praised for its mentality, togetherness and resilience. They are not characteristics that could be said of City's league campaign and the fact it is so far adrift of the champion is no coincidence.
MANCHESTER UNITED
By Kris Voakes
Manchester United's season has been so underwhelming that the identity of the league champion was always going to be irrelevant to it. Whether Leicester or Tottenham, Arsenal or Manchester City, this was not going to be Louis van Gaal's year no matter the scenario at the very top. Even when it briefly led the league at the end of September it didn't carry the air of a title challenger, and it was quickly disposed of by Arsenal in its next fixture in a match which underlined many of its glaring issues.
Leicester's triumph is one which has caught the imagination, but it could also become a convenient topic for United's movers and shakers. The unpredictability of this title race may well lead United and others to write off the entire campaign without learning salient lessons. Had Arsenal or City or Chelsea claimed the title then the Red Devils would have been asked serious questions about their short-comings, but Leicester's success means that United simply shares its ills with a host of other big-hitters.
The injuries suffered over the course of the season have indeed been crippling, but so too were a string of poor performances at key times when the team had constantly been allowed back into the picture for both the title and latterly the top four. The failing form of the likes of Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick and Memphis Depay raise questions of varying scale, and only another tremendous campaign from David de Gea saved it further humiliation. United's failure cannot be written off as some freak occurrence in a season full of them.
