How Leicester’s Premier League Title Still Explains the Premier League

Liverpool sitting in first, City beating Chelsea, Mourinho managing Tottenham -- it all goes back to 2015-16

Quick programming note: We’re a day early this week; I wanted to get this out before the Champions League started up again. Also, the Tuesday edition of the newsletter will be going on a two-week hiatus. It’ll be back the week of December 16. If it applies to you: Happy Thanksgiving! If it doesn’t, I hope your Thursday is wonderful, too.

On Saturday, Leicester City won another match, the team in first pulled off another improbable victory to extend their lead atop the table, N’Golo Kante was everywhere, and Riyad Mahrez snaked his way through the opponent’s backline to score a winner. Through 13 games , Leicester City have one more point than they did during the 2015-16 season.

Leicester, of course, won the title that year. And this year, well, they might be even better. It’s 2015-16 all over again, except Kante plays for Chelsea, Mahrez wears sky blue, and Liverpool are the team getting all the breaks. Four years later, everything is still the same. The colors just look a little different.

At the beginning of 2015-16, Claudio Rainieri was managing Leicester. Brendan Rodgers helmed the Liverpool sideline, Mauricio Pellegrini was at Manchester City, Louis van Gaal continued to dig in at Manchester United, Arsene Wenger began year 20 at Arsenal, and Mauricio Pochettino still hadn’t qualified for the Champions League with Tottenham.

Start with Arsenal and Tottenham -- second and third that year. The two North London sides sported the two best goal differentials in the league that season, per the website Understat. A couple more bounces go their way, and maybe one of them wins a title. 

If it’s Arsenal, maybe the transfer of power from Wenger to the next guy goes a little more smoothly. Or maybe he’s still there, guiding them to continued competence. Instead, under Unai Emery, they’re eking out home draws against teams in the relegation zone, and sporting underlying numbers of a mid-table team.

If it’s Tottenham in 15-16, maybe Pochettino wins more power within the club, and he gets to turnover the squad personnel to his liking. Or maybe -- with a major trophy already in tow -- he feels fine resigning after the Champions League final, which reports have suggested he seriously considered. Instead, it all fell apart and the team is now being managed by a guy who’s been fired by Chelsea and Manchester United since the beginning of Leicester’s title campaign.

In the summer of 2015, Jose Mourinho had just come off a Premier League title, and well, the higher you start, the farther you can fall. Chelse imploded in his third year with the team, Mourinho treated the club’s female doctor like shit, and he was out before Christmas. He was back in at Manchester United next season, but that stint followed a similar two-seasons-and-explode pattern -- except, this time without a Premier League title. His Spurs just beat West Ham, 3-2, in his first game with the club. Four years ago, his Chelsea lost to West Ham, 2-1, to kick off a five-losses-in-seven-matches stretch that pushed him out the door.

Chelsea responded to Leicester’s championship by buying their best player and then wrapping up the next Premier League title by Christmas. They’re on their fifth manager since the start of 2015-16 because that’s what Chelsea do. The previous two are now managing the two best teams in Italy; one of ‘em is offering up weird guidelines for familial fornication. All three full-time managers since Mourinho have deployed N’Golo Kante in differing ways; despite plenty of consternation regarding his role, no one’s been able to mute his influence. The best defensive midfielder in the world can do this, too:

Chelsea’s current manager, Frank Lampard, was playing for a team owned by the group that owns Manchester City lthe ast time City didn’t win a title. Since 2014, Leicester and Chelsea are the only two teams who have been able to beat back the inevitable tied emanating out of the Etihad. On Saturday, City equalized with a goal from Kevin De Bruyne, who used to play for Chelsea. Then they won the match with a goal from Riyad Mahrez, who used to play for Leicester. Ever hear a coach say that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? What about: the ball moves faster than the man? Four years later, the electric Algerian is still proving them all wrong:

Even without Mahrez and without Kante, Leicester have climbed right back to where they used to be. The season they won it all, not a single player among their top 11 minutes-getters was under the age of 24 at the beginning of the campaign. So far this year, six of the top 11 were 22 and under. It’s a modern team-re-building miracle, really. The two most-advanced vets are the pair of 32-year-old holdovers from 15-16: Kasper Schmeichel’s still saving more shots than he should, while Jamie Vardy’s got two more goals than anyone else in the league. Vardy’s not shooting enough to keep that pace up up, and Leicester’s shot profile as a whole presages an oncoming decline, but since the loss to Liverpool last month, they’ve thumped everyone they’ve played other than Burnley. In most years, Leicester would be in the thick of a title race. Their 29 points through 13 games are tied for 33rd-best since the birth of the Premier League, and their plus-23 goal differential is tied for ninth.

The most points through 13 games, though? That’d be 37 -- from Manchester City the year they set the Premier League points record, and Liverpool ... this season. Last month, after Liverpool beat Aston Villa, 2-1, the analyst Mark Taylor wrote this about the team’s seemingly unsustainable run of one-goal wins:

Single goal wins, on average account for 41% of a side’s Premier League points total, but in our sample of 90+ teams who won 10 or more, 80% of them accrued more than 41% of their points from such victories.

He continued:

To see where Liverpool stand as being adept at winning single goal margin games, we need to look at their underlying goals record.

In 2018/19 they scored 89 and conceded 22, taking the Poisson route, that’s consistent with winning nine games by a single goal over 38 games. They won, as we’ve seen ten, hardly a worryingly large over-performance.

You can lump Liverpool in with a group of teams who have achieved good things, partly as a result of “knowing how to win” (Leicester 2015/16 spring to mind, 14 single goal wins where nine would have been a more equitable return), but unlike most of these sides, the Reds have the underlying numbers to deserve their record.

Since then, however, Jurgen Klopp’s side have won two more single-goal matches -- bumping the tally up to seven in 13 matches. In 15-16, Leicester won 52 percent of their points from one-goal victories. After Saturday’s 2-1 win over Crystal Palace, Liverpool have taken 57 percent of their points from one-goal triumphs.

Just over four years ago, Liverpool hired Jurgen Klopp. Since then, he’s guided them back to the top of Europe and up to a level where a long run of close-game good fortune is capable of making them favorites to win their first-ever Premier League title. 

The last coach to briefly push Liverpool into that realm was Brendan Rodgers. Klopp lives in his house now, and he’s managing Leicester.