Grotesque doesn’t even cover it

The other evening I happened across an episode of Dad’s Army, 'Is There Honey For Tea?', in which the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard rally around Private Godfrey and his sisters Dolly and Cissy when their idyllic Cherry Tree Cottage comes under threat of demolition. The house is a perfect rose-decorated slice of bucolic English perfection which, Sergeant Wilson wistfully remarks is “just what we are fighting for”. Britain was a different place in 1975, when the episode first went out, beset by grey skies, strikes and British Leyland cars, an altogether different era to the somewhat confected view of tradition which, even as the set-up for comedy, that episode of Dad’s Army set out to convey. But it brought home a point. Tradition does count.

The timing of the episode going out was prescient. Tradition is under attack again from the announcement that England’s so-called ‘Big Six’ league clubs - Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City - are to join a new and exclusive European Super League along with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Internazionale and Juventus (notably, none of the likes of Bayern Munich, Ajax or PSG are involved). It’s been some time coming: the clubs are believed to have been in talks for some time about creating their own rival to the Champions League, but formal confirmation of the consortium has brought the morality of it all into acute focus.

Football supporters, commentators, the domestic leagues and politicians have all, quite rightly, condemned the plan. There have been murmurings of points deductions, international player bans and other sanctions for those clubs who take part. Overall, the move has been roasted, demonstrating the grotesque arrogance of football clubs in failing to understand the ethos of what supporting football is all about, and why fans are prepared to dip into their hard-earned to follow clubs at every level for sometimes perverse and random reasons. 

I make no secret of my patronage of Chelsea, one of the clubs who’ve signed up for this folly. And it’s not out of arriviste glory-hunting, either: I started visiting Stamford Bridge as a child, when the club was near bankrupt, flirting with the old Third Division, and crowds of just 7,000 were turning up to see warhorses like Micky Droy and Ron Harris kick lumps out of opponents. Liverpool were then the dominant English side - even Ipswich were in the ascendancy - and the sort of riches that surround Chelsea today weren’t even dancing on the wildest stages of our imagination. That’s not why went to the Bridge. It was our club, just as whichever berth you call your home club is yours. It is, of course, an added bonus if you have superstars to watch. Even better if your club gets to play the European elite - nothing gets the hackles up quite like watching a load of cynical Spaniards falling over a lot in front of you on a Wednesday evening. But to some extent, this is mere confection, fairy dust sprinkled on the more prosaic form that is the Beautiful Game.

"We have all spoken forever about the importance of the ‘pyramid’ - the dream, the aspiration of clubs developing, they fall, they get promoted,” former  Football Association and Manchester City chairman David Bernstein told Sky News this morning. “Clubs like Manchester City who, 20 years ago, were in the first division and playing Gillingham in a play-off final at Wembley, become what they are now. Leicester City now have punched above their weight. "So I think you are moving all that dream, that aspiration, and I think that's sad and very dangerous."

Football fans have expressed similar sentiment, especially supporters associations of the clubs embroiled in the breakaway. The Chelsea Supporters' Trust branded it “the ultimate betrayal" and a decision made “with no consideration for the loyal supporters, our history, our future or the future of football in this." One Liverpool group accused the club’s US-based owner, Fenway Sports Group, of appropriating a property that is "ours not theirs”, while another said it was withdrawing support to a club “which puts financial greed above integrity of the game.” The Manchester United Supporters Group posted a picture of the Grim Reaper kicking a football on its website, along with a statement opining that the new league “has no sporting merit and would seem to be motivated by greed,” adding that it had been created without any input from the grass roots of the club’s support. "These owners, irrespective of where they come from, seem to think football belongs to them; it doesn't it belongs to us - the supporters - irrespective of which team we support."

I’m not saying that Doncaster Rovers are any closer to playing Real Madrid in the Champions League, but why can’t they aspire to the Premier League and therefore a shot at a top four place? Unlikely that they would, but who is to decree that they can’t, simply because a self-appointed elite has elected to create a closed shop into which only they can play. And for those fans of clubs in this super league - do we really want to play the same 11 teams all the time, including six we meet at least twice a season in our home league? There’s no dodging the fact that competition for the Premier League title and for the Champions League itself is dominated by the same clubs season in, season out, but there’s still enough margin for variety that we can, for example, see West Ham challenging for a Top Four league finish this season, and thus a shot at the European elite next season at the expense of one of the so-called big six.

Tradition, of course, doesn’t even enter the equation. It’s all about cold hard cash. Larceny, actually. The big clubs and their owners have shown their true colours and a patent absence of any understanding of what they’re custodians of. By reducing European club competition to, essentially, an exhibition tournament, they are effectively turning the 12 teams into football’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I’m sure we’ll see all the tricks in the book, but it will soon get pretty boring watching them play the Washington Generals every time. European nights haven’t been made by predictability, but by the complete reverse. We still talk now of José Mourinho leading Porto to the Champions League title in 2004, or even further back, Brian Clough doing the same with Nottingham Forest, twice. 

What I bridle with the most is that these clubs believe, to begin with, themselves to be a self-appointed elite. Even thinking about my own club, Chelsea are where they are today thanks to Roman Abramovich's largesse. Do Arsenal or Tottenham have any right to see themselves as elite on their form this season? No, and frankly that statement extends back even further. Elsewhere, neither Liverpool or Manchester United have been exactly polished this term, ditto Barcelona and Real Madrid. The only thing that distinguishes these clubs is the wealth behind them.

What the proprietors have declared, in forming the super league, is their disdain for everyone else, and that frankly is the ugliest aspect of all this. I’m not going to pretend that football is a purely altruistic sport, where hard work and endeavour is the only measure of progress. Because clearly when you’re able to spend £70 million on a single player, whereas other clubs in your same domain struggle to spend that on a squad refresh, you’ve got a performance advantage (even if the litany of expensive flops proves that all that glitters isn’t always gold). Essentially, the breakaway clubs have given a massive ‘up yours’ to the rest of football. They have even doubled down on this by taking pre-emptive “protective steps” to legally prevent football authorities from taking sanctions out against the clubs, with measures talked of including players being banned from playing for their countries, one of the ultimate objectives they strive for.

Let me return to this thing about tradition. It’s a thorny subject. A procession of interviewees today have referred constantly to the role all football clubs, even the big ‘corporate’ behemoths, historically play in their communities, and that the big six are showing this contempt. They will all dispute that, going to great lengths to demonstrate their community programmes, from grass roots support to dispatching their first team to children’s wards at Christmas. But you can’t ignore that even the most historic clubs now looking to join the super league are living a world away from the traditions they come from. 

“He’s more machine than man,” Obi-Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker about his former protege, Anakin in the 'first' Star Wars film. You could say that about the clubs involved in this venture.  “They pretend ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the people’s club, the fans’ club,” railed Gary Neville yesterday about Liverpool. And he had this for the club he played for: “Manchester United, 100 years, born out of workers. And they are breaking away into a league without competition, that they can’t be relegated from? It is an absolute disgrace. We have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.” His former manager Sir Alex Ferguson - who remains a director at the club - told Reuters: “Talk of a Super League is a move away from 70 years of European club football.”

You could take a step back, breathe, and conclude that football is in constant flux. That progress should be embraced. Even Private Godfrey concluded that if his cottage had to be destroyed for the war effort, so be it. We can easily descend into romanticism, but I think that risks missing the point. We support the clubs we follow - regardless of their status - because of something else, something intangible. Even we Chelsea fans, contrary to the jibes, are not glory hunters. We’ve endured bad times and frustrations. We even appreciate the good fortune we find ourselves in, to follow extravagantly financed teams staffed by exciting talent. But that doesn’t entitle the custodians of our clubs’ histories to ride roughshod over them and our patronage. 

You could even take the harder view that football has been a divided kingdom for a long time, of an elite and all the rest. In the grand scheme of things, does anything fundamentally change with this super league? Yes, pretty much the same clubs who vie each season for the knockout stages of the Champions League are involved in it, but there’s a fundamental here: there’s no reason why other clubs can’t also be in the mix, working their way up the pyramid. And that’s what we scream and shout for. Not some glorified showcase, a friendly tournament in all but name, and one designed purely to line the pockets of the proprietors, and do nothing for the humble supporter, many of whom will be now questioning where they put their disposable income when it comes to football.

Christmas cheer, Chelsea-style

Picture: Reuters

A look, this morning, at the Premier League table and there is a chasm of just seven points separating Liverpool at the summit from plucky Southampton in ninth and at the bottom of a mini-league on 25 points. The main point here being that everyone seems to be circling around each other at the moment, and despite Liverpool’s ominous position at the top (well, ominous until Sam Allardyce came along yesterday), the fact that Manchesters United and City are back in the running, along with Leicester and Everton are indications that, surprisingly for the Christmas period - slap bang in the centre of the middle third of the season already - it’s anyone’s guess who’ll end up in a Top Four finish come May, or June, or October, or whenever this season actually ends.

Read the back pages and on any given day someone will write about any one of about six or even seven teams being title contenders. Or, to put it another way, have a good run and, apparently, you’re putting together a tilt. Even Manchester United, implausibly now up to fourth. So where does that leave Chelsea? Saturday’s match at the Emirates was one of the most lethargic performances I’ve seen from Frank Lampard’s side since he took charge, and really it shouldn’t have been. Premier League footballers are too professional to go nuts on the Christmas indulgence, so the apparent legginess couldn’t have been caused by overdoing the port and cheese (which would be my ready excuse for anything over the last 72 hours). So, quite why they allowed an Arsenal, stripped of many of their regular starters through illness, and coming to the game on the back of a truly abject run that raised very real questions about Mikel Arteta’s future, to monster them in such a decisive fashion is baffling. And troubling.

Let’s face it, Christmas is a lousy time for football. In normal times, the fans aren’t up for Boxing Day fixtures - especially the ridiculous 12.30 kick-offs that television scheduling insists on - and the pile-up of games has a noticeably diminished return as the period progresses. Frankly I’m usually grateful to get past New Year and onto the FA Cup Third Round. But that doesn’t excuse Chelsea’s dismal performance on Saturday that left them lying seventh (now eighth, at time of writing) and with an ugly looking record of three defeats out of their last five matches, all of them away. Lampard will have plenty to think about before making his team selection for tonight’s home fixture against Aston Villa but, then, he presumably had some weighing up to do against Arsenal. 

On Saturday, performances seemed to drop off a cliff before our vary eyes. “It wasn’t good enough,” said the Chelsea coach afterwards, adding that he was angry about the missed opportunity to go second. “You get what you deserve,” he ruminated. “Lazy,” was the other part of his assessment. “Lazy to give away a free-kick that [Xhaka] puts in the top corner,” he railed to Sky Sports, “and I'm very, very disappointed in the way we approached the first half, because some things in football are basics. It's not tactics or systems, it is 'do you want to run, back your teammate out and sprint'? Or do you want to jog and say 'maybe I don't have to run,' and we took that decision instead of the right one.”

One can imagine the atmosphere on board the Chelsea team bus back from Islington to Cobham was as chilly as the blustery evening had been in anticipation of Storm Bella blowing in. Lampard’s frustration was understandable, and while it’s usual for know-it-alls to say that a coach needs to take as much blame for a bad defeat as his players, on this occasion, it was clear how much his players were lacking. Timo Werner continued his frustrating run of games without anything meaningful in front of goal; Tammy Abraham continued to demonstrate what a dedicated forward he is, but without the goals to show for it, save for that one consolation (which was subject to scrutiny after the linesman ridiculously ruled offside due to a hair on the striker’s knee being slightly too close to goal than regulations allow). Still, though, Olivier Giroud sat it out in quiet frustration in the stands, a picture of seemingly stoic acceptance, despite knowing how he would have liked to get on and play against his former club. 

What Chelsea lacked in the forward line-up, they didn’t exactly make up for in their midfield and wide players. Even if Callum Hudson-Odoi, brought on at the break, injected some vim into the play, it was a rare uptick by anyone in blue. Jorginho’s latest missed penalty seemed to sum up the team’s performance - another one of his hop-skip-jump efforts that lacked any power and was promptly stopped by Leno. Really, it shouldn’t even be a case of sending him back to the training pitch to practice. He should never take another for the club again. 

Arsenal’s goals were well taken, but as good as they were, Chelsea were also at fault for all three: a needless penalty given away by Reece James, a cheap free kick conceded by the usually dependable N’Golo Kanté, and then Bukayo Saka’s bizarre cross that somehow redirected itself and into the goal, like a cruise missile dynamically changing course at the last minute and down a different chimney to the one its handlers had intended. With the exception, perhaps, of Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount’s ever-present industry (although even they were off their usual pace), none of the team Lampard put out against Arsenal did much to draw praise. It wasn’t that they were bad, per se, it’s just that they were just so ineffective. Yes, lethargic. Which means that the selection tonight against a vibrant Villa - who sit one place above Chelsea on goal difference, but with two games in hand - will be crucial. Because if Chelsea’s supposed best 11 can put in such a dismal shift against an Arsenal we thought were there for the taking, the second string certainly won’t fare so well.

Inevitably, though, questions are being asked again about Lampard’s own future. Lying eighth in a tight title race is not what Roman Abramovich bankrolled a £250 million summer spending spree for. The pressure is on the 42-year-old manager do better in his second season than the fourth place and a cup final finish from his first. Christmas is a lousy period to assess a football team, with the fixture logjam - worsened by the pandemic - making life hard for any team. Lampard faces the challenge that they are already four points off where they were after 15 games last season, with too many in-form teams above Chelsea who could pull away further. He’s clearly also dealing with some fitness issues in his squad. Ben Chillwell made such a miraculous recovery after exiting the home West Ham fixture after seven minutes with an ankle problem, that his teammates called him ‘Lazarus’. He definitely wasn’t sharp enough against Arsenal, as could be said of his neighbour in the backline, Thiago Silva. And elsewhere along the defence, Reece James looked like he wasn’t firing on all cylinders, either. But, then, Lampard has options. Club captain César Azpilicueta is still one of the best right-backs in the business, even if he's lost his starting place to James. To add to this, Lampard's religious adherence to 4-3-3 is starting to highlight a lack of flexibility that means he labours with Werner in his left-of-centre forward position.

“They have gone from looking one of the paciest, quickest sides in the Premier League, to one of the most pedestrian,” former Chelsea midfielder Craig Burley said on ESPN, noting that such a dip in form is the sort of thing the capricious Abramovich, takes note of - whether the head coach is a club legend or not. “I’m not suggesting Abramovich is going to sack him in the next couple of weeks,” Burley added, “but there is one thing they need to remember – top four. If they don’t get in the top four, he’s probably done.”

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

An ominous thought to end on, and although one bad game at Christmas doesn’t make a disaster, three defeats in as many trips away is the stuff of form issues. The next few weeks of league and cup fixtures are not going to be helped by individual players at Lampard’s disposal not pulling their weight, either due to confidence or fitness, factors that can be helped by the coaching staff. 

Where I do have some sympathy is that, as with every year it seems, the Christmas fixtures are relentless. While Lampard can’t complain about the recovery time between last Monday's game at home against West Ham and Saturday’s at Arsenal, he’s got a point about his beleaguered squad having to go again tonight. 

“I'm not trying to be clever,” he said last week. “It's an important point for us, because there are other teams that are challenging at the top of the league that play two games in three days. Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool play two games in three days. It's counter-productive for the quality of the Premier League, it's a risk for players if they are going to play both games at top-end elite sport, everybody knows that.” And he added that Aston Villa also wanted an extra day’s grace, but both clubs were overruled, he says, by the Premier League and by the broadcasters. “I know in conjunction with each other, this was bounced around, it got decided that we play twice in 48 hours, when other teams that are challenging at the top of the league play twice in three days. I don't see how it's a fair playing field, I think it's wrong.” 

It’s a refrain we hear every Christmas from every club and every manager. And from a fan’s perspective, the games themselves are never quite the attractions the broadcasters hope they’ll be. But it’s Lampard's job, come what may, to manage his squad through the period, maximising those in form, resting those who clearly need it - mentally as much as physically - and taking a punt on players who deserve their chance. Hudson-Odoi comes to mind, and Billy Gilmour. And, perhaps, Giroud, could do with more use.

The festive fixtures congestion argument will cut little ice with Lampard's bosses. Maybe not now, but certainly when the end-of-season review comes around. Lampard knows he’s not in charge by some default of having been the club’s highest scoring player of all time. When he signed the contract to become manager, that legacy was confined to the trophy room. What happens between tonight and season’s end is partly in his hands. I wish him well: as much as I can’t fault Abramovich for what he’s done for my club, his readiness to dispense with managers before they have had the chance to establish themselves has at times been predictably ugly. With the exception of one or two - the divisive Rafa Benitez and the frustrating Maurizio Sarri come instantly to mind - some stability and heritage creation would also have been nice. Lampard deserves no more favours than any of his predecessors, though fan loyalty is justified. But that also requires a reciprocal match in terms of team performance. And on that, he still has some distance to carry.

The night football came home...and no one was in

"The ambient noise is hideous. The overall spectacle melancholic. Maybe I will get used to it. But I have not enjoyed the game, and not just because it is same old Arsenal." So tweeted Robert Peston, ITV's verbosity-prone political editor. Normally Pesto is to be found asking excruciatingly long questions to whichever stooge has been put up to front the daily No.10 press conference. But here, in the succinct confines of Twitter, he nailed it: my worst fears confirmed - football returned to stadia bereft of fans, noise or atmosphere.

As I watched with low expectation the lifeless spectacle that was the evening's first serving, Aston Villa against Sheffield United, I couldn't help feeling it was all just an experiment: some sort of exhibition by a chemicals company to test out a new type of ball, a new form of artificial grass or that it was an Under-17 practice match behind closed doors. It certainly didn't feel like a team trying to fight its way out of relegation (Villa) or one trying to clamber into fifth place (United). The sterility of a Villa Park shorn of all but essential personnel, and the awkward moment of managers Dean Smith and Chris Wilder not knowing whether to shake hands or elbow-bump at the start (sensibly, they opted for the latter), gave the fixture a surrealism. I've seen televised games before played in front of an empty stadium, but they've usually been European matches operating under crowd bans. This enforced absence was different, and not even the Sky Sports option of a crowd sound effect audio channel could make a difference.

Players taking a ten-second knee before kick-off, followed by a minute's silence for victims of COVID-19, provided two moments of theatre. But for the 90 minutes of play that followed, the only drama was referee Michael Oliver's smart watch proving to be not so smart, and failing to signal a goal when the Villa keeper Orjan Nyland fumbled Oliver Norwood's free kick over the line. Cruel for Sheffield United, but even more cruel for the football-starved viewer hoping for something more than an anodyne encounter to herald the return of competitive football after a three month absence in which we focused on other priorities. Not dying, mainly. If the failure of Oliver's watch was a major talking point in the otherwise so-so 0-0 draw then so, too, was the lack of intervention from VAR on what - regardless of the game itself - was supposed to be a prestige moment in this weird season. "We were waiting for somebody at Stockley Park to show a bit of courage and say they will make that decision," Wilder said afterwards, "but if they've not seen it and seven cameras haven't seen it I suppose they will say that it was not their decision to make." Fair point. For once, you could hardly say the crowd saw what the referee didn't.

If the Villa game was meant to be the warm-up act, the main event - Manchester City-Arsenal - hardly delivered the goods, either. Like the preceding fixture, there was plenty of effort but suspect quality. I know it's going to sound mean-spirited for me, a Chelsea fan, to pass comment on Arsenal, and do so objectively, but it's fair to say that the Gunners barely turned up to their opening engagement of Project Restart. David Luiz's brain didn't turn up at all. The Brazilian, always a subject of mixed opinion while in Chelsea blue, is yet to win over anyone in N1. After last night's performance, it's unlikely he will now. Coming on for the injured Mari after 24 minutes, it didn't take him long to let Kevin de Bruyne gift Raheem Sterling for City's opening goal. Worse was to come when he ridiculously brought down Mahrez to give away a penalty. The subsequent red card received from referee Anthony Taylor might well be the last red thing Luiz sees as an Arsenal player: his contract runs out later this month.

Luiz has inevitably provided the lightning rod for Arsenal fans' wrath, but at the end of the day, this was a clinical Pep Guardiola result for City over an team Mikel Arteta clearly has an uphill challenge to improve. That, though, is to look at the game through the myopia of normal football engagement. Widen the focals, and we had a match, like the 6pm kick-off, that resembled a pre-season friendly with less-than friendly intent. Across the park, fitness looked predictably suspect, and this actually underpins the arguments of indifference to the Premier League resuming. Playing before soulless, empty stadia is one thing, but if the season's remaining, contractually-obliged fixtures are in any way similar to these first toes dipped in the cold sea of revival, then even the most starved fans are going to go wanting.

Players often talk of crowds as being the "12th teammate", and the absence of supporters is clearly a factor. Sure, football can be played as a mechanical exercise, but last night's attempts at blowing puffs of breath into a dying season demonstrated just what a pointless exercise it really is. I've said before that the season's stumps should have just been pulled up, and we restart in September or whenever it's safe to do so, and my view hasn't been changed by last night's morsels of live 'elite' football. It might be back, warts and all, but elite quality - on this first evidence alone - is a long way away. Many will no doubt be relieved: we're all craving normality - holidays, going to the pub, not having to wear face masks to post a letter, and no one will disagree that 'normal' will come at a price, for the time being. I'm not, however, convinced that football so vacant of atmosphere is the normal we want.

Does anyone have a cure for goal shyness?

Thanks to social media we are now familiar with almost every aspect of a footballer's life. When they sign for a club we get the obligatory 'thumbs up' photograph of the player undergoing his medical, followed soon by the contract signing itself, and then the standard 'club shirt/scarf aloft' picture. As they progress through their club careers we are entertained by videos of the player banging in trick shots and dummying teammates on the training ground, all designed to show what a fantastic player they are when, obviously, not having to deal with actual opposition players coming at them in full tilt.

However, none of this fan engagement via social media reveals what Chelsea's players are actually doing at their Cobham training ground all week long. Because, in last night's frustratingly tedious 0-0 draw with Arsenal in the Carabao Cup we saw the Blues dominate with more than half of the possession, and had 21 shots on goal against Arsenal's eight and six shots on target to Arsenal’s three. Álvaro Morata, the latest striker to bear the prefix "club record signing" was, once again, industrious without product, leading to a notable increase in the volume of tutting in the stand around me and my girlfriend (attending her first ever top-tier football match...).

After opening his Chelsea account with a number of we’ll taken goals early on, since October Morata has been achingly profligate, most notably in one-on-one opportunities. Now, it would be charitable to credit the goalkeepers in each of these situations, but the truth of the matter is that a striker with his cojones properly attached would have put those chances away time after time. And, of course, it can only get worse. One newspaper report today noted that defender Andreas Christensen is yet to score for the club. So what? He’s a defender. What I’m interested in is the striker scoring, mainly because in his job description that’s mostly all it says.

Chelsea have been there before, of course. In fact it’s been an Achilles heel of the club for many years that, not since Gianfranco Zola's era, has it enjoyed a striker so deadly that goals happen every time, without fail (and I'm not even sure that Franco was all that consistent). Not for nothing is the club's record goal scorer Frank Lampard, a midfielder. Diego Costa and Didier Drogba were the closest Chelsea have come in the modern, Abramovich era to a regular marksmen, though both suffered being temperamental, the latter in particular, when disinterested in a fixture, simply breaking down when it suited him. And there have been the fanciful experiments - Shevchenko, Torres, Crespo, Sturridge, Eto'o, Ba, Casiraghi - with mixed results, mostly of the occasional kind.

It's easy, of course, from my seat high up in the East Stand of Stamford Bridge to carp about what happens on the pitch below, but expectations are high. And when you're spending a reported £60 million on a striker, you’d hope he does what it says on the tin. Morata isn’t alone, however. I've now watched several consecutive Chelsea games in which the goal margins could have been higher had shots on target have actually gone in. Yes, some of those can be put down to good goalkeeping, but many could have been converted with more confident, accurate predation by the players involved. That, is what I want to see on my social media feeds. Not cute larks on the training field, but players - especially those paid handsomely to score goals - practising how best to bang them in, time and time again.

The problem isn't just Morata: even Eden Hazard has been more miss than hit. Teams like Southampton and Stoke - despite their shambolic league position - have gone out of their way to frustrate Chelsea in front of goal. But then that should be something the attacking side has a plan for. Again, back to the training ground. Morata has, though, been the most obvious miscreant. In last week's league encounter with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium the Spaniard missed a priceless chance in the first half and then sent another effort wide when bearing down on Petr Čech towards the end of the 2-2 draw. Morata was, according to Antonio Conte, "not lucky in this period". "He’s young," the Italian explained. "I repeat, I understand for a striker it's not easy if you don't score, but don't forget for Alvaro it's his first season playing regularly. He didn’t always play with Real Madrid and Juventus. You have to know this. I’m very happy with his commitment and the way he's playing. He has to stay calm continue to play this way. The goal is coming." True, and last night you couldn't fault his work rate. But, to repeat, his job is scoring goals. Going back to October, his early season form dipped for the first time following injury, with Conte saying that he needed more time to return to top form after missing chances against Bournemouth, including yet another convertible one-on-one opportunity.

If anything, Morata's apparent lack of confidence, with his feet at least. in front of goal draws the spotlight on Conte's need for a striker in the January window (the exact same problem that led to Fernando Torres joining the club in January 2011). Michy Batshuyai, the charismatic Belgian, is the de facto backup to Morata, but he has looked increasingly not the solution with every ten-minute cameo Conte has given him. Long-term, there's Tammy Abraham, who won't be recalled from loan, meaning that the only salvation for Chelsea's misfiring forwards is either an epiphany or a fresh injection of talent. And it's not entirely certain where that might come from. For now, Chelsea need to work - and work hard - on the training pitch at Cobham. They need to rediscover what you do with the ball in front of goal, regaining the confidence to not overplay and overelaborate, but shoot straight and true.

The Premier League is now clearly out of sight for all but Manchester City, but with this Saturday's league fixture against Leicester, next Wednesday's FA Cup replay against Norwich, the second leg of the Carabao Cup against Arsenal a week later, and Barcelona in the not-too distant future in the Champions League, Chelsea need a strikeforce as effective as their defence continues to be, thankfully. Because it's goals scored we pay to see, not goals saved...

Don't panic!! Well, not yet at least...

It's OK. No need to panic. Yes, I know we've been here before: a Community Shield encounter with Arsenal, a frustrated manager bemoaning the lack of signings, an apparent lack of confidence in front of goal, and a Premier League title to defend, but lightning can't strike twice, right? Right? Antonio Conte's gloomy fear of suffering "the Mourinho season", following an indifferent start that rapidly went downhill until the manager was sacked in December, can't happen again. Can it?

Based on the period since Chelsea lifted the Premier League trophy in May, it can. Not that it will, but the mood around the reigning English champions has been skittish to say the least. The parallels with the post-2015/16 season disaster are glaring, not least because of the manager's frustrations with the transfer activity (or lack of), but also in the fact that Antonio Conte - like Mourinho did shortly before that infamous opening game against Swansea on August 8, 2015 - has just signed an improved contract himself. Then there has been the substantial list of target players who've failed to show up, including Romelu Lukaku, gazumped by Manchester United.

Yesterday's draw at Wembley (settled with one of the more soul-crushing penalty shootouts you'll ever see without anyone wearing an England shirt) was another exercise in humility for Chelsea. Whatever hubris generated by last season has been reset to zero over the last few weeks. Beaten on that very turf, by the very same team, at the FA Cup Final in May, they exhibited none of the exciting swagger and even youthful exuberance of their compelling win over Arsenal during the pre-season tour in Singapore. In fact it was, too all intents and purposes, a complete re-run of the cup final, the game that determined that these two teams would meet again less than three months later at the same venue. That Victor Moses redeemed himself with a fine goal to erase the memory of a woeful performance in May that saw him sent off and Chelsea exposed, was negated by Pedro's rash raking of Mohamed Elneny's Achilles, the arguably extreme instant red card, and then Arsenal equalising from the subsequent free kick.

Twitter/Simon Johnson

The Community Shield is never billed as anything more than a curtain-raiser. Even Pedro's dismissal won't count when Chelsea kick off their title defence against Burnley next Saturday, as the Wembley game is considered a friendly. But as the Twitter cliché goes, there is no such thing as a friendly, especially when Chelsea and Arsenal meet. However, yesterday's game was an interesting, if subtle projection of managerial styles. Arsène Wenger stating in his post-match interview that he needs to cut down his first team squad of 33, with Antonio Conte reiterating his increasingly urgent need for signings - not that he needed to say anything.

There is still much to like about the Chelsea that won the 2016-17 English title, but there are also some glaring gaps. David Luiz - for all his charisma and chutzpah on the pitch - gave glimpses of his more maverick self yesterday. He's a wonderfully entertaining individual, but he also needs to remember that he's not infallible. He needs tougher competition for that position to keep him sharp. And Marcos Alonso, who sometimes doesn't get praised enough, can also easily demonstrate why he was something of a last-minute panic buy last summer.

But the bigger worry for me is that with Eden Hazard out injured, and Diego Costa resorting to doing workouts from the family garden in Brazil while he waits his return to Atlético Madrid, Chelsea are looking threadbare for real creativity. Alvaro Morata will get there, eventually, and Michy Batshuayi has come on leaps and bounds in the short space of time he's been leading the line, but even he looked profligate in front of goal yesterday. Pedro and Willian will continue to vie for starting roles in which their pace and guile can be applied, and Cesc Fàbregas will continue to supply inch-perfect passes - when he's allowed to play, and clearly at the cost of having the more defensive-minded Tiemoue Bakayoko play alongside Kante in the role he was bought for. But...

There are missing parts. Conte's summer refrain about signings has not been out of moody, Mourinho-style petulance, but a genuine concern that, while Chelsea's business dealings have seen a good amount of money come in for the likes of Nemanja Matic, Bertrand Traore, Nathan Aké and Nathaniel Chalobah, the £130 million spent so far on Antonio Rudiger, Bakayoko and Morata is not enough. In any normal time, and in any normal, non-inflationary market, £130 would be the most you could spend on a slew of signings. But we are not in a normal time, and Neymar's ridiculous move to PSG last week has merely poured a flammable liquid on the raging nonsense that is player valuations. Sadly, that means Chelsea will need to conform to this new reality if they're to bring in the players Conte wants and be able to compete with the affluence of domestic spenders like Manchesters United and City, or those they'll be facing this season in Europe.

The worry, though, is that time is running out to bring in anyone of quality. The double-edged sword of that is that anyone of quality either has the door shut on them by their present club, or a silly price tag slapped on them to keep suitors at bay. And the next thing you know, you're watching Sky Sports and live video of David Luiz, smirking his way through St. Pancras on transfer deadline day, and the feeling that, proverbially speaking, the slow ones are being played at the school disco, and you've missed out on the one you had your eye on all night long.

First the pie, now the mash

As someone of - shall we say? - a somewhat less-than 'bronzed Adonis' body shape, the public wringing-out of Sutton United reserve goalkeeper/goalkeeping coach/groundsman Wayne Shaw has been an unedifying spectacle.

But, then, we Brits love a story about a loveable foil. Shaw himself may have courted publicity long before Tuesday night's "piegate" incident at Gander Green Lane: when images first emerged of the 23-stone, 45-year-old with a...um...unique physical profile for a footballer, even a part-timer at a non-league club he was already cast for "top footy bantz", with memes immediately tweeted which revolved around that old terrace staple of "who ate all the pies?".

Well, now we know. But not without Shaw apparently putting himself in league with the Devil - i.e. Sun Bets (shirt sponsors of Sutton's FA Cup 5th round tie with Arsenal) for the stunt in which he conspicuously munched on a pasty while the clock ticked down on the match. Given that the FA Cup is sold on the romantic lore of its "magic", and the prospect of underdog teams doing battle with those from the elite at obscure suburban grounds, sight of the "roly-poly-goalie" engaging with pastry and meats-various should really have become just a part of the competition's glorious mixture of the professional and the amateur.

But, no. The suspicion that Shaw's piefest may have actually contravened FA betting rules has brought about a collective swallowing of something hard and jagged. Shaw himself has apparently resigned from the club "in tears", while the Gambling Commission and the FA are said to be investigating - quite rightly suspicious of the fact Sun Bets had offered odds of 8-1 that Shaw would be filmed consuming some form of pie during the game (although there is already a counter that he was eating a pasty, not a pie, so the bet was null-and-void, anyway).

With honesty, Shaw admitted that he had been aware of the odds on offer but maintained that he didn't place a bet himself though. Still, despite it all probably and naively being a 'bit of fun', Shaw himself has ended up being hung out to dry, disgracefully, even by The Sun newspaper itself, the media associate of Sun Bets. Humbug, methinks.

Fun though this may all be - and there is a strong sense of po-faced joylessness over the official reaction (the Gambling Commission's Richard Watson said, with some justification, "integrity in sport is not a joke") - the saddest part is that Shaw ends up just another loveable loser, an Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards with goalkeeping gloves. And it has detracted from a genuinely impressive performance by Sutton against Arsenal, 105 places above the south London side.

"[The issue] has been very disappointing, there’s no doubt about that,", Sutton's dignified manager Paul Doswell told Sky News. "It’s something that we’ve dealt with quickly as a club. Wayne himself has offered his resignation to the club this afternoon and that has been accepted. It’s a very sad end to what was a very good story."

Inevitably, though, Shaw may yet run out the winner. Despite leaving the job he loved, that had seen him sleep at the ground just to ensure it was ready for the big tie, the supermarket chain Morrisons has apparently offered him a job as a pie taster. "We’re always looking for the best talent to taste our pies and make sure they hit the back of the net," said the supermarket's Chief Pie Buyer, Tessa Callaghan, without any obvious recognition of the crow-barred PR opportunism of it all.

Well, I suppose we Brits love to make capital out of calamity. Our favourite war film is The Great Escape (which, you'll recall, ended with most escapees being recaptured and shot) and its theme tune was adopted to gee up England fans at internationals. And don't forget Gareth Southgate, Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle landed lucrative Pizza Hut commercials for messing up their penalties at Euro '96 and the 1990 World Cup, respectively. Piegate may end well for Wayne Shaw, but at risk of joining the po-faced and joyless who've been scornful of the whole episode, I can't agree more with Doswell that it has taken the shine off the real reason we love watching David/Goliath cup ties. And that has nothing to do with pastry.

Money and football - it's back to business

Picture: adidas

48 hours ago we were celebrating the closest thing modern professional football has come to altruism - the "fairy tale" (© all newspapers) of Leicester City winning the Barclays Premier League. The common view has been that Leicester, unlike the footballing behemoths they beat to the title, did so on modest funding and a humble team ethic that reflects their genial manager, Claudio Ranieri (best not, though, dwell on events at the end of last season at Leicester and that video...).

We shouldn't too carried away. Leicester don't - and weren't, going into this season - exactly represent a rags-to-riches story. The media may have painted their victory as some sort of David-and-Goliath mismatch, but we're hardly talking about part-time postal workers and milkmen taking on the elite. Certainly the Leicester players will have increased their personal values with this season's unlikely, odds-shattering title win, and no doubt some will progress from millionaire status to multi-millionaires. And that's when the trouble will start.

The Premier League - and the incredible money Sky and other television deals pump into it - has been with us now for 24 years. In that time we have seen the car parks of clubs ostentatiously transformed by the sight of de rigeur Ferraris, Porsches, Range Rovers, Lamborghinis and other symbols of the ridiculous wealth bestowed on young men barely out of school-leaving age. On Instagram we see pictures of their homes, their minor palaces in Oxshott, Weybridge, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. On social media, commentary of Monday night's party at Jamie Vardy's house has focused as much on the opulent chandelier hanging in his kitchen as the team spirit demonstrated by the Leicester players watching the Chelsea and Tottenham draw.

We are quick to judge: how often have I heard and read people complaining about Chelsea's players this season doing very little to justify the incredible salaries they're paid. But there is justification to it. After all, whether we pay exorbitantly for season tickets (as I do) or we buy the products advertised on the television channels that are paying to show the games, we're paying for all this.

It's a touchy subject. Good, then, of Manchester United's Juan Mata to admit in a Spanish TV intervew that his £150,000-a-week wages are "obscene". Mata is one of the most likeable and intelligent figures in the game. Rather than spending his spare time on the golf course, in card schools or chasing women who are not married to him around nightclubs, he has, since his arrival in England, demonstrated a cultured side to the professional footballer, engaging in his new surroundings and frequently writing eloquently about them on his highly readable weekly blog One Hour Behind. He is also an extremely gifted midfielder - I would still love to see him back at Stamford Bridge - but also one who has been able to burst out of the footballing bubble to view it for what it is.

"With respect to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount," Mata said in the interview with the Spanish programme Salvados. "I'd happily take a pay cut if there was less business involvement in the sport. Football is very well remunerated at this level. It's like we live in a bubble. Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It's unfathomable. With regard to the world of football, I earn a normal wage but compared to 99.9 per cent of Spain and the rest of the world, I earn an obscene amount."

Mata said he could sympathise with spectators growing jaded with their clubs, especially if the cost of watching doesn't match the performance delivered by the teams themselves. "I can understand what they're talking about," he told Salvados. "The business side of football makes it seem as though the owners are now more important than the fans. It's not like the football of old; there wasn't as much press coverage before," adding, somewhat tellingly: "or as many interested parties looking for their cut."

"Every player thinks he's Maradona when he joins a big club," Mata went on. "That happens to all of us but then you start to notice it in the younger players. You see kids who think they're rock stars, wearing extravagant clothes and driving fancy cars... and sometimes you have to take them aside and have a word."

Perhaps Mata's wisdom should be imparted to Dominic Solanke, the 18-year-old Chelsea youth team striker who has been on loan this season at Vitesse Arnhem. Solanke has demanded a pay rise to take his earnings from £7,000 per week to £50,000, almost double the average annual salary in the UK - and he's still an Under-21 player yet to break into the first team (much like many of his academy peers at Chelsea).

Understandably, Solanke's demands have been met with outrage. Chelsea, however, may have to consider that they have brought it on themselves, with a reputation for paying high salaries. In the current Chelsea first team, 22-year-old goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is on £120,000 a week, Cesc Fàbregas is on £156,000, Diego Costa £185,000 and Eden Hazard a whopping £200,000. Even Radamel Falcao is trousering £140,000 a week in his loan deal from Monaco, and no one has seen or heard from him since he came to Stamford Bridge.

According to The Times today, Chelsea are going to stand firm on Solanke's outrageous claim, threatening to demote him to the academy squad unless he adopts a more realistic view of his worth at this stage of his career. The paper claims that Chelsea want to set an example, so that their younger talents don't let money cloud their development as players. It's an admirable approach. Young football players should continue the traditions of apprenticeship, and not simply see their senior peers - some of whom are barely much older - cruising about in exotic cars and expecting to enjoy the same trappings of success so immediately.

We will never escape the vulgarity of money in football. Few fans will have a problem with their favourite players showing off their wealth, as long as they deliver on the investment we all make in them by performing to the best of their ability on the pitch. The clubs, though, have a responsibility. The relationship between them and us fans can only stretch so far.

On top of ticket price hikes, there have been stealthy increases in the subscription costs of the TV companies who cover the games (on top of the advertising revenues that ultimately we pay for). And there are all the other things that make being a football fan a wallet-shredding ordeal: yesterday Chelsea unveiled its new 2016-2017 home kit - not exactly the best design I've ever seen from adidas, coming somewhere between a silk nightie and children's pyjamas, and advertised by a particularly thuggish-looking Diego Costa - for which you could end up paying more than £105 for the full-replica adult shirt with the name of your favourite player on the back. Add another £5 if you also want the official Premier League badge on the sleeve. "Absolute madness. Pure greed," tweeted Stan Collymore.

I may not be an expert on sports clothing but I can hardly imagine that a shirt, no doubt made in a Far East, low-wage country, will have a bill-of-materials that adds up to that sort of money, not even a shirt with adidas' proprietary "Adi Zero" technology, whatever that is. One can only hazard a guess at what the profit margin is on the shirt - even more if you consider that you'd also be advertising Yokohama tyres in the process of wearing it, seeing as they paid Chelsea £200 million to be on the front.

Whether you're a fan, a club or a player, football is an expensive business. And you don't always get out of it what you put in. A matchday ticket in the Premier League this season averages £30.68 (for reference, Chelsea's range from £52-87), with season ticket prices averaging at £513.95 for the cheapest and £886.21 in the more expensive categories (and remember, that's average). We Chelsea fans pay some of the highest season ticket prices in the league: £750 for the cheapest, £1250 for the most expensive. And the 18 - yes, just 18 - home league games our tickets have entitled us to haven't exactly given much joy this term.

Which brings me back to Leicester City. They may be owned by a Thai billionaire, but they have achieved their remarkable success this season with equally remarkable modesty. On August 8, the opening day of the season, the entire Leicester squad represented a total outlay of £45 million.

Compare this with the investments of the teams who'll end the season below Leicester: Raheem Stirling alone cost Manchester City £49 million, out of a total spend of £153.50 million. And all that got them was fourth place in the Premier League and a Champions League semi-final. For comparison,  Manchester United spent £108 million and lie fifth while Chelsea spent £66 million - in defence of the 2015 title - and are currently ninth. Interestingly, Arsenal's spend was just £10 million and they're now third. Tottenham shelled out £66 million, but their net spend was only £5.7 million, and they're second. Make of all that, what you will.

Of course, we all accept - reluctantly - that the money in football will never return to something more sensible. The argument about how much a footballer earns versus how much a nurse earns may have its merits, but it is ultimately a pointless exercise, no more so than trying to work out how Tom Cruise earns $25 million per film. It is clearly nuts that football salaries in countries like Italy and Spain are in complete disproportion to the social struggles and high unemployment these proud and passionate footballing nations are currently struggling with.

We know it's all about market forces. We know that if a Chelsea won't stump up the wages, a Real Madrid or a Juventus will. But it would be nice, for once, for our football clubs to stop taking us fans for a ride, and behaving with a little less greed and a lot more modesty. Then we might start buying those shirts again.

As Leicester win the title, the search for Elvis goes on

The conventional wisdom is that the British don't value success, whereas Americans regard it as an attainment to be revered. We islanders apparently find it all a tad vulgar and would much prefer to wallow in failure. Why else would our favourite film be The Great Escape, the story of a brave but doomed POW breakout? And why else would the England football team's unofficial brass band play the film's theme music incessantly and in unwitting irony in an attempt to stir support during matches?

The same reasoning lies behind our tolerance of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards, he of the double-glazed spectacles, who truly believed he could fly and became Great Britain's ski jumping hopeful in the 1988 Winter Olympics. At the time (actually, since, too) Britain wasn't exactly a world-beating ski-jumping nation, and Edwards - no sporting failure, by the way - was automatically installed as the underdog. As is the British way, he was obviously unlikely to succeed but gave it it a damn good go. They've now made a movie out of him, too. No doubt the England brass band are learning its score in anticipation of this summer's European championships.

So, while Britain turns its nose up at the desire to be successful, and after a few spins on the pedestal will gleefully find a way to knock off anyone achieving it, we do love an underdog. At Wimbledon we cheer homegrown tennis stars in the face of minuscule chances of them making it to Week 2 (until, of course, Andy Murray comes along and wins it, instantly transmuting himself from "surly Scot" to the greatest Briton since Churchill, Elgar and Henry V). Nearly three-quarters of a century after World War 2 we still watch The Great Escape, The Battle Of Britain and even Dad's Army to remind us of when we were overwhelmingly the underdog. And when we beat nonsensical odds to come out of that period still alive, just.

So what, then, do we now make of Leicester City? Today they are the Barclays Premier League champions. Last season they were nearly relegated from the league itself. At Christmas 2014 they were rock bottom, having only been promoted from the Championship at the end of the previous season, ending a ten-year absence from the top flight. At Christmas 2015 they were on top, and yet at the start of the season bookies would have given you odds of 5000/1 on them actually winning the league. By contrast, you can't get better than 2000/1 for finding Elvis Presley alive.

If ever there was an example of the classic British underdog, Leicester City are it. But more than that. Their success in winning the Premier League with two games to spare is, without succumbing to hyperbole, one of the most remarkable achievements in football and even sporting history. It is hard not sound patronising when describing Leicester's success in such terms, but even their own fans deservedly and raucously celebrating outside the King Power Stadium last night, following Chelsea's tempestous 2-2 draw with Tottenham, were struggling to take it all in. "We're just a small city you've never heard of," said one on Sky News.

When the endearing Claudio Ranieri was appointed Leicester manager, replacing Nigel Pearson after a combustible end to the previous season, there were grave doubts. While he had certainly managed some of Europe's elite sides, including Chelsea, Fiorentina, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Roma and Inter, it had been without any notable success. His previous appointment, as manager of the Greek national team, lasted barely four months. In his native Italy, Ranieri had endured plenty of critics: football writer Tommaso Pellizzari recently told the Financial Times’ Simon Kuper that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, adding how “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”.

Gary Lineker, arguably Leicester’s highest profile supporter, even tweeted "Claudio Ranieri? Really?” on hearing of the Roman’s appointment to the Foxes, later being quoted on BreatheSport.com as saying: "Claudio Ranieri is clearly experienced, but this is an uninspired choice by Leicester. It's amazing how the same old names keep getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round." It’s a missive he now surely regrets, but it would be harsh to single him out entirely. At the beginning of the season numerous pundits had Leicester to be relegated this season, having narrowly missed it before. At the other end of the table, predictions were that this would be a straight back-to-back title for Chelsea, or that Arsenal would finally fulfil their promise. Few - if any - predicted that Spurs would come as close.

That Leicester have confounded the experts is a true testament to the mist of reality that hangs over the Premier League. It's been calculated that Manchester United have spent more on players in the two years that Louis van Gaal has been in charge than in Leicester's entire 132-year history. The gulf in class, they say, between the-now English champions and the usual suspects who "should" win it is enormous.

Jamie Vardy was working in a factory not so long ago, playing non-league football. He was even turned down by Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield who? Exactly. And today he is the Football Writers' Association Player Of The Year, and there is even talk of a movie about him. Five years ago Riyad Mahrez was in the sixth tier of French football. Last month he was named the PFA's Player Of The Year.

Leicester should probably be named Team Of The Century. Their Premier League victory may have come at the expense of the oligopoly being dismally unable to mount a challenge this year, but they have led from the very beginning. Even allowing for the somewhat phoney war of the opening weeks of the season, Leicester have simply powered through, playing composed, counter-attacking football, with Vardy and Mahrez scoring goals that have been a pleasure to behold, fed by an endeavouring midfield, a sturdy defence and, in Kasper Schmeichel, a world-class goalkeeper to-be.

The more expensively-assembled elite will, when they carry out their season reviews, have to look at Leicester and think hard about how they did it, especially given the meagre funds the club has at its disposal (Leicester's starting line-up on the opening day of the season represented an investment of less than £16 million; by comparison, last summer Manchester City spent £49m on Raheem Sterling alone). However you look at it, this has been a remarkable season in the Premier League.

It’s not that Leicester have merely benefited from Manchesters United and City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea not being at the races - they have simply been better. With the exception of Tottenham – who have been largely excellent (words I, as a Chelsea fan, struggle to type) – Leicester have outclassed the so-called big-guns: United and City have been beset by their own misfortune – the existing manager in United’s case, the effect of announcing a new one in City’s; Arsenal promised big yet again, and faded by January yet again; Liverpool are still building under Jürgen Klopp, but as Sunday’s Swansea game demonstrated there’s still work to be done there; and Chelsea… Well let’s just look forward to a new season and a new manager, shall we?

Picture: Leicester Mercury

Hopefully they will all conclude that what Leicester have - and they are lacking - is simply the chemistry. And credit for that must go to Ranieri. Look back over the season - the pizza nights for his players, the quiet, dignified man in interviews, none of the histrionics or negativity of his principal rivals. Prior to Leicester, his managerial record wasn’t all bad. He took Sardinian side Cagliari from Italy’s Serie C1 to Serie A in successive seasons, introduced Gianfranco Zola at Napoli, won top flight promotion for Fiorentina plus the the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana, and took Valencia to Champions League qualification for the first time. After a disastrous spell at Atlético (a club in dire financial peril at the time) he joined Chelsea, building the foundations of the team that José Mourinho would eventually win successive Premier League titles with, as well as signing Frank Lampard and promoting John Terry to central defence. Sure, there were some eccentric performances before he was sacked by Roman Abramovich who bought the club in 2003, and at times the label ‘Tinkerman’ was well deserved. But Ranieri guided the club to its most promising seasons in decades, reaching a Champions League semi-final and knocking out Arsenal along the way. And when the ‘dead man walking’ was eventually fired, Chelsea were in second place in the Premier League.

That Ranieri should have returned to England to manage Leicester after journeying through Europe was seen as an opportunity to complete unfinished business. No one, though, not even the most glass-half-full Leicester fan, could have expected that to mean where the team have ended up. Not even Ranieri: "I never expected this when I arrived," he said in a statement last night. "I’m a pragmatic man, I just wanted to win match after match and help my players to improve week after week. Never did I think too much about where it would take us. The players have been fantastic. Their focus, their determination, their spirit has made this possible. Every game they fight for each other and I love to see this in my players. They deserve to be champions." And they do.

In today's papers, on television last night, in radio phone-ins and all over Twitter, the somewhat condescending phrase “against the odds” has been everywhere. Their Premier League title success, as unlikely as it has been, has not simply been a remake of Cool Runnings. Leicester may not have the wealth of the teams below them, but they're not paupers either. But their underdog status has not been about money, anyway. Their victory has been about a team that isn't one of the so-called "elite" winning it.

Ranieri’s side has shown a refreshing passion, unity and discipline that their rivals, save for Spurs, haven’t. They’ve soaked up the pressure. Some might even say they’ve played pure football. In Vardy they’ve had a player who has even given England fans something to think about as we head towards the Euros in France. In Mahrez, we’ve seen someone to create excitement every time he steps on the pedal. And in Wes Morgan, we’ve seen a true captain’s captain. Captain Morgan - yeah. But most of all, we have seen in Claudio Ranieri a dignified manager who, at 64, has finally achieved premium silverware, and on his terms, too.

It is a fairy tale, and why not? Are we so embittered and cynical in football that only an established order must prevail? Of course not. As I’ve written so many times before, football is an archly tribal sport, but it has been a long time – probably going back to Newcastle under Kevin Keegan – that an entire nation has united to will a team to victory. I can’t even remember the last time a team attracted so much interest from the foreign media before. Even the Americans can pronounce "Leicester" properly now. Feelgood story of the year, eh?

The North London derby - time for Arsenal to grow a pair

Football derbies rarely stand up to the hype and expectation, but then rivalries in football rarely actually deliver the goods when the teams involved actually meet. Tomorrow's encounter between Tottenham and Arsenal at White Hart Lane does, at least, come at a truly fascinating time for the Premier League, with Leicester City finding themselves unexpectedly in the "it's theirs to lose" position, with Spurs - who were hardly regarded as stalking horses back in August - holding something of the psychological upper ground over their near-neighbours Arsenal.

If, though, one expectation has come good, it's the manner with which Arsenal have frustrated yet again with their own shortcomings. In August we were - as is tradition - entertained with predictions that this would "definitely" be their season, and that Arsène Wenger's signing of Petr Čech was a masterstroke (though now he's out for the next three or four weeks with a calf injury, perhaps less so). And, yes, the fact that they're still in-principle challenging for the title pays certain lip service to that general belief.

But then, to anyone with even basic perception, the facts remain as plain as the noses on our faces, that Arsenal are doing just what they always do - dozing off in January and then scraping into the Champions League.

Perhaps that's what Wenger wants? Perhaps he holds so much power around the Emirates Stadium (and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that he does) that the Arsenal hierarchy have no greater ambition than ensuring the turnstiles keep turning and that perpetual European qualification each season can be measured in terms of revenues, profits and a business model, rather than exciting the fans.

Because it can't be fun to start a season with so much self belief that predictably and, apparently, relentlessly, it comes unstuck once the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Arsenal fans surely can't be satisfied with the relative mediocrity of European qualification each season without anything really meaningful to show for it. And, clearly, they're not.

"I have never heard the Arsenal supporters as angry as they were at the Emirates on Wednesday night when their team lost at home to Swansea," Thierry Henry has written in The Sun. "They were less patient than I have ever known, booed one of the manager’s substitutions and groaned every time a pass went astray or a tackle was lost. The stick that Arsene Wenger has been getting is not personal. People judge what they are seeing, although some maybe go too far in the way they express their unhappiness."

Wenger has hit back with a statement that reflects both his perceived lack of passion and his legendary myopia: "Thierry Henry has his opinions. He has not found the measurement of the fans' angriness, of 60,000 people, straight away - because he sits in the best seats of the stadium."

I'm not going to trot out the old 'boring Arsenal' trope because they are, or should be, better than that. But you can't help pointing the finger at Wenger's demeanour as the reason for Arsenal's 'just so' record in recent seasons.

I'm sure any of the Premier League's perennial strugglers would love to have Arsenal's problems, but even I find myself exasperated at Wenger's apparent inability to deliver on the potential. He talks a lot about his team's mental strength, but when it comes to actually applying it, they fail. Look back over the 2007-8, 2010-11 and 2013-14 seasons, when Arsenal had the league's whip hand in the first few weeks of the new year. This season, as in those, history has repeated itself.

Even their remarkable 2-1, dying-seconds victory over Leicester on Valentine's Day should have been the spur to climb to the very top and make camp. And, yet, they haven't won since and are now six points adrift of Claudio Ranieri's league leaders, and three points behind the North London rivals they meet tomorrow.

Football purists are drawn to Wenger because of his footballing intellect and the fact that he has clearly produced teams of elegance and impact. But that reputation is fading before our eyes and if we were to be honest, league positions and European competition oddly mask this fact. The gap between greatness and failure isn't much. Look how Chelsea went from all-conquering champions to relegation-threatened disappointments in the space of just three playing months, only to be picked up again as the Premier League's form side under Guus Hiddink.

This actually prompts comparison between Wenger and his bête noire, José Mourinho: because Chelsea's stunning demise from August to December was clearly the result of the wrong pyschology, attributable to Mourinho's own negativity. Wenger might have the same problem, albeit with a more attritional effect. Yesterday, Arsenal's Alexis Sánchez told US satellite broadcaster DirecTV: "With the players we have, I believe we can win the Premier League. However, sometimes we lack the hunger, the mentality that we are winning 1-0 when we go out on to the pitch. Sometimes we lack this hunger to believe that we can be champion." Isn't this exactly the malaise that befell Costa, Hazard, Fábregas and Co.?

Contrast that with Tottenham: 66/1 outsiders to win the Premier League title when the season began (Leicester, by the way, were 5000/1...) they were expected by several pundits to end the season no higher than 6th. That could still happen, of course, but Mauricio Pochettino has confounded the experts with his young side, one that still shows deficiencies, especially up front, but which has applied greater resillience and without all that much hyperbole, either. Moreover, he has brilliantly exploited the travails of Manchesters United and City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal - all of whom were predicted, in August, to complete the top five.

Compared with Wenger, there is an air of absolute reality about Pochettino. He is neither daunted by the challenge of tomorrow's derby, nor stoked up on hubris to take it for granted. "It’s not a decisive game," he says, "but it is important for us and for them." He knows that the points distribution between the top five can still change as the run-in looms, but his reaction to Wednesday's defeat to West Ham - a game that could have taken them top - contrasts with the blustering from Wenger.

As a Chelsea fan, I'm clearly conflicted as to whom, out of Spurs and Arsenal, I'd like to see win more. Which is why, like almost every football fan in England and, I believe elsewhere, I hope Leicester City go on and pull off the unprecedented. Nobody deserves the league title more out of any of the teams in sight of the prize, even if in the north-eastern part of London there remains a residual sense of entitlement.

As those of us in south-west London have had to concede, bloodlessly it has to be said, success is not only earned, but the effort requires the right mindset. If Arsenal still want to go for it - and there's nothing saying they can't - their manager needs to end the torturous pondering and instill in his team a sense of achievable achievement. And, to put it crudely, a pair of bollocks.

The Pep in the Premier League's step that it needed

I am experiencing both dread and delight by this week's not-exactly unexpected news that Pep Guardiola will become Manchester City's new manager.

The dread comes from the fact that a patent talent - a Jamie Vardy or a John Stones - on the shopping lists of the big clubs, is more likely to want to play for the celebrated Catalan than opt for the managerial uncertainty and dysfunction at either Manchester United or Chelsea. Or the truly odd world that is Arsenal, who, once again, have started a season with all of the usual "This is our year!" and "We're better placed now than ever to win the league!" before it all starts to fade away in January. All of which means sloppy seconds elsewhere. OK, those are the breaks.

The delight, however, is the prospect of arguably the world's greatest club coach, currently, applying himself in the Premier League and bringing to it a pedigree that has netted, by the age of 44, 14 trophies in four years at Barcelona, including three Spanish league titles and the Champions League twice, and two Bundesliga championships with Bayern Munich in the course of his two full seasons at the club. That's beyond Mourinho form, and without the antics. Or the third season syndrome.

The Premier League will be, though, a very different beast to La Liga and its German counterpart. I don't say that out of arrogance, but just as players have been lured to England by the money and prestige of the league, they've also struggled or at least initially laboured to adapt to its speed and physicality.

Guardiola may be a master of innovation and guile, but he should not expect to have it all his own way, any more so than City, with Sheikh Mansoor's money, have done under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini. But given the scale of Guardiola's proven ability, and the transfer budget that will be at his disposal, it's entirely possible that the once less-fashionable Manchester club could become the greatest in Premier League history, eclipsing their city rival in wealth and superlative, though not necessarily, one suspects, in heritage and status. But, then, that's the problem for United, as it has been for Liverpool. You were great, but what now?

Alright, this may be a little over the top. City have been there before, with preposterous, Galactico-sized spending that has still only netted the two Premier League titles since the Abu Dhabi United Group took over the club eight years ago. And it still hasn't won anything in Europe since the 1970 Cup Winners Cup.

We shouldn't, either, fall victim to creating a deity out of Guardiola. There's no doubt that he has set the bar high for exciting football and for applying an intelligent, cultured approach to football management. But even with the money, the existing squad and the potential for reinforcements, we should be cautious about installing Guardiola as a nailed-on cert.

That said, I have liked what Manchester City have done over recent seasons. It's hard for me to take a queasy stance over their monied resurgence, given that my own club has, too, benefited from the questionable largesse of an oligarch. But their arrival as a fourth big player, not to mention the somewhat satisfying sight of Manchester United's hubris being brought down a peg or two, has made the league infinitely more interesting.

There's little doubting that Guardiola will elevate City to another level, but credit should be given to Manuel Pellegrini, who is, in essence, a good manager, blessedly lacking in the histrionics of certain others, and who has acted with supreme dignity while the club has openly courted the younger Spaniard.

Though two different characters, there have been strong parallels between the Chilean and Claudio Ranieri's "dead man walking" period at Chelsea. Ironic, then, that both Pellegrini and Ranieri have been mentioned as candidates for the vacant job at Stamford Bridge.

Which is what makes Pellegrini a very interesting and unexpected candidate for Chelsea, or even the surely-soon-to-open vacancy at Old Trafford. In theory he could walk into the job at United (as would any manager given the opportunity - viz D. Moyes). But while Chelsea have been considering the likes of Antonio Conte and Diego Simeone - unproven, both, in the Premier League, and with no guarantee that they'd fit - as well as Mark Hughes and Ranieri, Pellegrini would bring Chelsea the experience of managing a big club with big expectations of quick success.

Pellegrini also possesses the sort of personality that Abramovich would like. He is without doubt a top manager, but unlike his former rival José Mourinho and all the manias that came with him, Pellegrini has demonstrated a knack for just getting on with things. Not for nothing has City been challenging for the title or fending off challengers under this refreshing character.

And what of now? Dignity personified, as he continues to compete for four titles whilst knowing for certain that his time in charge at the Etihad is drawing to a close. In spite of City's capricious managerial policy, Pellegrini came to Manchester with a very decent managerial record, from South America and then in Spain (look at his Villareal stats and then against Guardiola's Barcelona when in charge of Real Madrid). Even if this season, in which all the so-called big clubs have shown intermittent desire to win the Premier League, Pellegrini's ethos has been one that would also fit Chelsea's ambition for style of play and a style of success (on Premier League history alone, his win rate is third, behind Mourinho and Alex Ferguson).

At 62, and not, for example, the insane 34 years André Villas-Boas was when appointed to effectively restructure the Chelsea dressing room, Pellegrini would be the safe pair of hands that the club will need to pick up in the wake of John Terry's departure and following the restorative effect of Guus Hiddink, who will be 70 in November and unlikely to want to remain in club management for the long term. Moreover, Pellegrini would be charged with rebuilding Chelsea, possibly without European football next season, which is unlikely to bother his apparent lack of ego.

Yes, it may well take a fallow year for Chelsea to re-emerge with youth on its side, with the wealth of it in the current squad and, ridiculously, out on loan, exceptional quality like Dominic Solanke, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and the Brazilian Kenedy, all of which could build something very special indeed for the '17-18 season.

But back to Guardiola, sort of. With just under four full months of the season to go, Manchester City under Pellegrini still have plenty to deliver. Chelsea, under Hiddink, still have damage to repair and confidence to restore, with an exiting captain to maintain too. Manchester United need to do something to retore their status as the biggest club in the world and not a running joke. Arsenal need to give themselves a kick up the...er...Arsène and deliver on the false dawns they so unfuratingly - even for a Chelsea fan! - keep serving up. Liverpool need to calm down and settle under the delightfully eccentric Jurgen Klopp. And Leicester City? They just need to win the damn thing and put a smile on all of our faces.

Because next season will be a very different animal, with a Premier League "starring" a manager who has been coveted by more clubs than anyone in the history of the sport, who will be paid more than any manager in the history of the sport, and who will have more expectation placed on him than anyone in the history of the sport. And that means I can't wait for August.