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Leicester look to pass 40-point mark in Boxing Day trip to Liverpool

By on December 25, 2015

The holidays were considerably gloomy at the King Power Stadium last season. Leicester City sat bottom of the table after loss to Tottenham Hotspur on Boxing Day, slumping deeper into their thirteen match winless streak. Two days later, however, a spark came in a 1-0 win over Hull City. Leicester then drew Liverpool on New Years’ Day and the broke into a full sprint with a win against Aston Villa the following week. “From that day on, if I was going somewhere, I was running,” as Tom Hanks famously said in Forest Gump.

Leicester have been running ever since, first out of the clutches of relegation, straight towards the top of the table and into the Premier League record books. They’re only the third team in top flight history to be bottom of the league on Christmas and then top of the table the very next year, following Norwich in the eighties and Burnley in the twenties. “Look, I am very confident because if Leicester last season saved themselves in the last two months that means the stamina is fantastic,” said Ranieri ahead of a Boxing Day meeting with Liverpool, per The Guardian. “Why can’t we continue to run, run, run? We are like Forrest Gump. Leicester is Forrest Gump. I give you the headline there.”

The Foxes sit two points above Arsenal and six ahead of third-placed City, with only a single loss this season, a 5-2 drubbing from Arsenal way back in September. Since then, notable results have included draws against Southampton, Tottenham and Manchester United earlier in the season and victories over Chelsea and Everton in more recent weeks, to prove their good run of form was no fluke.

“I’m not surprised anymore,” Liverpool gaffer Jurgen Klopp said of Leicester’s strength. “It’s really deserved and I’m not surprised anymore, nobody is.”

Perhaps Leicester are in fact the favorites heading into their trip to Anfield tomorrow. Liverpool sit in ninth place, but they’ve scored the fewest goals of any team in the top half of the table and are the only top team team to have a negative goal differential. Klopp’s arrival has reignited Liverpool’s momentum and given them renewed vigor up front, but their old defensive woes are still there. Consistency and focus are now Klopp’s highest priorities.

Dejan Lovren and goalkeeper Simon Mignolet will return from injury, giving shaky back-up goalkeeper Adam Bodgan a much-needed break, although James Milner and Martin Skrtel have both been ruled out of the fixture with injuries.

“Martin is now missing and that is not perfect but it is not our place to complain about this,” said Klopp. Daniel Sturridge’s return from injury has also been delayed, but Klopp won’t use it as an excuse. The Reds, however, will have the backing of a home crowd tomorrow, in front of they haven’t lost a Boxing Day fixture since 1986.

Yet Leicester have the most potent offensive force in the league at the moment, with Jamie Vardy and Riyah Mahrez appearing unstoppable up front. They’ve bagged twenty-eight league goals between them so far this season, compared to Liverpool’s twenty. Although Vardy’s record consecutive scoring streak is over, he is still very much dangerous when he isn’t scoring, having won six penalties since the start of the 2014/2015 season.

Ranieri is far too polite to ever become boisterous about Leicester’s current situation, though. “If I understand correctly, Leicester were never top of the league at this time so we are very happy,” he said, per ESPNFC. “When the manager and the players make the fans happy then this is fantastic.

“I looked at the start of the season and thought these games were unbelievable – that over Christmas we had a very big rock (they face Manchester City, Bournemouth and Tottenham Hotspur in their next three fixtures).

“But now we are only concentrating on Liverpool, then when we’ve finished that match we will concentrate on the next.

“The players know we are doing well but we haven’t achieved anything [yet].” He has always maintained that Leicester must simply focus on getting forty points, although a win tomorrow would take them over that tally at the halfway point in the season. Perhaps then Ranieri and his team could afford to look down and back on all that Leicester have achieved and truly appreciate the gift of their good form, born from hard work and dedication.

Photo credit: Thomas Rodenbucher, via Flickr

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.