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In retrospect, Danny Drinkwater’s prowess was the sign that Leicester City had something special going on. The Foxes had plenty of soon-to-be huge names on their Premier League-winning 2015-16 roster — N’Golo Kante, Riyad Mahrez and of course Jamie Vardy — but after Drinkwater made a big-money move to Chelsea in 2017, he was barely heard from again. He had two goals and eight assists during Leicester’s magical title run and a total of two goals and one assist in parts of four other Premier League seasons.
While European soccer was well into the process of moving toward possession as the ultimate goal for all of the most dominant teams, nobody was pulling that off perfectly in England in 2015-16. Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United topped the Premier League’s possession list at just 58%, trailed slightly by Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City and Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur. None of those teams made it past the quarterfinals of either the Champions League or Europa League.
Leicester, meanwhile, proved that in the absence of a team that could do everything required of it at a continental level, a team that does very specific things particularly well can win a lot of matches.
They had basically one way to score. In open-play sequences ending in goals, Vardy had 41 touches, Mahrez 36, Drinkwater 22 and Kante 17. Marc Albrighton and backup forward Leonardo Ulloa were the only others who had more than 10 touches. Leicester would recover the ball and funnel it to either Drinkwater or Kante (or both), who would quickly find either Vardy or Mahrez up the pitch. Vardy and Mahrez finished with 41 goals and 17 assists between them in league play; the entire rest of the team scored 26 goals. They defended well, counterattacked with vigor and, in just their second season after promotion from the English Championship, won the entire damn league.
It may be a while before an underdog pulls off something similar in the Premier League, but we’ve…
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Source : espn
