With Leicester City running on adrenaline to stay fifth in the Premier League, halfway to staying up, a quarter of the way into the season, refuelling is going to be vital. Liquids, carbohydrates and team spirit must be kept topped up.
So champagne and pizza were the order of the day as Leicester celebrated victory over Crystal Palace, 12 bottles of Moët coming Claudio Ranieri’s way to mark his recent 64th birthday as he agreed to take his ebullient squad out for a meal to mark their first clean sheet of the season.
It felt like a time for rejoicing at the King Power Stadium as Jamie Vardy extended his remarkable goalscoring run on the afternoon Leicester finally managed to shut out their opponents. That, certainly, is a recipe for continued success.
“Champagne and pizza is good,” Ranieri said. “Not fantastic but it’s OK.” Asked whether such a diet is unhealthy, he replied: “No, it’s carbohydrate – good for the muscles.”
Despite his advancing years, the former Chelsea manager is relishing club management once more. Do they still need you, do they still feed you, when you’re 64? Evidently so. “When you live with the young players, you are young,” he said. “I love to manage day by day.”
Vardy became the first Leicester player since Arthur Rowley in 1956-57 to score in seven successive league games and can break the club record against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday. But the England striker, top scorer in the Premier League, and his club manager were eager to proclaim the collective as they placed the team’s scintillating start to the season in context.
“Look, we must achieve 40 points to be safe,” Ranieri said when asked how far Leicester, with only one defeat in their 10 games, can go. “After, we see. Now 40 points, [we are on] 21 less [fewer than our overall target] because that is my philosophy. Now we arrive at the warm-up. Every match is difficult in the Premier League.”
Vardy struck when Brede Hangeland’s awkward error allowed Riyad Mahrez to play him in to dink the ball over Wayne Hennessey and run round the other side to be sure. He then led the defending from the front, scything down Bakary Sako in the last minute as Palace, normally so deadly away from home and on the break, were for once neutralised.
The former Halifax Town striker later stated that the result was more important than any personal records. “Definitely and I think that showed at the end,” he said. “We’ve conceded quite a few goals lately so to defend like that, to hold on and keep a clean sheet, is brilliant. It just shows the character in the squad because everyone was defending.
“We’ll see if the boss buys the pizza. Obviously I’m delighted to get the goals’ record but it means more to me that we’ve won again and kept up our excellent start.”
Many strikers who have scored 11 goals in 11 games, been picked for England and led their unfashionable team away from relegation danger and into the European placings might get ahead of themselves. But having worked in a Sheffield factory and played non-league football Vardy has got, at 28, a better chance than most of keeping grounded.
“I think he’s a nice boy,” Ranieri said, in his endearing mixture of Basil Fawlty and Manuel. “I tell him every time: ‘You play for the team, continue to fight, continue to press, continue to run, continue to attack the defensive line, that’s as important [as scoring]. The goal, you can score or you can’t score. The performance must be good.’”
Palace seem to have a plethora of attacking options that, despite the absence of the suspended Dwight Gayle and the injured Marouane Chamakh and Connor Wickham, should arguably give them a better chance than Leicester and West Ham United of sustaining their surprising high league placing.
Alan Pardew started with Wilfried Zaha and Patrick Bamford, on loan from Chelsea, on the bench as he offered Sako, Jason Puncheon and Yannick Bolasie the opportunity to attack off Fraizer Campbell. “We are missing some big offensive players and that is beginning to hinder us,” the Palace manager said after their fourth defeat in six league games. “We really need to push now. That’s a little bit of a concern for us.”
Man of the match Jamie Vardy (Leicester City)
