Kieran Maguire is a Lecturer in Economics, Finance and Accounting at the University’s School of Management:
“HR departments all over Leicester are busy dealing with record numbers of staff phoning in sick today. Fans from nearly all other clubs (Spurs and local rivals Nottingham Forest notwithstanding) are toasting Leicester City’s amazing achievement in winning the Premier League title.
Many people are also asking themselves what was the key to their achievement, which we’ve narrowed down to three factors.
Good management
If you look at any successful business, the decision making from those at the top is key. From the likes to Henry Ford, Bill Gates, James Dyson, Mark Zuckerberg and so on, it’s the people at the top who can make a huge difference.
When Leicester recruited 64 year old Italian Claudio Ranieri last summer, no one took much notice. But Ranieri’s genial personality, which entertained the media and in doing so shielded the players from too much attention, coupled with a fierce work ethic, has been the perfect fit for The Foxes.
Their start to the season was notable for cavalier football, winning matches despite conceding goals, and they found themselves towards the top of the league.
When Ranieri realised that success for Leicester was a possibility, he made a tactical masterstroke, and converted them from cavaliers to roundheads. He changed the set up of the defence, and a team that didn’t have a clean sheet in its first eleven games of the season has had nine of them since the start of January.
This is an example of management identifying issues before they get out of hand, and finding solutions so that they don’t impact upon the goals.
Good technology
Leicester’s squad cost a fraction of that of other, more established, clubs in the Premier League. The two Manchester clubs have spent over £400 million between them in the last 18 months on big name players who have performed to varying degrees of success.
Leicester have taken a different approach. They have used data analysis organisations such as ProZone, Opta and WyScout, who log huge amounts of data about players and make it available to clubs and other interested parties.
By taking such an approach, Leicester were able to identify specific player to perform specific roles. Leicester wanted to make their midfield more robust.
N’Golo Kante’s statistics from his career playing in Caen, France, indicated he made more tackles than any other player in the country. A check by Leicester’s scouts backed this up, and he was signed for a fee of about £5.6 million in August 2015. Kante has been a major contributor to Leicester’s success this season, but the ‘big’ clubs overlooked him, despite having access to the same data, as they are under pressure to make marquee signings.
Leicester also use the data analysis information with players themselves. When players return to training after a match they are given individual performance summaries, so they can see the number of tackles won, metres ran, time spent in each area of the pitch and so on.
Leicester have utilised this information well in having players work as units, so the central defenders, strikers, and so on view their information together to see how well they are working as a team.
Leicester have embraced wearable technology as part of their training regime. Players wear monitors that give Ranieri and his team information about heart rate and recovery times during training. This allows management to identify those players who are starting to fatigue, and this can help in decision making for matches.
Good Luck
Leicester have had a perfect storm of luck going for them, though luck can be self made too.
Leicester arrived in the Premier League in the middle of a record breaking TV deal, which allowed them to outbid others for players in terms of fees and wages. Whilst Leicester could not compete with the glamour clubs of the Premier League and Europe, they have resources that put them far ahead of most clubs in leagues such as France, Portugal, Netherlands and so on. This helped their recruitment.
They have had a settled side, with few injuries or suspsensions to disrupt their playing style. Consequently the players knew their roles and what was expected of them to a greater degree than those of other clubs.
Leicester’s players are individually and collectively playing the best football of their careers. The same cannot be said of the likes of Hazard, Rooney, Toure and so on, who seem to have been collectively mediocre on their £10 million plus a year earnings.
They have not had the distractions of cup competitions. No European football, and early departures from both domestic cup competitions has meant their players have just had to focus on the Premier League.
There haven’t been any rivals with sustained runs of form. Spurs, Arsenal, Manchester City and United have had good and bad spells all season, allowing Leicester to be champions with lower points than any club for a long time.
However all this pales into insignificance with the overall superb achievement of winning the Premier League. At the start of the season Leicester were 5000-1 outsiders to lift the trophy. All fans will tell you that each August, when the season begins, they live in hope of success for their team.
The riches at the top table of the Premier League had crushed that hope for many fans, but next August everyone will be attending their first match of the season wondering ‘Perhaps we could do a Leicester’, and for that, all fans should celebrate their success, as it has restored the dream.
