Leicester City could scarcely have been better prepared for the Premier League, and started the season well, but have fallen away of late and now carry the hopes of the lower divisions on their shoulders.

Overview

These are three clubs with wildly different recent backgrounds. Burnley are the only show in a small northern town, with a Championship support base, budget and stadium. They don’t overspend, they keep their house in order, and that means that when they do appoint a talented manager they’re capable of springing a surprise promotion as occurred last season. QPR are the club that accumulates billionaire owners who throw money at footballers at such an alarming rate that you can’t help, occasionally, getting them promoted, even though it’s a castle built on sand and disaster soon follows.

Leicester, it seemed, were best placed of the three to survive in the Premier League this season. The Foxes initially chased success through the QPR model with billionaire Thai owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha handing the keys to the safe over to Sven Goran Eriksson — a scenario that only ever leads to a skint football club and many sullied bed sheets along the way.

But under a second tenure of Nigel Pearson, Leicester went for the ultimate Steady Eddie approach. Pearson’s post-match interviews could rock a screaming baby to sleep and over the past three years he has built this Leicester side like a retired man assembling a ship in a bottle in his garden shed over quiet weekends. At LFW Towers we play a game where you have to breath out as long as Nigel Pearson is talking on the television — the effect is similar to carbon monoxide poisoning and you fall into a deep, peaceful sleep wherever you are at the time.

Leicester finished ninth in 2011/12 and during 2012/13 added seven permanent signings to their squad — Marco Futacs from Portsmouth , Zak Whitbread from Norwich , Conor Clifford from Chelsea, Chris Wood from West Brom, Ritchie De Laet and Matthew James from Manchester United and Jamie Vardy from Fleetwood. Only De Laet, James and Vardy ever made it as regular starters.

In 2012/13 they finished sixth and lost the play off semi-final at Watford in incredible circumstances — missing a last minute penalty to win the tie and then allowing the Hornets to storm downfield and win the game with the last kick from Troy Deeney. They responded by changing almost nothing. Last summer they signed just three players — Dean Hammond from Southampton, Zoumana Bakayogo from Tranmere and an ever expanding Gary Taylor-Fletcher from Blackpool who looks more like a makeweight in a dads v lads match down the local park than a professional footballer. Again, only Hammond is a regular.

Where QPR solve every problem with another signing — and good God only knows what January has in store at Loftus Road other than the inevitable pursuit of Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe — Leicester have very deliberately based their success on a steady group of players and focused on improving what they have. They were promoted in 2014 with the same core starting 11 they had in 2011. A BBC East Midlands report from the training ground last season revealed a club and manager who had thought of everything and left no stone unturned — a state of the art facility chock full of nutritionists, physios, IT geeks, match analysers, masseurs, dieticians, coaches, scouts and more. Compare that to QPR’s set up at Harlington, and Harry Redknapp’s penchant for palming off coaching duties on whichever out of work name happens to be driving past the front gate.

And to begin with this season it looked like Leicester would be the latest in a long, monotonous line of opponents coming to QPR where I could sit here and write a “beware the club with the long term plan” article. Against Arsenal and Manchester United at home they were magnificent, scoring six goals and going close to at least that many again, taking four points when it should have been all six. They won at Stoke, suggesting there’d be none of the inferiority complex and defeatist approach to away games that often inflicts newly promoted sides in the Premier League. Ahem, seven defeats from seven played QPR.

But now Leicester are struggling. They’ve lost five and drawn two of the last seven and failed to score in six of those. That run includes crucial games against Sunderland, Burnley, West Brom and Crystal Palace in the mini-league down at the bottom of the table.

I still think Leicester, and QPR as it goes, will survive. But the struggles of a decent team and well furnished club, with a stable management and boardroom structure, impeccable behind the scenes set up, talented and settled squad and a coherent long term plan don’t bode well for the Football League. With the draconian Financial Fair Play rules the Championship has imposed just at the point where the Premier League television money got really stupid, the fear has to be that the bottom three in the top flight will more often than not be the three teams that have just come up.

Such was Leicester’s dominance last season they were able to plan for life in the top flight from the beginning of March. But what chance do they have, coming into a league where the team that finished seventeenth last season got £70m for its troubles?

The bottom of the Premier League is concerning for more reasons than not wanting to go back to Millwall on a Tuesday night next season. The three newly promoted teams haven’t gone straight back down again since Barnsley, Palace and Bolton in 1998 but here we see three vastly different clubs and teams in the bottom three altogether. The financial disparity between the first and second tier in this country means it’s highly likely to be a much more regular occurrence going forwards which is bad news for QPR and Leicester this season, but much graver longer term because it won’t be long before the middle of the road teams in the top flight most at financial risk from a demotion start loudly asking whether promotion and relegation should be happening at all if its just the same six or seven teams bouncing between the top two leagues.

These two sides need to pull their fingers out.

Scout Report

Unless Nigel Pearson has a stroke prior to this game on Saturday you pretty much know what you’re going to get from Leicester in terms of shape. They play a very set 4-4-2 set up dominated by two giant centre halves — Wes Morgan, and either Marcin Wasilewski or Luke Moore. Personally I’m surprised to see Moore out of the team, but not half as surprised to see Ritchie De Laet continually picked ahead of Danny Simpson at right back.

Now, I’m all for giving your newly promoted players a chance and keeping faith — something QPR haven’t done nearly enough in recent years — but the fact is De Laet wasn’t even particularly good in the Championship. He’s one of those players who has been given for more chances and leeway than he otherwise would have been simply because he somehow got picked up by Man Utd at some stage. He had various loan spells in the lower league, playing against QPR for Norwich, Portsmouth and Leicester, and was the worst player on the pitch on every occasion. Whatever QPR can find to throw at the Belgian right back they should find it quickly and throw it firmly. Another game where I wonder if moving Eduardo Vargas to the left wing and letting him go at a weak full back may pay dividends.

The main problem seems to be in the midfield four, where Danny Drinkwater was absolutely outstanding in the Championship last season and looked set to step up and start catching the eye of the Premier League’s bigger sides in much the same way as Ale Faurlin did three years ago. Faurlin’s relentless path to greatness was destroyed by a series of knee injuries whereas Drinkwater just seems to have found the step up in class too much to handle so far. It’s left Leicester, who are often going to be outnumbered in midfield anyway picking two in the middle and two wide against other teams’ central three set ups, really struggling to get a hold of games in the middle of the park. Increasingly, they’ve been trying young Matty James there instead of late.

Wide man Riyad Mahrez looked a quality player in the games we watched, cutting in to shoot or going wide to cross with equally good results. But Leicester have been picking Jeff Schlupp — think Samba Diakite with less brain and a fraction of the technical ability — ahead of both Nick Powell and Anthony Knockaert on the other flank this season which, again, doesn’t make sense to me having watched a few of their games. Another big weakness for QPR to hammer away at with whoever plays down the right side.

Up front Jamie Vardy was exceptional against Man Utd, and Leonardo Ulloa scored against Arsenal as part of a run of five goals in the first five games of the season, but both have dried up.

Leicester won’t change greatly from the side you remember watching last season. There will be two big centre backs, two medicore full backs, two workmanlike central midfielders, at least one decent winger and they will focus on getting the ball wide and delivering good crosses to hard working strikers, or knocking the ball into channels to turn defenders around and keep them honest. It’s well drilled but it’s basic, old style, high pressing English football.

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TacticalR added 00:43 - Nov 27 Thanks for your oppo report. It's interesting to hear about the travails of Leicester because it's the fear of players not being able to step up that normally leads promoted clubs into a flurry of ill-judged purchases, and Leicester's troubles show that this fear is not unfounded. The scenario with the same few clubs getting relegated and promoted is not that hard to envisage. Relegation was never a matter of the slightest concern to those top clubs who conceived the Premiership. It's been a problem ever since, but could become a nightmare with relegated clubs caught between different FFP regimes in different leagues. As to Leicester's backroom boys, can this so-called 'state of the art' collection of 'nutritionists, physios, IT geeks, match analysers, masseurs, dieticians, coaches, scouts and more' really compare with our gang of mystics, motivators, shamen, buddhists and students of German philosophy? Surely our lads are much better placed to offer spiritual enlightenment in these dark times?

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Kaos_Agent added 18:27 - Nov 27 "Leicester have been picking Jeff Schlupp – think Samba Diakite with less brain and a fraction of the technical ability" Vargas should be able to deal with that down the right side. I'm looking for the Chileans to feature in this big match.
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francisbowles added 11:19 - Nov 29 We will need to put there rb under pressure henceTraore to attack down the outside with Yun and get back and help with Vardy. Ulloa will be a problem with Dunne missing, perhaps Ned should mark him. Henry to pick up whoever is looking for knockdowns from him. Hope Vargas and Isla can get back to their pre international break form for us and dominate our right side. Going to be a very tense afternoon, I think!

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