Monday 27 February 2017 08:53, UK
Leicester reached the top and had nowhere to go next. A drop-off in motivation and performances was inevitable, argues Peter Smith...
"I need the soldiers. I need the gladiators," said an irritated Claudio Ranieri after watching his defending Premier League champions Leicester crash out of the FA Cup against 10-man League One Millwall earlier this month.
It wasn't the first time he'd questioned his team's desire during this campaign. "It's strange because last season we won for this, being more determined than the opponent, playing with more heart than the opponent," he added. "We could also lose, but we'd fight every match."
Anyone who has watched the Foxes labour in recent months will have witnessed the contrast to the ferocious, hungry group of players who defied the odds to pull off the most remarkable title victory in English football history.
The stats back up that perceived drop-off in output, too. Last season, Leicester's players were covering 110.1km per game on average. Now it's just 108.7km.
So what's happened?
The new contracts. The new cars. It's easy to wheel out favoured criticisms of modern day footballers: that they don't care, that they believed their own hype.
But while the riches, glory and fame which came with that Premier League win changed the lives of those players, there's an argument that the title success itself made this season's complete drop-off in performances, and more importantly, motivation, inevitable.
Leicester's championship win was unique. And so, too, are the circumstances of their title defence.
When every previous Premier League winner has lifted the trophy, their first instinct has been to outline the next target: to defend their title, to improve on that season.
Bred on a culture of success at Manchester United, Gary Neville has become accustomed to putting aside a victory - no matter how great - and refocusing on a new goal. "When you win championships you have got to be able to come back again with hunger," he said on Monday Night Football in April 2014.
He was speaking in criticism of Manchester City's penchant for winning titles and then failing to defend them. "They drop off. They get to the top of the mountain and drop off it," he summed up.
But for Leicester's champions this was it. For a squad largely made up of journeymen, many signed from lower leagues or even semi-professional football, this was the defining moment in their careers. The pinnacle.
Those players will never achieve anything like that again. We all know that Leicester aren't that good.
"Those players will never achieve anything like that again," Jamie Carragher said this month. "Last season was a freak. We loved it and we were all willing them to do it but we all know really that Leicester aren't that good."
And they knew it too.
Midfielder Andy King, the first player to win League One, the Championship and the Premier League with one club, revealed the lack of direction many of the squad felt in the wake of last season's glorious climax. "That is the question we've been asking ourselves the last couple of weeks," he said in May. "Where do we go from here?
"After an achievement like that it is hard to beat but it is down to us to enjoy the moment while it is here and then to make sure we put this season behind us."
Where do we go from here?
Ranieri recognised the gargantuan achievement of 2015/16, a year when everything went right for the Midlands club, could not be repeated. "When I say '40 points' [is the target this season], a lot of people are laughing but it is true," he said in August, after an opening day defeat at relegation favourites Hull City brought Leicester back to reality with a bump.
For the majority of Premier League champions, indeed the majority of sportsmen, that moment of career peak goes unnoticed at the time. There's always the next challenge. The belief it can be done even better next year. And most of the time, the opportunity for improvement is genuine.
But for Leicester City's players there was never any prospect of surpassing last season.
"I have climbed my mountain, I am on the peak, so this feels right," said 2016 Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg when he announced his retirement from the sport five days after beating Lewis Hamilton to the crown. There are similarities between the German and Leicester City.
While the tantalising prospect of Champions League football provided an incentive to go again - and Leicester's far better performances in that competition prove the point - the players have been unable to find that renewed motivation in the Premier League, where they had achieved all they possibly could.
The obvious solution is for the championship-winning group to disband, for new, hungry players to replace them while the class of 2015/16 seek different challenges elsewhere.
Ranieri claims he had offers to leave Leicester in the summer but now, rightly or wrongly, his future has been decided by others. But, like his former players, whatever happens next, recapturing glory on last year's scale is likely to remain elusive.
