Football365’s early loser: Riyad Mahrez
Date published: Tuesday 27th December 2016 2:00
Moving down to 16th position in the Premier League; losing at home to an Everton team who are themselves in a bit of bother; dropping your best attacking player; handing out 30,000 Jamie Vardy masks to protest against a red card. Leicester City’s difficult second series continues. Triumph has become tragicomedy.
It’s one thing for the reigning PFA Player of the Year to suffer a loss of form, but another entirely to be dropped in favour of Demarai Gray and Marc Albrighton. We felt obliged to include Mahrez in our list of 2016’s best Premier League players, but his fall from grace since May is far more surprising than Leicester’s collective decline.
Rather than play down the Algerian’s absence from Leicester’s starting XI on Boxing Day, Claudio Ranieri expanded upon it: “He’s not in good form now and I wanted to stimulate him. I didn’t see him do well during the training.” No more pizzas and no more Mr Nice Guy.
It was a pointed message from a manager who must be thoroughly sick of Leicester’s 2016/17 before it is even half-completed: At a time of crisis, nobody gets a free pass. The spring brought adoration from Premier League supporters and the summer reported interest from Barcelona, Arsenal and Paris St Germain, but autumn and winter have seen a loss of Mahrez’s standing both in England and abroad. Is this funk the result of a player realising that his chance for a big move has passed?
You can see why Ranieri is demanding more. In the league this season (1,371 minutes), Mahrez has created 25 chances, provided two assists and scored no non-penalty goals. In his first 1,371 league minutes last season, Mahrez created 28% more chances, provided seven assists and scored nine non-penalty goals. The assist against Manchester City, deft and disguised, indicated that the talent remains. Its rarity this campaign shows that the application and consistency have been sadly lacking.
Still, Ranieri’s gamble hardly paid off. Against Everton, Leicester forced only two shots on target and three corners. Gray, Mahrez’s direct replacement, failed to create a single chance and sent both of his shots off target. Nine of the 14 players Ranieri used gave the ball away with at least a third of their passes. The danger of publicly calling out Mahrez is that it only risks damaging the morale of an under-performing squad now ‘fighting’ relegation.
Leicester’s away form is appalling (two points from a possible 27 this season), but their results at home are hardly more inspiring. Having taken seven points from their first three games at the King Power Stadium (only dropping points against Arsenal), it is eight points from six matches since. Like Mahrez’s delicate cushioned pass to Jamie Vardy, the magnificent 4-2 victory over Manchester City is the oasis in an arid desert, their only victory in nine league matches. West Ham at home on New Year’s Eve has suddenly become must-win.
No team is too good to go down, and Leicester aren’t even close to too good. They are a personification of their best player: Jaded, demotivated and coasting towards a relegation fight for which they have not trained effectively. Triumph is no inoculation against collapse, as Ranieri and Mahrez are learning only too well.
Daniel Storey
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