Can Leicester City Handle the Title Pressure?
Leicester City’s win at its recent away game against Manchester City has been labeled as significant to its title hopes this season. The success has put the club five points clear at the top of the premier league and has positioned them as the title favorites with every bookmaker. Since Leicester has managed to stay on top of the radar, the question is whether they can handle the pressure?
It is still unimaginable how Leicester came to Manchester and won convincingly on a game that was regarded as the test of the season and designed to remove doubts from those who never thought the team was a serious title contender. In fact, Leicester displayed an emphatic and mature performance that amazed many sports analysts and supporters. Leicester are not viewed as lucky underdogs anymore but a serious title contender in the Barclays Premier League. The actual strategy is how Leicester will handle the mixture of expectation and pressure.
Chris Sutton, a former Norwich City striker, had highlighted dangers of treating a team as an underdog saying that such teams may thrust to the front and feeling the full weight of expectation. According to him, a similar experience was witnessed when Norwich City club missed an unlikely title chance slip away in 1992/93 season when they were only a point clear with six games left. Sutton explained to the BBC Sport that when the title seems more obvious to take and when you are too close to winning, the harder it becomes. What happened in 1992/93 was that Norwich got too close and in March they were still leading in the Barclays Premier League. When the team started thinking about whether they could win the league, there was a lot of pressure and expectations from the owners and fans.
According to Sutton, everywhere he went in Norwich, people asked him ‘can we win it?’ the team was asking each other ‘are we still in the title race?’ and the whole situation was ‘what if we do win it?’ According to Sutton, it was such a new pressure to all the team and the then manager, Mike Walker. At the time, Manchester United had gone for three games without a win but managed to beat Norwich and went ahead to win the Premier League.
Riyad Mahrez, a Leicester City forward, explained in an interview that the team will keep dreaming as they fight for the title. Everything has changed about Leicester City and now they see them as more favorites than before. In the betting world, the team has earned a place as a top team in the Barclays Premier League and many fans wants to bet against the team. Soccer betting has become a norm for many people and has created large enterprises in the betting industry. Online soccer gambling is the most common and when teams like Leicester are performing better they make betting interesting when different odds are created based on team’s performance.
