I think something is very fishy about it, maybe prem bosses had a Vince machman moment and fixed the winner of the prem to get million more viewers and maybe was in contract for something crazy to happen in the prem and that's why clubs are getting millions TV money every season. Also look at that team it wasn't much better than the sqaud Sunderland and we had other than a vardy etc
3 good players the rest are premier league relegation battle at best 70% of them have been championship players or lower their whole careers before they won the prem, and when u think of some of the great teams that haven't won the prem, and then a bunch of nobody's so it's abit more than abit fishy.
Tbf, there was no conspiracy at all.
Leicester were a team who were far more than the sum of their parts-look what happened when you took Kante out of their team; they were consistent both in terms of a style that worked for them and in terms of the team they were able to put out.
The big teams around them had poor seasons partly because they were in transition for various reasons-hence Spurs being able to take advantage too.
Mahrez, Kante and Vardy had the season of their lives and the manager had the season of his career too. They were lucky with injuries where their rivals weren't.
That all these conditions fell in their favour is just one of those things. I am 100% happy that there was absolutely nothing untoward about Leicester winning the league.
Does anyone know of any odds at any time in the premier league ever being 5000/1 for a team to win the title, apart from Leicester?
I can't seem to find anywhere where it gives historical title odds for all teams in the premier to win the title. Maybe someone knows where you can view this. I'm curious.
You see, what I can't get my head around is, the season before, Leicester manage to escape relegation by going on a sort of title winning end of season run to escape relegation...as I said earlier.
However, what puzzles me is the fact that Leicester started the next season with a lot of things more favourable for them than the season before, with a new manager in Ranieri...not some obscure manager.
Yet even more puzzling is the fact that Leicester are given the biggest odds over promoted teams from the championship, not to mention teams on par with them in that season before.
I've tried to find betting odds for premier title winners from as far back as when it started but can't seem to find anything.
I was reading up on some stats from a blog (I don't know how accurate/true they are) and it says that prior to Ranieri taking over, Leicester were near bottom in terms of overall fitness stats and yet the next season, despite having the least possession stats, they were in the top two fittest teams overall.
I don't know how true any of that is but I will say one thing.
I remember remarking on how all their players seemed to look as fit and as sharp at 90 plus minutes as they did at kick off. Of that I can honestly say. I remember being a bit bemused over it.
I just looked at the ref's who took part in games.
It appears there was a select few taking part in the lions share of those games, whilst others never reffed any.
How bang on this is, is open to question and/or for anyone to maybe look it up and make up their minds.
I'll copy and paste a little bit from what's said. Take it as something or nothing, because it's not me putting down facts or anything, it's me putting out musings and potential coincidences or beyond coincidence, type
By all mean dismiss any and all of it if you wish. All I'm doing is giving a bit of food for thought to create a bit of interest for those who are interested to take part or simply read and think without taking part.
Ok here goes. Title season.
Leicester City in the Premier League prior to Howard Webb selecting match officials:
4 wins 7 draws 18 losses
Penalty differentials: 2 in favour 3 against
Red Card differentials: 2 in favour 2 against
Leicester City in the Premier League since Howard Webb selects match officials (to Apr 10):
28 wins 10 draws 4 losses
Penalty differentials: 10 in favour 1 against
Red Card differentials: 4 in favour 1 against
The following officials had not refereed any Leicester City games since Webb took over - Attwell, Friend, Hooper, R. Madley, A. Madley, Scott, Stroud, Dowd and Foy.
All Leicester City games have been shared around the other 12 officials.
Why?
Taylor and Dean have been given four games each - resulting in 8 victories for Leicester City - and Jonathan Moss has overseen 6 wins and a draw in his seven appearances as referee or 4th official.
I can remember when Chelsea were tortured by ref's and so was Mourinho ,that very same season. Can anyone remember that?
A lot of visual things baffled me at the time but I brushed them under the carpet, kind of thing.
I used to wonder why Mourinho was being targeted by ref's and media.
I found it really odd but never really took too much notice of any of it until this amazing miracle of the underdog story of Leicester.
You just think, are Leicester the once in a lifetime miracle story makers that just rubbed the genie's lamp and got a set amount of wishes before the genie went back into the bottle and fell to the bottom of the deepest ocean to be entrenched deep into the ocean floor for another 100,000 years before reemerging on the beach of some other lucky person/group?
Fun to think about while having your corn flakes but lets face it...smaller secrets are leaked every day in football. Theres no way the amount of people needed to make this work would have kept their mouths shut.
What tells me that it wasn't a conspiracy was how they did so well in the champions league the following season, the same team. They just had a very good team at the right time and we need to accept this. Kante won the title with Chelsea when he left and was a key man there too, Mahrez is still quality, Vardy is a great little counter attacking player to this day, wes Morgan and Danny Simpson were much under rated, Albrighton always had potential.
Nah, not buying the conspiracy idea. The chemistry and quality were right, lucky with injuries, no pressure, momentum, goodwill from the nation - little percentages here and there add up and as someone said, the planets aligned. Dont forget Di Matteo won the CL unexpectedly, Greece and Denmark won the Euros, FFS look at Wales last time in the Euros, margins between winning and losing are fine at this level so these kind of surprises can and do happen.
This is spot on for me. I also think there's a tendency to underrate that Leicester team. They had great goalscorers in that team, a very good goalie and an organized defence. It wasn't always great football, but they managed to get enough 1-0 and 2-1 victories to seal the title at the end of the day, and there's nothing odious about that at all. Aye, it's strange to see that Danny Simpson and Robert Hugh actually won the title, but they were part of a team that was on a roll.
If everytime an underdog wins something or exceeds expectations it has to be labelled a conspiracy, I think we're losing what's left that's good about the game. It's beautiful to me that Leicester, Leicester, were able to outskill Man United and Chelsea over the course of the season. That's why football is great.
Ghost I don't know if you are into horse racing but take the Grand National which unlike the Premiership is a handicap. Not like the Elite Manures and Citeh etc, but each horse is handicapped to give them all an equal chance within the weight structure.
In theory if the handcapper has done his job and there aren't any nags out of the weights they should all cross the line in a photo finish.
You still get hot favourites and fancied horses but since WW2 more than a third of the winners have neen long priced outsiders
Last edited by ex_pat_magpie; 10-06-2018 at 08:47 PM.
The grand national is more of a lottery of horses.
Basically the fences and grouping can dictate the outcome on many occasions.
I think you and I know that horse racing is one dodgy carry on...just a large scale greyhound type carry on.
Of course most of it will be sort of legit but the rest of it all is littered in doping, deliberate conditioning/unconditioning to certain tracks being a bit more iffy than others..
Basically insider stuff to play pass the parcel among those who are higher up.
I think you'll know the score with all this if you're into this stuff... and so will most others.
It simply isn't a fair game... but of course you're going to get horses that legitimately win from legitimate people. It's not all corrupt, just like football is not all corrupt.
That goes for almost everything. The good the bad and the ugly of anything that creates favour, stance or fortune.
We all know football is monetary dodgy. It slaps us all in the face like a big wet stinking fish every day.
Sepp Blatter and Platini...etc.....etc....etc.
Dodgy ref's the world over.
In house betting.
The list is endless.
The thing is, to ensure people spend money you have to create many scenarios to relieve them of it whilst not showing your hand as to that being the case...and in fact making it appear that the game is ultra fair and to the point of this "bet responsibly" carry on and all the rest.
There are no skint bookies because the overall betting of anything is always stacked in the favour of the bookmakers.
In the case of one singled out football team/club...that one football team/club can be the catalyst to create one hell of a changed mindset in betting and bums on seats, because it creates hope where many fans saw little.
That's my thoughts.
It doesn't mean I'm stating facts. I'm merely stating a theory based on eyebrow raising, gut feeling or hunch, down to coincidence overload.
I do understand that a miracle can seem to come about once in a few score of years.
You know..... a tabloid piece on a man who takes his wife to a top floor restaurant 100 storey's high where a gas blast blows a kitchen stove towards their table and tips it up but forces her and her husband towards a window which shatters.
They both get thrown out with this table and stove above them.
They plummet towards the ground, but luckily a large gust of wind slams the side of the building half way down and manages to blow both people into the only open window in the building that was being changed at that very time.
Once they land back into the building, they land on mattresses that were being stored in that part, which made them both bounce out of the other side of the building through a window that shattered due to the man having a metal leg which flew off and smashed the window ahead of them.
They plummet down the building and land on a big shop awning below then bounce off that into the back of a parked truck full of mattresses that were about to be delivered to the very floor they flew in and out of....followed by the man's false leg which lands beside them, which he puts back on and they dust themselves down and take the elevator back up to the restaurant where they re-order their meals and enjoy a free bottle of bubbly........a Bolangers which is what this story is....yet is nearly on par with Leicester....except Leicester has a few extra jaw dropping extras.
That's just the way I see this stuff.
We're all different in many ways in how we perceive stuff.
The only thing is, there's no direct proof of any of it, except for lots of eyebrow raising on a big scale, which counts for nothing other than that....but does create interesting talking points for those who care to dissect it, as is being done, which makes for decent craic and debate..