A lot Leicester worry about

Football. It's a funny old game.



Last season, Leicester City became the greatest team in the history of all sport anywhere in the known universe. This season, they are the worst shower of clodhopping nincompoops ever to set foot on a rectangular strip of grass.

These are not my opinions. These are FACTS. Ex-footballers on the tellybox say it, and well-informed commentators on social media too, all of whom successfully predicted in August 2015 that Leicester would win the title the following May, so they must be respected, as purveyors of the TRUTH.

We might be in the last 16 of the European Cup, in our debut in the competition, having topped our group without conceding a goal in our first 5 matches, like no English team had ever done before. We might also be in the 5th round of the FA Cup, with a faint chance of reaching the quarter-finals for only the second time in a dozen years. These don't matter. We are the CHAMPIONS, it's the league wot counts, and we are a disgrace to Sir David Attenborough, Gary Lineker and Adrian Mole.

As a Pointless Fulham fan noted recently, though, it could all be regression to the mean. Knowing that numerically robust analysis is something that concerns most City fans greatly (certainly I've heard almost nothing but discussions of statistical rigour on the terraces of Filbo and the King Power over the decades), I decided to work out what Leicester's average league position in my lifetime was, and use that dataset as a yardstick to determine just how DREADFUL this season is.

An erratic yardstick

Chronologically, then, starting in the season I was born very close to the end of, here are Leicester's league positions for my entire life, with very brief explanatory details where required:

11th (22 teams in top flight)
22nd (relegated)
39th
23rd (promoted)
21st (relegated)
29th
25th (promoted)
15th
15th
19th
20th (relegated)
34th (1987-88, 21 teams in top flight)
35th (1988-89, 20 teams in top flight)
33rd
42nd
26th (1991-92, 22 teams in top flight, lost play-off final)
28th (lost play-off final)
26th (won play-off final)
21st (relegated)
25th (1995-96, 20 teams in top flight, won play-off final)
9th
10th
10th
8th
13th
20th (relegated)
22nd (promoted)
18th (relegated)
35th
36th
39th
42nd (relegated to third tier)
45th (2008-09, our lowest league position ever)
25th
30th
29th
26th
21st (promoted)
14th
1st (Premier League champions!)

To be honest, the final data point is so anomalous it should probably be disregarded as an error.

Nonetheless, by tallying up the total and dividing by the number of seasons gives an average league position of 24th. Leicester City's average league position during my lifetime is 24th. Using the current league structure, this would therefore define a 'normal' City season as one in which we finished in the playoff places of the Championship. That sounds about right to me.

As such, on league position alone, even if City finish bottom of the Premier League this season, it will be an above-average performance. If we finish 17th, it would be a better result than 75% of the seasons I have lived through: a statistically terrific performance.

So there you go. This season is really going rather well. Which other fans are having a genuinely better, happier season? Arsenal fans? Palace fans? Villa fans? F*rest fans?

What's more, we ended up with 9 points more than we needed at the end of last season, so we can ask for these to be added to our current meagre total if needs be. If the FA refuse, not to worry, our title defence isn't over yet. With 13 games to go, if we win all our remaining matches and N'Golo Kante's second team lose all of theirs, we can still pip the Blues on goal difference.

Bring it on! 2016-17 is going to be even more memorable than we thought!

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