Leicester's Cinderella story nearing unhappily ever after

Robert Huth froze when he knew he'd made a mistake. The odds were stacked 70-30 in Henrikh Mkhitaryan's favour on Sunday, but the German defender - such a dependable, no-nonsense operator who befitted his surname last term - stepped forward to try to meet the ball before the midfielder. He merely made himself an enjoyable obstacle for the Armenian to bypass.

It was stuff from the school of Titus Bramble or Frank Sinclair by Huth, and certainly lacked the conviction of a year earlier when the Premier League champion-to-be nodded two goals in a 3-1 defeat of Manchester City.

This weekend's 3-0 home loss to Manchester United saw Leicester City take the unwanted record of being the first top-flight team to lose five straight matches to begin a calendar year since Tottenham Hotspur in 1986. It's been 520 minutes without a goal for the Foxes, and clues of why they could be the second team to be relegated the season after finishing atop English football - Manchester City did it in 1938 - came from an interview Huth gave before the match.

"We need to get on with now rather than saying: 'Last year was great,'" Huth said. "It's reality. We are struggling with relegation.

"We're losing games and we can't put our fingers on how or why.

"We fully deserved what we got last season, and it was always going to be a struggle after what happened, but we didn't think we would be in this position."

There are obvious reasons for Leicester's decline. N'Golo Kante's sale to Chelsea rid the club of one of the league's finest midfielders; opponents now play deep, so balls over the top to Jamie Vardy are nearly impossible; in stark contrast to last season, the shape and system has been changed regularly.

But most telling is the drop in industriousness in Claudio Ranieri's squad. The hunger isn't there, and with just two points separating 15th-placed Middlesbrough and 20th-placed Sunderland, Leicester, wobbling in 16th, is in the midst of a relegation dogfight.

The problem is, Leicester celebrations haven't ended.

The beloved 2015-16 Foxes team has picked up awards on what feels like a bi-weekly basis, Claudio Ranieri seems to have won Manager of the Year at various ceremonies, and left-back Christian Fuchs had a piece in The Players' Tribune on Oct. 26, 2016, which began: "So Jamie Vardy was having a party."

Regardless of Leicester's current failings on the pitch, the remarkable title tale of yesteryear continued to be told.

Perhaps nowadays with the intense media scrutiny or adulation (both social and in print), it's almost impossible to avoid dwelling on failures and successes. Including this term's likely Chelsea triumph, each of the last eight Premier League seasons has seen the previous title winner not retain its silverware. The crown fits temporarily, until the head bloats through constant rehashing of better times.

For Ranieri to keep his side grounded after overcoming 5,000-1 odds to sit atop of English football would have been a monumental achievement. Players like Riyad Mahrez, Wes Morgan, and Huth were written off - the veteran manager was himself after a disastrous spell in charge of Greece's national team - so not to revel in silencing the naysayers and winning a legion of admirers would undoubtedly prove tough.

It's something that only the best managers can do. Although Ranieri doesn't fall into this category, perhaps the gaffer - previously possessing a reputation of an affable character, but now reportedly part of a self-imposed exile from other Leicester staff - should've tried to borrow methods from one of the greatest coaches the game has ever seen: Sir Alex Ferguson.

"I remember the first day of pre-season in the summer of 1999, just a few weeks after the team had won the Treble," Bill Beswick, a former consultant sports psychologist at United, recalled to FourFourTwo magazine. "One of the players showed up carrying a sack full of baseball bats that had 'Treble Winners' written on them, and began handing them out to the rest of the United players.

"Alex marched over and started to collect up the bats and put them back in the sack, before throwing the lot in the bin. 'That was last season, boys,' he said to the players. 'That's all done now. This is this season.'

"He would always stamp out deviation from the focus on winning."

For Leicester, Ranieri probably brought in the bats himself and, incredibly, the English champion looks increasingly likely to strike out.