Was Nigel Pearson right?

I mean, you've got to give me 10 out of 10 for the clickbait title, right?

As we look back on yesterday's disappointing result, and at a year that has felt at times frustrating, it's got me wondering about what we, as a fanbase, expect from this football club, and whether those expectations are realistic or not.

When Nigel Pearson, following a home defeat to Barnsley, said that we suffered from 'delusions of grandeur' for being angry about the performance, I immediately reacted with anger towards him. How dare he say that we suffered from delusions of grandeur just for having the audacity to expect to beat Barnsley? It was a clear sign to me that Pearson didn't understand the club he had returned to. That he didn't understand how the owner's investment and the raising of the profile had meant that our own expectations had risen, and that yes, yes we do expect to beat lowly Barnsley.

Fast forward 7 years. We've just lost at home to Cardiff. A team that, much like Barnsley, we should have beaten. The only difference being that this defeat was in the Premier League, not the Championship. And I can't help but wonder - did Nigel have a point? Are we a deluded fanbase? Deluded by our own sense of grandeur? I have to say, the arrogance and self-entitlement from some sections of our fanbase, that we should of course beat poor, lowly Cardiff, seemingly forgetting that they amassed 92 points in the Championship to reach this level, and I do start to think that he was right, that we are deluded into thinking that we can just stroll up and win at ease.

Losing or drawing a home game against a team that we should be beating is entirely in keeping with our history. How many times have we been to a game when that has happened? Even during our League One season, we failed to beat Stockport and Northampton and scraped victories against Bristol Rovers and Hereford. In the Championship winning season, we needed a 93rd minute equaliser to draw with relegated Yeovil. In the great escape season, we didn't beat Burnley or Hull. In our most successful season ever, we struggled to victories against Norwich and Newcastle. There will be many, many more instances (I recall a Boxing Day defeat at home to Rotherham many years ago when Martin Keown was playing for us?)

My point is that as a club, we have a long, chequered track record of struggling against teams that we should be beating. It's not something new or unusual, it's the norm. It's not something that is unique to Claude Puel's tenure. Sure you could argue that his tactics and style of play make those matches harder to win, but it's not some terrible new trait that we have only developed over the last year.

Nev was right yesterday when he said that football is unpredictable and that if it wasn't, everyone would win the pools every week. Football is played by humans with faults, managed by humans with faults.

We do need to gain a degree of perspective at times when we view how we are doing. We're 8th in the league. We're not going to go down this season, which means we will have a sixth consecutive season in the Premier League. This is unprecedented for Leicester City. There is a lot that is good about this club. This league is one that changes rapidly, clubs come up and clubs go down. I was doing a little research and came across the Premier League table from 10 years ago;

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008-09_Premier_League

In this time, 30 clubs have been promoted and 30 clubs have been relegated. And from the 2008-09 season, only 10 clubs remain in the league, of which only the big 6 and Everton have not suffered relegation. My point is that for a club of our size, consistently staying up is a good achievement. Of course we want more, but so did supporters of Bolton, Blackburn, Stoke, clubs that we are historically of a similar size to. Statistically and historically, it is likely that we will be relegated at some point within the next 10 years but the ambition and commitment of our owners means we have a fighting chance of not just surviving, but thriving too. And if we do achieve that, I hope that we can learn to enjoy it more because bad times are only ever a couple of poor seasons away for clubs like ours.