Even before Leicester City’s pre-season clash with Tottenham was rained off, they threatened to go into the Championship campaign less prepared than their rivals.
Upheaval at City was necessary following their relegation, and a summer of change was always going to put them on the back foot. But now they have just 90 minutes left of pre-season, and it does not feel like that is enough to get them ready to face Coventry on August 6.
It would be unreasonable to expect City to be the best prepared club of the 24 competing in the Championship this term. For a start, their Premier League campaign finished three weeks after the regular Championship season did, so for those sides not involved in the play-offs, they were always going to have longer breaks and/or earlier pre-season returns than City were.
It was not until July 3 that City were back in at Seagrave, so as to afford their squad a true rest period. Many of their rivals were doing bleep tests and pre-season fitness check-ups more than a week earlier.
City have also appointed a new manager, a new backroom team, and require an overhaul of their squad, not only because of the financial implications of relegation and the required adaptation to that, but also because of the number of players that left on free transfers. Poor squad planning in previous summers has left them more to do this year.
Given the new ideas being implemented by Enzo Maresca, and the limited time to do it in, it would have made sense to make the pre-season schedule as simple as possible. But a tour to Asia, booked earlier in the year and announced when City were on the brink of relegation, has hampered that.
City have not travelled abroad for pre-season for a number of years, unlike most other leading English sides, and so have not benefitted from the commercial boost an overseas tours can bring. But given City’s predicament, this summer felt like an inconvenient time to fly thousands of miles away.
However, relegation and the arrival of a new manager did not change plans. Maresca defended the trip in his opening press conference, saying it’s a part of modern football.
But the long journey to Asia will now culminate in just one match, unless City can reorganise the game Tottenham to be played behind closed doors in the next couple of days. It is unfortunate that the weather caused Sunday’s fixture to be called off, but it wasn’t an impossibility.
July is the start of monsoon season in Thailand, and the match was being played at an open-top stadium. Rain can force a game to be postponed in the UK too, but it would have to be extraordinary weather for that to happen. At this time of year, the downpour seen in Bangkok is not unusual. A cancellation because of weather that was not out of the ordinary will lead to more questions and more fan upset that the tour was ever organised in the first place.
With a mooted match against the Thai national team never officially organised, it means, as things stand, City now just have one game in Asia, and one game before their season kicks off. The match against Liverpool will be only the fourth fixture of pre-season, and will be followed by a 7,000-mile flight home.
In comparison, Coventry played Shrewsbury this weekend, and have matches against MK Dons and Exeter to get themselves ready to play City. One of City’s potential title rivals, Middlesbrough, have just played their fifth pre-season friendly, losing at home to Ayoze Perez’s Real Betis, and have two more games in the UK to prepare themselves.
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