Manchester City should be walking Premier League

Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy should be given the opportunity to join a bigger club if it became a possibility.

And since the league switched to a 38-game season in 1995/96, only one such team – Aston Villa, who finished sixth in 1998/99 – has dropped out of the top four by the end of the campaign.

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Twe two holding midfielders are Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho and Everton’s Ross Barkley. Jamie Vardy is scoring freely for the rampaging Foxes, and they deserve the acclaim and attention they now are receiving.

“What is Leicester City doing at the top of the Premier League standings?” you ask. Well they have to get through the long winter first, but already they’ve laid down a marker and illustrated that the Premier League’s closed shop isn’t quite as closed as it appears at first. Leicester City is now 3rd in the Premier League and on pace for their best season ever in the Premier League.

“Any player who plays up front in a Premier League team needs to catch the eye of the England coaching team and the reports that were coming through 12 months ago were that he was raw, a little bit erratic in front of goal but he was lightning quick and a bit of a handful”, he said.

“I still think they will win the league but they are under-performing and they are under selling themselves”.

MARTIN SAYS: Compared to my first 20 years of commentating we are certainly seeing more. A win for the Foxes will have more odds than a Chelsea win, but Leicester have been fighting the odds in nearly every game this season. In a run of six games in the space of a month before the advent of January 2016, Leicester will entertain Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City to the King Power Stadium, while also travelling to Swansea and the two Merseyside clubs.

Our friends at Opta can’t tell us how many own goals were scored after 13 rounds of each Premier League season because the fixture list didn’t used to be as regimented as it is now. Before Troy Deeney’s own goal on Saturday afternoon, Manchester United had not scored a winning goal in added time since Boxing Day 2012. It is merely now a question of whether Vardy can maintain his form until next summer and then transfer it onto one of the biggest stages in World football.

To put things even more in perspective: last season Leicester were bottom of the table after 13 games, this time they top it by one point.

The Athens derby between Panathinaikos and league leaders Olympiakos Piraeus was called off before kick-off on Saturday following violent scenes with flares thrown on to the pitch. At what point do you start saying they’re contenders for a top-four place?

Manchester City and Arsenal are still tied with 26 points each after both teams suffered embarrassing losses – they have paid the price for it and are now third and fourth in the table respectively.