A 1-0 lead is a terrifying thing. The team in possession spends the rest of the game in the knowledge that they may be winning, but they’re only one decent long shot or defensive brainfade away from blowing it, while the team in arrears, however badly they may be playing, know exactly the same thing, but in a good way. Vulnerability on one side, hope on the other. A cocktail of potential misery.
Leicester City and the art of the 1-0 win
We investigate what makes 1-0 wins so special: their history, their significance and how Leicester are riding them to an unlikely title.
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Such a game feels incomplete, somehow. The first goal in a game is generally “the opening goal,” that phrase contains within it the implication that more are coming. And as the time ticks away, everybody gets nervous, every ball into the box becomes a fizzing bomb and every corner takes on an aspect of doom. And that despite the fact that every football team in the universe is useless at corners. By way of illustration, here is proof that there is no such thing as a safe one-nil lead. However late you leave getting it.
But once the game is over, and that one-goal margin has evolved from a scoreline into a result, there’s something impressive about it. A one-nil win has an air of efficiency. It is spare, it is lean. However messy and nerve-wracking the performance might have been, history will show that things were taken care of as tidily as possible. A one-nil win is the very definition of “job done.”
Fairy tale-elect Leicester City love a 1-0 win. Saturday's triumph over Southampton was their seventh of the season; more remarkably, it was their fifth in six games. They have six games left in the season to protect their seven-point lead over Tottenham and win the title, but more importantly, they need five more 1-0 victories if they are going to break the record for most 1-0 victories in a title-winning season. (At least, since England moved to three points for a win in 1981-82, which seems as good a point to measure from as any.)
The record is currently held, to nobody’s great surprise, by a José Mourinho-managed side. His first title at Chelsea, in 2004-05, was a masterclass in applied efficiency, and included no fewer than 11 1-0 wins. Four of them came over both halves of Liverpool, home and away, and while we have no evidence that this statistical oddity pleases José Mourinho more than anything else he’s ever achieved in his career in England — pending his attempts to break Pep Guardiola’s spirit next season — we wouldn’t be hugely surprised.
Even if they don’t make it to the mark of 11, however, a title-winning Leicester side will have done well. In terms of 1-0 wins they’ve already outstripped 29 previous three-point title winners, including 10 that had the advantage of a 42-game season. Their seven 1-0 victories puts them level with Arsenal in 1997-98 and Manchester United in 2007-08, and behind only Chelsea 04-05 (11), Manchester United 2008-09 (10) and United again, in 1995-96.
It’s quite tempting to draw a parallel between United’s campaign that season — in which they managed eight 1-0 wins — and Leicester at the moment, because both sides’ seasons were back-loaded with one-goal victories. Leicester have five in their last six games; United picked up five in their last 10. The circumstances, though, could not be more different: United were on the hunt, reeling and then passing in Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle. Those 1-0 wins felt remorseless and implacable. Whereas Leicester’s one-nils, coming as they do from a side on top of the table against all the odds, have something of an air of a side fighting against the immutable laws of the universe. Icarus, desperately trying to get just one more flap out of his wings.
To round out the historical record, we should probably touch on the teams that made their way to the title without needing to rely on the one-nils to get them there. Two sides have won the title with just two 1-0 wins to their name: Chelsea in 2009-10, when Carlo Ancelotti’s entertainers scored 103 goals in 38 games, and Manchester City in 2013-14, when they accrued a mere 102. In an interesting and possibly telling side note from that latter season, Liverpool began their campaign with three 1-0 victories in a row, yet their season didn’t feature a single one after that point as they abandoned the very concept of defending, charged to the top of the table, then slipped. Maybe Brendan Rodgers would have ended the season a champion if his side had known how to close out a 1-0 win here and there. Or maybe they’d have never got anywhere near the top.
It might be tempting to take Leicester's recent run of binary results as demonstrating something negative or even boring about this side; that they've shut down the fun for the sake of the glory. But to do so would be deeply churlish. While Claudio Ranieri would presumably love to win every game 4-0, he's had to change his side's football through the season as the title race went on. By this point, their opponents have noticed that they're actually exceptionally dangerous, which means that Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez are no longer being afforded the space in which to counterattack. As such, the emphasis has fallen on Leicester's defence, which didn't manage to keep a clean sheet until the 10th game of the season, but have kept nine since the turn of the year.
That, as much as anything else, is proof that Ranieri isn’t just managing his team with twinkly smiles and pizza. In essence, he’s solved two problems this season: how to win when nobody takes you seriously (counterattack at pace) and how to keep winning when suddenly everybody has to (defend with great organisation and commitment). And as we approach the end of the season, his side can take comfort in the fact that while one-nil leads might be a pretty troubling things, a seven-point cushion must surely ease the mind.
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