The Bookies and Leicester City

How the boys in blue always contrive to defy the bookies....

When I place a bet, I lose money. The second is an inevitable outcome of the first.

As when Joe Kinnear opens his mouth, he awards himself another fake LMA Manager of the Year Award, or a Newcastle player whose name isn't mind-numbingly Anglo-Saxon (i.e. anyone who isn't Steven Taylor) has their name garbled (always slightly strange given Kinnear's Dublin heritage).

These are inevitabilities. Like the setting of the sun or the coming of the tide. They just are. And they always will be.

The second inevitability of gambling is that, whenever I place a bet, I hear the words "You'll never meet a rich gambler" or "The bookies are always right".

Well, it turns out that there's one thing the bookies get wrong. Every single year.

Bookies: Taking money from me, yesterday

For every single year, around this time of June, Leicester City fans begin to endure an existential crisis. The doom-mongers come out in force and the rumours start flying. The Thais are leaving. The money's run out. The party's over and this will be the mother of all hangovers. Kasper's going to Hull. Andy King's going to [insert name here]. Chris Wood has squared up to Big Nige and fled to Magaluf with the lads (he's done neither, of course, as far as I know). We won't make the play-offs next year. Financial Fair Play will cripple us. THE END IS NIGH.

Every year, around this time of June, I ignore the rumours and look at the odds. Since some time in the mid-1920s, every time Leicester City have been in the second tier, if the bookies don't have Leicester as favourites to win the League, they've had us somewhere in the top 4.

So, keep calm and look at the odds. We'll be fine, the bookies are always right and yet again the bookies reckon we've got a fair chance of going well. Even though Reading have added Royston Drenthe to an already capable squad and we've signed the square root of sod all, we're not that far behind them in the odds table.

But why? For the past 10 years, we've had nothing to cheer but two play-off semi-finals. Yet still, with a persistence bordering on delusional, Mr. Hill, Mr. Power, Mr. 365 and pals, all say Leicester are going to do well, every year, without fail. Either they're idiots, or this is their idea of a joke - and they chuckle at themselves as the Leicester faithful duly hand over their money with hope in their eyes and faith in their hearts.

But there's one man who gives me hope. One man who realised that the bookies had, purely for sh*ts and gigs, put his team as favourites to win the Championship and thought "Sod them all, I'll win it anyway." 

That man is Neil Warnock.

Famously, throughout the 2010/11 season, when QPR were winning the Championship at a canter. Warnock was incredulous. "I looked at the odds in the summer and saw they had us to win the League, and I thought I was looking at the thing upside down, to be honest. It's incredible. My team has come together in 13 months. It's incredible how the lads have responded to it."

So, Neil, thanks.

Neil Warnock: delighted

Next time someone tells me Leicester are doomed, I will just look at the odds. And I will think, Neil, if you could defy the bookies' twisted sense of humour, you loveable Yorkshireman, with your incredible eyebrows, then so can Big Nige, with his incredible white trainers.

If the QPR of 2011 could do it with their mix of last-chance salooners (Shaun Derry, Clint Hill) and young firecrackers (Adel Taarabt) then so can we with ours (Wes Morgan / Anthony Knockaert).

If we can't, then the bookies will yet again be wrong. When it comes to Leicester's promotion chances, of course, they always are.

Anthony Knockaert: devastated