The lessons Liverpool can learn from Leicester City

Leicester City's astonishing Premier League triumph will have given fans of the larger, more traditional title hopefuls pause today.

Penny for the thoughts of those involved with Tottenham Hotspur, who hadn't been involved in a serious title race since 1985, and having spent their Gareth Bale booty and come so close this time round - hey, at least they went down fighting - still haven't added to the two titles they won in 1951 and 1961.

Another bronze centime for Newcastle United, without a league win since 1927, and in serious danger of relegation from this year's Premier League despite a £73m splurge. See also north-east rivals Sunderland, though they've only spent £37m, and their comparatively younger support base at least have fresh memories of that 1936 title.

Everton, a full 12 wins this year behind Leicester, haven't seriously challenged for the league since they last won it in 1987. Arsene Wenger is under absurd pressure as a result of Arsenal's dozen-year drought. Meanwhile Manchester United, whose annual wage bill is £146m higher than Leicester's, are in a three-year hole, and if the way everyone has run out of patience with Louis van Gaal is any guide, it's already feeling like 33 to some.

And of course pity poor Aston Villa, who haven't challenged since the early 1990s and last won the title 35 years ago, their previous one having come 71 years before that. They're heading down to the Championship having - like all of the aforementioned clubs - spent a fair bit chasing their dreams over the years, to little obvious benefit.

Of all English football's grand old clubs, Villa almost certainly have the right to feel the most discombobulated by the way things have panned out this season. Mind you, Liverpool, for very different reasons, might run them close. Not least because last week saw the 18-time title winners symbolically surpass Manchester United's legendary 26-year wait for a league title: it's now 9,495 days and counting since Ronny Rosenthal powered them over the line in 1990, a wait that puts United's fallow period between 1967 and 1993 in the shade.

Liverpool having come so close themselves recently, only to fail at the last hurdle, will exacerbate the pain. The manner of Leicester's victory snaps the stewardship of Brendan Rodgers during that ill-fated 2014 title challenge into sharp focus. Just like Rodgers' side had done two years previously, Leicester did a fair bit of swashbuckling to work themselves into prime position, with expansive victories over Sunderland, Newcastle, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and Manchester City sending them to the top.

Unlike Liverpool, they knew how to hunker down and parlay promise into gold. Once his team were established as league leaders, Claudio Ranieri set his men solid for battle: the wily Foxes registered five 1-0 wins in six games during the run-in. (It's really six in seven if you accept that the 2-0 victory at Sunderland, capped off by a late Jamie Vardy goal, was really another spiritual one-niller.) Even more impressively, they showed the gumption to fight their way back from losing positions in a couple of crucial late matches: Leonardo Ulloa's penalty against West Ham; Wes Morgan's header at Old Trafford. Ranieri had kept his team calm and focused, a stark contrast to Liverpool's heightened implosions against Chelsea and Crystal Palace.

Only Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea have spent more in the last five seasons than Liverpool. The old net-spend argument is usually trotted out at this point, though the achievements of Leicester and Spurs - the latter having turned a profit over the past few seasons - shows it to be the desperate exercise in Titanic deckchair rearrangement it always was. Liverpool have simply not been getting bang for their buck. Time for a new approach.

Fortunately for the club, they now have a manager who seems to understand this: "Money is only one part of success, the rest is work." Jurgen Klopp's mantra may be informing his recent decisions regarding Daniel Sturridge. No matter who you are, you can't win a title without a reliable goalscorer: Jamie Vardy has proved this with 22 goals for Leicester this season, as did Peter Withe and Tony Woodcock with 12 and 11 respectively for Nottingham Forest in 1978, and Ipswich Town's Ray Crawford with 33 in 1962. Daniel Sturridge, with 43 Premier League goals in 68 appearances, delivers the sort of figures you need.

But if Leicester's wonder story teaches us anything - like the triumphs of Forest and Ipswich beforehand - you need a firm team ethic too. All three of English football's biggest fairytales were told by teams whose whole was worth more than its constituent parts. If Sturridge can't tailor his efforts to Klopp's high-pressing requirements, or is unwilling to spend time on the bench as part of a horses-for-courses rotational policy alongside more willing runners such as Divock Origi and Danny Ings, then there may be trouble ahead.

Because big-money star names help, but they aren't the be-all and end-all. And if a team-first policy was good enough for Alf Ramsey, Brian Clough and English football's newest champion manager Claudio Ranieri, you can be sure it'll be good enough for the wily Klopp too.