Wes Morgan, Robert Huth and resisting the evolution of the centre-back art

The ultimate accolade for Wes Morgan came a few weeks ago. “It is almost certainly too late for him to make England’s Euro 2016 squad but I do not think he would let anyone down given the chance,” said Harry Redknapp. As many were quick to point out, Jamaica, who had capped the centre-back 25 times, may feel slightly let down that the defender had defected to the country of his birth.

Perhaps it was a throwaway remark but the man who is set to lift the Premier League title has long been on Redknapp’s radar. In what felt an unhelpful intervention, his son Jamie revealed in his Daily Mail column: “My dad sent scouts to watch him loads of times. While they told him Morgan was good, they weren’t sure how he would cope against quick players, or if he was mobile enough for the top flight.” Unlike, presumably, the centre-backs who excelled for Redknapp senior in the two seasons when he was culpable for QPR’s relegations from the Premier League.

Just as few predicted Leicester’s startling success, Morgan’s emergence as one of the division’s most admired defenders has come as a surprise. So, too, that of his sidekick. Robert Huth was Stoke’s fifth-choice centre-back, playing three minutes of league football in his final eight months at the Britannia Stadium before joining Leicester. Now ‘the Berlin Wall’ and the Nottingham Rock are twin icons of defiance, colossal figures who have provided the ballast to underpin the most unlikely title win of all.

Leicester’s surge began with a flurry of goals. Their position has been cemented by a series of clean sheets. The statistics underline the effectiveness of their centre-back partnership. They have only conceded four league goals since Boxing Day when they have had 11 men on the pitch, and Huth and Morgan have scored as many themselves. They have only trailed for 19 minutes with a full complement of players.

They have been paragons of reliability, pillars of strength who ensured Leicester have not buckled under the pressure of the run in. They have kept six clean sheets in their last seven games. Even if Tottenham secure maximum points from now on, Leicester need not win again. Three more clean sheets would make them champions.

It is a scenario borrowed from fiction but Huth and Morgan are the Life On Mars centre-back duo, seemingly plucked from the 1970s, when defenders were defenders, rugged, ruthless stoppers who cared not for footballing niceties. They are the Gene Hunts of the football field. Their methods have fallen out of favour as penalty-box push-and-shove has been outlawed, but they still work. They have approached the centre-back’s identity crisis with a bloody-minded disregard for recent developments. They have reversed time, going back to an era before their counterparts became confused because false nines left them with no one to mark.

They have struck a blow for the defensive dinosaurs. As football evolves, some threatened to become extinct. The old-fashioned centre-back was an endangered species, certainly at the elite level. His skills were not valued by some of the game’s most influential thinkers. They wanted constructive players, not destructive. Consider the array of midfielders and full-backs Pep Guardiola has preferred to pick in the middle of his defence to actual specialists: Yaya Toure, Javier Mascherano, Javi Martinez, Xabi Alonso, David Alaba.

They were footballers first, defenders second. No wonder the centre-back’s job became more complicated in world where their job description broadened and too many became jacks of many a trade but masters of none, neither as assured in possession as midfielders or as defensively sound as their predecessors. They have been neither one thing nor another.

Not Huth and Morgan. ‘Thou shalt not pass’ seems their motto. They are not playmakers at the back; crucially, they are not expected to be. Claudio Ranieri has simplified life for them. He has given them licence to be themselves. Because Leicester have defended deep, their lack of pace has not been an issue. Because their full-backs have actually been defensive first and foremost, they have not been dragged out of position to the flanks to cover for ersatz attackers. Because they have twin defensive midfielders, they are not drawn forward to win the ball because their team-mates cannot. Their tasks have been straightforward: head, tackle, block, intercept, mark.

They have done all with great relish. Leicester look the best drilled defence in the division. They are built on solid foundations. It is why they are set to succeed where more gifted and garlanded teams have failed. At 31 and 32 respectively, Huth and Morgan are gnarly old pros who, rather than being rendered obsolete, are set to become champions. Redknapp’s scouts were right about one aspect of Morgan’s speed. His has been a slow-burner of a career. But, at Old Trafford on Sunday, he could become the first man ever to captain Leicester to the title. It is a far greater achievement than any England call-up could be.