Football's Game of Thrones: How the Premier League got even more epic

The cast list has grown more glamorous. The A-Listers are being introduced: Paul Pogba on the pitch, Antonio Conte and Pep Guardiola in the dugouts. Jurgen Klopp has been promoted from a supporting character who was introduced midway through the last season to the role of a protagonist. Jose Mourinho, the villain who met an untimely, hubristic demise a few months ago, has been revived, reintroduced and reinvigorated.

As producers of any hit show know, you can’t kill off someone as compellingly Machiavellian, equipped with dark good looks, a memorable turn of phrase and a capacity to come out on top, as Mourinho.

The Premier League is an epic, a high-class drama and a low-grade soap opera rolled into one. It is a footballing Game of Thrones, where only one king can reign, but it features sporting royalty at competing empires: Mourinho at Manchester United, Guardiola at Manchester City, Conte at Chelsea, Klopp at Liverpool and the longest-running character Arsene Wenger, forever engaged in the longest-running personal plotline.

Theirs threaten to be gripping, perhaps toxic, personal rivalries, particularly given the presence of some of the outspoken, animated figures. Theirs could be heavyweight battles, where seismic forces collide, ones which have been given injections of incision. There has been an expensive upgrade across the board, a recognition that quality was lacking in key places last year. Because the reigning monarch is the man who had seemed the court jester, offering a brand of light entertainment that seemed to provide a distraction from more serious performers. Claudio Ranieri, it transpired, had more substance than most imagined.

But the Premier League’s 24th season featured its most preposterous plot line to date. It proved a surprise ratings winner across the world. Leicester City, the 5000-1 outsiders who were roundly tipped for relegation, made off with the title.

It rendered them the story of last season. And, automatically, one of the stories of this. Because, really, there is no precedent. Nottingham Forest may have been champions in 1978 and European Cup winners in 1979 but, and without diminishing Brian Clough’s achievement, the landscape is very different now.

It poses the question for the scriptwriters: how to script a sequel to the most outlandishly strange narrative? There can be no repeat: the context has changed too much for that. Ranieri has tried to recite his lines from 12 months ago, beginning his tongue-in-cheek rhetoric of targeting 40 points again, but Leicester cannot benefit from a lack of expectation.

The element of surprise may not have disappeared, but it has been diluted. The pressure has grown. They may be at shorter odds to go down than to retain their title, but the spotlight will still shine on them nonetheless.

Details that were only really scrutinised in the east Midlands last autumn – Riyad Mahrez being demoted to the bench, N’Golo Kante starting a game on the left of midfield – might have been condemned as mistakes had the wider world been fixated upon them then. Leicester emerged into the picture later on in the campaign as a fully-formed team, not during their experimental phase. By the time many noticed, Ranieri’s clarity of thought and consistency of selection had become apparent.

Ranieri proved a master of reinvention, Tinkerman turned continuity candidate. Now he will have to revisit his earlier identity. Leicester’s Champions League commitments mean the methods that worked so well last season and the advantages they possessed, playing fit, fresh, unchanged teams every week, will have to be jettisoned. It is a staple of drama to pit the same characters into different situations. Leicester are a case in point. They spent pre-season in 2015 facing Lincoln City, Mansfield Town, Burton Albion and Rotherham United. In 2016, they faced Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona and Manchester United.

The dynamic is different, with Leicester stripped of Kante, with Ranieri given the task of integrating arrivals. The chemistry may not be the same. The opposition should be wiser. Too many were too slow to adapt to Leicester’s style of play last season. Too many pushed up to the half-way line, leaving room for Jamie Vardy to accelerate into it.

Most significantly, the competition should be greater. Leicester claimed the title with 81 points, the second-lowest winning tally in the 21st century. They were convincing champions, 10 points clear of anyone else, but it was the first time in the era of three points for a win that none of United, Liverpool or Arsenal reached 72 points. Neither, for that matter, did City or Chelsea.

With their respective failings, the superpowers created a void at the top of the table. The temptation is to say Leicester stepped into it. It may be more accurate to say Vardy sprinted into it, following by the dogged Shinji Okazaki, the darting Mahrez and the indefatigable Kante.

Now the empires should strike back, and not merely because both Manchester clubs have spent in excess of £100 million. Indeed, United spent a world record sum on Pogba alone. Mourinho’s first Chelsea team won the Premier League with 95 points. Guardiola’s Bayern Munich retained the Bundesliga last season with 88, meaning they dropped just 14. Conte’s last Juventus side claimed 102 in Serie A.

They are the three perfectionists. Even if Leicester repeat last season’s haul of 81 – an astonishing 40-point improvement in the space of 12 months – they could be distanced. After the triumph of the underdogs, this season is set up for the return of the top dogs. After what became, in ludicrously wonderful fashion, one of the least competitive Premier League campaigns, this may be the most fiercely contested.