The Kante-Gueye conundrum: How are Leicester so good and Villa so bad?

They are separated by about 40 miles. That, and the small matter of 56 points and 19 league places. Aston Villa and Leicester are the local rivals who are opposites, one enduring arguably the worst season in their history, the other enjoying their best. Villa are almost certain to be relegated on Saturday. Leicester could close in on the Premier League crown on Sunday.

Villa appear a prime example of how not to run a football club. Leicester are rightly deemed role models, applauded for their astute business and commended for compiling what seems a title-winning team for a mere £22 million.

Yet what intrigues is the sense a similar strategy has been pursued. These are clubs who, recognising that Premier League players are often prohibitively expensive, looked at the undervalued French market. Last summer, both wanted midfielder Jordan Veretout. He opted for Villa. “It was a good choice,” he claimed as recently as February, and presumably with a straight face, though it looks an extraordinarily bad move.

Last summer, too, both wanted a defensive midfielder. They seemed to study the statistics. Leicester recruited N’Golo Kante, whose 145 tackles for Caen made him much Ligue 1’s most prolific ball-winner. Villa opted for Lille’s Idrissa Gueye, who had proved so adept at regaining possession that, in the previous two seasons, only Lyon’s Maxime Gonalons had a higher figure in the combined chart for successful tackles and interceptions.

Now Kante, who cost £5.6 million, seems a shoo-in for the unofficial award for signing of the season. The pricier Gueye can be called a £9 million flop. And yet the Premier League’s tackling totals are instructive. The all-action Kante, with 105, has won the ball more often than anyone else in the division. His closest challenger? That would be Gueye, with 96. The Villa player, with 4.4 interceptions per game, actually averages more than his Leicester counterpart, on 4.2. No one else in the division gets remotely close to them.

Some may argue it is proof that statistics are largely irrelevant in themselves without greater context, that Kante’s importance lies not in the numbers of interceptions and tackles, but the illustrations of how and when and where and what the consequences were.

Another interpretation is that it highlights the wretchedness of the rest of the Villa team. Perhaps, contrary to the perception that everyone has underperformed at Villa Park this season, the athletic Gueye has been an exception. Perhaps their player-of-the-year contest should not have been abandoned in ignominy and he should have been anointed. No matter how often Gueye – or Gana, as he styles himself on the back of his shirt – wins the ball back, they contrived to lose it again, conceding goals at one end and failing to score them at another.

But results mean Villa, who spent £52m on summer signings and have amassed a mere 16 points, could be deemed an example of analytics, or Moneyball, gone horribly wrong. After all, the man who made the fourth most tackles in Ligue 1 in 2014-15 was Jordan Amavi, the left-back Villa signed. Jordan Ayew had the second highest number of shots. Villa bought him, too. Veretout figured fourth in the list of chances created. Villa studied the spreadsheets, consulted the data and acted accordingly. Around £33m – or more than the club record sum Villa recouped for Christian Benteke – was committed to arrivals from France. There is certainly a case for saying Villa erred by importing all at the same time, especially while lacking a distinct style of play that suited any.

It may be deemed a catastrophic failure, whether of strategy, of player identification or of implementation or all three, not least because Newcastle, who also raid Ligue 1 enthusiastically, are 19th and Villa 20th. Yet Leicester are top, having unearthed Kante and Riyad Mahrez in France. Both have been shortlisted for the PFA Player of the Year award. Sir Alex Ferguson has declared that Kante would be a worthy winner. Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain have been credited with an interest in buying him.

Yet is Kante simply a superb player, or one who is perfect for the role he has been given in a Leicester team who do not try to dominate possession, but wanted someone who could slot in within a structure to regain the ball and give it simply to better technicians? After all, he plays fewer passes per game than Gueye, finding colleagues with a lesser percentage. So, if they exchanged employers, would the Senegalese be lauded now if he was producing similar numbers in the Leicester midfield and the Frenchman castigated if Villa looked similarly doomed despite his presence?

It may take a second season to determine is if Kante is simply a far better player or one in a vastly superior situation. Virtually everything has gone right at Leicester, almost everything wrong at Villa; these feel tales of triumph and disaster where individuals have been caught up in something bigger. Leicester are rightly lauded for the successes of their scouting system. Certainly it feels as though they pursuing specific players with defined attributes to fill specific voids, whereas it is harder to identify evidence of such targeted recruitment at Villa.

Yet it is worth remembering Leicester bought Gokhan Inler in part because they were considering continuing playing the 3-5-2 formation that enabled them to escape relegation last spring. Instead, the Swiss was sidelined as the more energetic Kante and Danny Drinkwater became masters of efficiency in their counter-attacking 4-4-2. Chance, circumstances, adaptability, planning, players performing better than expected: everything is a factor. So, too, is the chaos at Villa Park.

Almost everyone involved – two managers, one chief executive and sporting director, Hendrik Almstadt – has paid with their jobs. Given the scale of the clearout, it feels a surprise that head of recruitment Paddy Reilly has not yet. If he does, Gueye and co will be cited as reasons.

Leicester have certainly displayed clearer thinking and benefited from better management as Claudio Ranieri adjusted his gameplan to suit the players at his disposal, the hyperactive Kante included. His charges have showed chemistry and gelled perfectly whereas it is an understatement to say that Villa’s have not. Yet it is startling that clubs whose transfer-market blueprints showed such similarities could veer in such wildly different directions.