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When Chelsea come up against Leicester this Saturday, it will be a haunting echo of history. Their first clash last season sent the two clubs on diametrically opposed trajectories, with Leicester hurtling to the top of the league and their opponents sinking to the cusp of the relegation zone. Barely 72 hours after that fateful December day, Jose Mourinho was secreted out of Chelsea's Cobham training ground, hounded all the way by the baying press pack and disorientated by the snaps and flashes of a thousand glaring camera lenses. He had been sacked as Chelsea manager, and Claudio Ranieri had delivered the fatal blow.The cosmic balance of all this was quite exquisite, to the extent that it all felt rather unreal. Mourinho had, of course, succeeded Ranieri ahead of his glittering first stint as Chelsea boss, with many feeling that his Italian counterpart had been treated with a measure of ingratitude by the club. While the young Mourinho's messianic influence doubtlessly justified the decision on a practical level, there was a lingering sense that a wrong had been done which had, by command of the universe, to be righted. Whether through karmic influences or the ancient forces of hubris and nemesis, the situation came full circle. Ranieri was the man to topple Mourinho, and so the metaphorical snake came to devour its own tail.What happened after that feels similarly implausible, and remarkably distant considering that it was only a matter of months ago. Leicester's title win seems like a hazy dream sequence, a surreal fantasy which happened at some indeterminate time in an imagined past. In the clouded ether of our subconscious, we can see Wes Morgan lifting the Premier League trophy, and an open-top bus parade featuring Marc Albrighton, and Jamie Vardy calling his own doppelganger "a full-kit wanker" while brandishing a bottle of cheap lager beer. Claudio Ranieri is calling to us, shouting "dilly-ding, dilly-dong!" in an attempt to wake us from our absurdist stupor. But we cannot awake, we cannot open our eyes and, Christ, reality and illusion have become one and the same.It seems somewhat comforting, then, that the status quo has been restored this season. Chelsea are seventh, Leicester are 12th, and some sense of normality has returned to the world. Saturday's game will probably end in a routine victory for Chelsea, who will go on to finish in or around the top four come summer. Meanwhile, Leicester are back to their middling selves. Well, apart from the fact that their subsequent fixture is a chance for a third-straight win in the Champions League.
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