It was no surprise to discover that players from Leicester City, the Premier League champions in waiting, made up 50 per cent of the PFA Player of the Year nominations announced last week.
Riyad Mahrez is favourite to scoop the award, the Algerian winger involved directly in 27 of Leicester’s 59 goals – 16 goals and 11 assists – in 2015/16.
A good portion of those assists have been supplied for striker Jamie Vardy, whose red card in the nail-biting 2-2 draw against West Ham United on Sunday somewhat overshadowed the England international's 22nd league goal of the campaign to keep him firmly in the hunt for this season's Golden Boot as the Premier League's most prolific goal-getter.
See also:
• Richard Jolly: Jamie Vardy earns his villainy, but no hard-luck story for spirited Leicester City this time
• Richard Jolly: Stars have aligned for Leicester City, with Kante, Mahrez and Vardy shining brightest
• Team Talk podcast: Can Tottenham do the double? Or has Mahrez got it won? Breaking down the PFA Player of the Year shortlists - Ep 20
And driving the most improbable of English championship successes is N’Golo Kante, a player his manager Claudi Ranieri confessed he was unsure of parting with £5.6 million (Dh21m) for last summer and now who can realistically expect to command a figure anywhere between five and 10 times that much should any try to pry him away from King Power Stadium.
But as my fellow columnist Richard Jolly has noted in several of his columns, Leicester's is a team in which every first-team member is having the best season of their career.
Here are some of the players who deserve special mention: not so much backingband, more ripped-jeans, bandanna-wearing, tattoo-sporting hell-raising front men:
• Kasper Schmeichel
Tied with Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart on most clean sheets for the season at 14. Andy Carroll’s converted penalty on Sunday was the first time the Dane had conceded a goal in 574 minutes of football. Stands on the cusp of becoming part of the first father-son combo to win a Premier League winner’s medal after his father Peter’s haul of five for Manchester United.
• Robert Huth
The German man mountain’s presence at the heart of defence has helped forge a thou-shalt-not-pass menataily. The only member of the Leicester staff, including his veteran and much-travelled Italian manager, with a league winner’s medal having been part of Chelsea’s squad in 2005 and 2006.
• Wes Morgan
A late bloomer at 32 but Morgan has been a one-man blocking machine this season, with more clearances than any other Premier League defender. Alongside Huth, they dispel the modern myth that centre-backs have to be stylish and comfortable on the ball. A defender’s defender.
• Danny Drinkwater
The 26-year-old midfielder is seminal to Leicester’s game plan: dogged in defence and with the vision and accuracy to release the pace of Vardy and Mahrez into space. Nothing kills a defence like a ball in behind and few minds are as sharp as the player who learnt his education in Manchester United’s youth set-up.
• Shinji Okazaki
Ask any Leicester fan to name the unsung hero of their title march and the Japanese will feature prominently among them. Though a return of five league goals from 29 games is small fry compared to Vardy, the 1.74m former Mainz striker is a constant menace to opposition defences and deceptively good in the air.
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