SHAKEDOWN AS CRAIG IS SHOW THE FOXES DOOR
IT is just 17 months since Leicester wrote football’s most fantastic fairytale. But now it is almost as if that wonderful episode never happened. A Champions League adventure last season enabled the believers to cling on to the notion that English football had a new and unexpected member of the elite. However, following two managerial sackings and £175million spent in the transfer market attempting to maintain the magic, the Foxes appear to have resumed their position in the sport’s natural order. Yes, after eight matches and just one victory, they lie 18th in the Premier League. And for ambitious, monied and ruthless owners what they had seen from Craig Shakespeare was not enough to convince them that he was the man to not only arrest that slide, but to turn it into upwards momentum once more. It was strange that the club’s owners, the Srivaddhanaprabha family, took until three weeks after the end of last season to confirm the 53-year-old as Claudio Ranieri’s replacement, despite a successful 16-game audition. Shakespeare agreed a three-year deal and then embarked on a spending spree of £90m. But, just six weeks after the transfer window closed, the likeable Brummie has been axed. In one respect, Shakespeare was a victim of circumstance. How much more successful would his tenure have been if Chelsea had not signed influential midfielder Danny Drinkwater on the final day of August? And Shakespeare never even saw his replacement, Adrien Silva, play as the suits never registered his transfer in time.