LEICESTER SHOULD BE ASHAMED
City deserve every bit of bad fortune that may befall them
IT is such a shame that Leicester City have sacked Claudio Ranieri. I am gutted for him. Most of all, I am gutted for the game I love. It absolutely stinks. This is not the game I grew up and fell in love with. It is not the game which brought such incredible highs and a fairytale story for Leicester City and their supporters just eight months ago when they made everyone believe in miracles.
The actions of the Leicester board, and the players – for they have played their part in Ranieri’s exit – prove that the game is just money-orientated now. And it’s sad.
The Leicester owners have said that they consulted with the senior players and they threw the manager under the bus after he, realistically, guided them to heights most never expected to reach and will never reach again.
We are talking about some players who are average Championship players, or average Premier League players at best. They have a Premier League winner’s medal which is the ultimate the majority will achieve in their careers.
And their thanks to the manager who got them there is to play a part in getting him sacked. They have not given him their backing in their discussions with the board and, of course, in their performances.
It can be difficult sometimes to turn performances around for a manager. Peter Reid came to my mind this week when news came through from the King Power Stadium.
We just could not get a result for him in his last weeks at Sunderland, no matter how we tried, and we were all trying desperately for a manager who we loved. After he was sacked, Sunderland struggled under Howard Wilkinson – he went after a few months – and it was too late for Mick McCarthy to rescue us. We were simply in freefall. The timing of Ranieri’s departure seemed strange, coming so soon after Leicester’s Champions League defeat in Seville.
Many people felt that Jamie Vardy’s goal in the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium was going to be the turning point in their season. But it may have just masked the problems within the team.
Yes, it could have been a turning point but it was still not a good performance. The fact is they got away with it against Seville and were fortunate to come away with just the one-goal deficit.
But things can happen overnight in football and change very suddenly. Perhaps the trip to Spain did offer the owners the first real opportunity to open discussions with the players about where they have gone wrong this season. And clearly, they didn’t like the answers from the team.
The message seems to be that the dressing room could not and did not support the manager and had stopped believing in him.
Even the chicken burgers and the pizzas, the rewards which worked so well last season, seemed to have dried up. The players didn’t like that either and even complained to Ranieri a couple of weeks ago.
One person I would keep an eye on is Craig Shakespeare, who looks likely to be in caretaker charge of the Leicester team when Liverpool visit the King Power tomorrow.
Has he contributed to Ranieri’s sacking? He wasn’t really a part of the Italian’s coaching team because he was with Nigel Pearson at Leicester and Hull. I know it’s football, but he could have come out and supported his manager. The fact that he didn’t may have been interpreted by the owners as less than positive.
If he does get the job permanently, looking at how such things have worked in the past, it would add credence to the suggestion that the players, despite their denials, talked to the owners behind the manager’s back, and the owners have listened. That doesn’t reflect well on anybody.
With success comes bigger wages and the Leicester board have certainly backed the players with huge contracts for the likes of Drinkwater, Vardy and Mahrez.
But such massive rewards create a powerful player. With that power comes a voice. But there is also a responsibility to deliver the same levels of performance and the same high standards which won the player that contract in the first place. Quite clearly, they have not reached those levels.
The Leicester City story was incredible – it was like the most ridiculous Roy of the Rovers storyline coming true. Ranieri should have been immune from the sack. Even if the club were relegated, he should have had the opportunity to get them back up. There is still that romantic in me that says he should have been able to write his own story for his future with Leicester, not be treated so shabbily by them.
He didn’t just win the league, but got them into the Champions League knockout stage, too, and all the millions that will bring the club. Nowadays, the immediate reaction after a couple of defeats at any club, is ‘get the manager out, he’s an idiot’. Sometimes, owners and chairmen should step back, evaluate everything and look at the bigger picture, judging the past and the future. Then they might avoid bleak, unfair decisions like this one.
I actually think Ranieri would have struggled to keep Leicester up. It is a real shame he has not had the chance to prove people like me wrong. Like many, I won’t be too upset to see them go now.