Dump Puel? Don’t be daft

CLAUDE PUEL under pressure at Leicester already? Only if the board have truly taken leave of their senses. The season is one game old — a hard-fought 2-1 defeat away to Manchester United at that — and already there is speculation around Puel’s position. Yet if his hold on the job was so tenuous, why not change in the summer? After Leicester ended the season poorly, there was the chance to break and rebuild. Instead the club backed their manager with more than £100m on seven new players, plus a backroom reshuffle.

By all accounts, assistant Michael Appleton was not greatly impressed by Puel, and the feeling was mutual — so he left and was replaced by Jacques Bonnevay, a 57-year-old French coach who most recently worked in Japan and has largely been out of club football for a decade. He was known, and admired, by Puel though and very much his appointment. Again, why sanction such a specific change if serious doubts remained?

It is not as if Bonnevay would stay if Puel goes.

Leicester’s owners have form if results do not go well and any club who can sack Claudio Ranieri less than a year after the greatest title win in English football history, are no respecters of convention. Even by their standards, though, it would be strange if Puel went so soon. Everything about the summer suggested faith. This would be the earliest apostasy.