RANIERI WAS BRAINS BEHIND TITLE

CLAUDIO RANIERI is a very decent man. He will take no pleasure in events at his former club yesterday. Craig Shakespeare’s dismissal does not vindicate him, or make him a better manager. How could it? Ranieri won the Premier League with Leicester. How could he, or anyone, be a better manager than that? So Ranieri doesn’t need extra credit, but he’s going to get it anyway. He, we now know, was the brains of the operation. Not Shakespeare, not Steve Walsh — whose transfer market insight currently has Everton pegged 16th in the table. When Ranieri was sacked, it was fashionable to decry his achievements, as if the greatest title win in English football history had been pure luck, some happy accident. Worse, the idea Ranieri hadn’t really done much at all was allowed to go unchecked. That he had inherited his team, that he had changed nothing, that Shakespeare was the mastermind and his boss merely a hospitably cheery front of house manager. No doubt Shakespeare — and Walsh — were very good for Ranieri. But Ranieri was even better for them. Somehow, he took a band of largely journeyman players and turned them into a team that won the league by ten points. In doing so, everyone emerged with reputations enhanced. Had Sam Allardyce remained in the England job, Shakespeare would have been coaching England at the 2018 World Cup. Walsh secured a position at Everton that was widely considered a promotion. Riyad Mahrez was players’ Player of the Year. N’Golo Kante moved to Chelsea. Jamie Vardy became an England regular. All on the back of Leicester’s miracle. A few more nods in Ranieri’s direction would not have gone amiss. Instead, when Leicester’s form turned in his absence last season, few defended his honour. It was all very sad. Where is Ranieri now? With Nantes, in Ligue 1. They are fifth, on the same points as Saint-Etienne in third. Last year, they finished seventh; the season before 14th. Maybe Ranieri has lucked out with another member of the backroom brains trust — or perhaps he might be a genuinely gifted coach who would possibly have turned Leicester around last season, given time. Leicester’s owners make Roman Abramovich look an old softy. They sacked Nigel Pearson, who kept them up against all odds. They sacked Ranieri who, as the comedian Mark Steel put it, won the Grand National on a cat. Now they have sacked Shakespeare, eight games into the season. Had Ranieri started with six points from eight matches, he would have gone early. But he didn’t. He won the league instead. If Shakespeare didn’t appreciate what a genius he was then, maybe he does now.