PREMIER LEAGUE Ranieri’s sacking is disgusting. This is a sport which thinks nothing of anyone and certainly doesn’t give people time to right wrongs STAN COLLYMORE

IF someone had said to me on Saturday, May 7, 2016 that Claudio Ranieri would be getting sacked in 292 days’ time I’d have laughed them out of town.

Andrea Bocelli had just blasted out a spine-tingling rendition of Nessun Dorma from the centre circle at the King Power Stadium.

Leicester had delivered on the pitch against Everton. And the Premier League trophy had been handed over to Wes Morgan and his manager, to fireworks and fanfare all round.

I interviewed Jamie Vardy and some of his team-mates down on the turf, and the greatest football story told in years reached an end – and gave us all a warm, fuzzy feeling about our game again.

That’s why when Foxes owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha did wield the axe on Thursday it was such a joke.

Although, sadly, the act was symptomatic of the greedy and ill-thought-out nature of the game. It was modern football in a nutshell.

It served as a reminder that ours is a sport which thinks nothing of anyone, no longer thinks long term and certainly does not give people time to right wrongs.

The fact that Ranieri has been sacked is disgusting, absolutely disgusting.

Football is eating itself. And Ranieri’s players should hang their heads for having in the most callow of fashions let down the man who made them Premier League champions.

In May last year, Srivaddhanaprabha was talking about raising the stadium capacity to 43,000, about this being a ‘five-year project’ at the end of which Ranieri would groom the next manager.

Yet like so many words spoken in football, his were ultimately hollow.

I will not pretend I was a massive Ranieri fan before he arrived at Leicester. Or that I foresaw what he would do at my old club.

But his transformation from someone who looked destined always to be the bridesmaid won me over.

He proved he could motivate his players over a 38-game season.

This campaign was always going to be a tougher one, given the added demands that come with defending the title and taking on Champions League football.

He made some good, solid signings last summer in Islam Slimani and Ahmed Musa. The squad is much better now than when he arrived.

But Leicester’s big names, men Ranieri helped to become big names, have let him down.

Only Kasper Schmeichel can come out of the season with any credit for his performances.

I started to worry back in September when I asked Vardy if he’d come on my show, and he said he couldn’t because: “Things are a bit busy with the book”.

If he’d said he was busy with football, that he just wanted to concentrate on the start of the season, I’d have understood, but blaming his autobiography made it sound as if his focus was all off.

But let’s put this into context: this story isn’t just about Leicester players, it’s about all footballers these days.

Eden Hazard tossed it in at Chelsea last year. And that was under Jose Mourinho.

When players start failing it goes one of two ways – “Either we can go or we can put it on to the manager”. Nowadays it’s always the latter.

The only way I can think to stop it is by putting managers on one-year rolling contracts which stipulate they cannot be sacked during the season.

That way players haven’t got all the power.

It might even be an idea to limit players themselves to 12-month deals and tell clubs that they can have a maximum 25-man squad with as many players as they want from their academy, although that’s a debate for another day.

Today, it must still be about Ranieri