Leicester City Fan View: It's sad to see Claudio Ranieri go - but most Foxes fans won't be criticising owners

In the past four days, Leicester City must have been written and spoken about almost as much as when we won the Premier League. The mood’s very different though and modern media ensures that everybody from professional pundits to those who don’t even really watch football have had their opportunity to play judge, jury and executioner on the club.

The verdict for sacking Claudio Ranieri? Overwhelmingly we’ve been branded guilty of being a disgrace. Many have wished us to be relegated. A little funny considering this effort was made with, what I believe were some heavy hearts, to try and save us from relegation. Only time will really tell if it was the right call and even then we’ll never truly know if he could have saved us. It was pretty much the only call left to make at a club where virtually everything has been going wrong this year though.

What’s been worse are the patronising approaches that are all too common. Those who believe we should have tolerated the current level of performances and relegation dogfight because ‘this is our level’. That we should have kept Ranieri, even if that meant going down, because we overachieved last season. Silly old little Leicester City, daring to want to aim for more. Yes, in previous years we have been a yo-yo team and had to battle, but is it a crime to have ambitions to build on that?

Ninety-second of all the clubs in England for 2017 form and on the verge of slipping into the bottom three, no league goals since January 1st. For the majority of Foxes fans, we may be deeply saddened to have to sever ties with Ranieri, but we knew it was inevitable. Where players don’t perform and change just isn’t happening, well that’s football. The hard truth is, sentimentality is something we can afford to have more as supporters, but not so much from a business point of view. It’s why you won’t find many in the Leicester camp criticising our owners; even if again, general opinion isn’t so generous towards them right now.

This doesn’t feel so much like the early misstep our owners made when they first came in by getting rid of Nigel Pearson to bring in Paulo Sousa and then moving onto Sven Goran Eriksson. No, this is a decision that probably should have been made earlier if it was going to be done at all, that would have saved the contradiction of releasing a statement of unwavering support that’s a harder point to swallow. Ranieri’s achievements likely earned him longer than most as with only thirteen games to go, it feels like a last roll of the dice to try and save us. They deserve the benefit of the doubt too, having made the right gambles in the previous two years.

We know where we’d most likely be had Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and his group not bought the club. It’s something not really worth contemplating. Look at the list of other clubs whose owners treat them more like playthings and then consider ours again before jumping to criticise them. Ignore the nice to have gimmicks of free beer, t-shirt, donuts and what not, it runs deeper than that. Since 2010 they’ve helped us clear our debt, get the ground back under our ownership, improve training and youth facilities, pumped a fair bit of money into the transfer kitty and most of all, treat us as supporters with more respect than we’ve known from any previous owner. They’ve also invested in the local area too, large donations to charities and hospitals.

None of us will forget what Claudio Ranieri helped our side deliver last year, he’ll remain in our history and for being such a gentleman throughout, he’s won over so many who only eighteen months ago had less generous things to say of the Italian. It’s sad it had to come to this but I’m sure we’ll honour him. Whether that be a chant or two to remember him against Liverpool, or even a statue, there’s already a campaign to get the money to erect one. The one thing we don’t have as a club, is the luxury of time to dwell on the decision.

Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool side come to the King Power stadium and our thirteen match run to save ourselves begins. It’ll be assistant manager Craig Shakespeare who’s stepping up to take charge of the side until a new manager is appointed. Having been in and around the club pretty much since 2010 himself, he knows it well and it’ll be interesting to see what side is named and what performance is given. Should a much improved performance be shown by our players, many of whom have now publicly acknowledged their part in not performing to the levels they know they can, may be further vilified by the media. Hopefully not by our own fans though. Small factions appear to think booing and jeering them is the solution. It’s certainly not and it wouldn’t help things. We’ll likely never know the full truth but we need these players to get us out of the mess they’ve helped put us in.

We’ve been in this position before. More players and managers will come and go, it’s the club we truly support though and we need to get behind all involved again to give ourselves a fighting chance.