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Guillem Balague: Ranieri didn't trust his Champions and it cost him his job
Leicester are back, and back with a vengeance.
Their 3-1 demolition of Jurgen Klopp’s luck-lustre Liverpool side divided opinion as it was always going to do.
It was always going to be a much more complicated matter than merely the cliched game of two halves.
This was, as football so often is, about heroes and villains. Wearing the white hat and represented in the crowd by an assortment of banners and people wearing his cut out mask over their faces was the saintly Claudio Ranieri.
The reaction of the crowd was understandable because, putting aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of Claudio’s dismissal, what is beyond doubt is the fact that it was handled absolutely appallingly, to the point where it is difficult to imagine how it could have been handled worse.
Bearing in mind the coach masterminded the single biggest shock in the history of the Premier League, and probably in the whole of elite football anywhere in the world, there must surely have been something more that Leicester City could have done to soften the blow, something they could have offered, either symbolic or tangible, or both, if they felt the time had come to part company with the Italian.
Not surprisingly therefore, the sacking of Leicester’s very own ‘San Claudio’ was greeted by a combination of disbelief, sadness and indignation. “I think they should be building statues to him, not sacking him,” said Gary Lineker, a man who knows better than most what it is to feel the love of the Leicester fans.
In the other corner sat those perceived by many as the villains of the piece; the players, the bad guys in the black hats; the ingrates, football’s 'Oliver Twists’, taken from rags to riches by a benevolent, bespectacled, benefactor, before reverting to type and biting the hand that had fed them so royally.
Probably for the first time in their lives, this was a Liverpool side cast merely as extras in the cliff-hanging episode of a compulsive soap opera. Their role was to administer the ritual spanking to Leicester City’s bad boys and send them further towards the abyss, while football’s self-satisfied, smug voyeurs watched the denouement before finally proclaiming at the end that, 'justice had been done’ and that 'what goes around, comes around’.
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But as we now know, Leicester’s players hadn’t read the script. What they did know, however, is that no matter what the result, this was always going to be a no win situation for them. Had they lost 5-0, there would have been a chorus of 'serves you right’ from just about everyone including their own fans.
Play as they did and win comprehensively, the immediate accusations would be of a bunch of overpaid, spoilt brats who manipulated the situation to get rid of their leader, for whatever reason, before going back to playing the way everyone knew they could all along.
It’s a wonderful notion apart from one small detail. IT’S WRONG!
There is one golden rule that applies to just about everything, including football, and that is the old adage that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Against Liverpool what we saw was a Leicester that reverted to the style and - with the exception of Onyine Ndidi in for the now departed Kante - the line up that made them such a force last season. All behind the ball and always ready to launch a sharp counter attack.
Perhaps, most significantly, Leonardo Ulloa who had claimed that he had been betrayed by Ranieri and would never play for the Foxes again found himself back in the squad. On the back of their success, Leicester City spent more than £70 million on four major signings and, Ndidi apart, Slimani was the only one of the major additions to make it into the squad, albeit as an unused replacement.
In order to accommodate the new players brought in by Ranieri what was needed was a change of style, a different approach to the old, behind the ball and then up and at 'em on the counter when the opportunity presented itself.
This left Jamie Vardy, so lethal on the counter last season, a mere shadow of the player he was but also failed to make the most of the runs into the area from deep of Shinji Okazaki plus the pace and skill of the previous season’s Premier League player of the year, Riyad Mahrez.
To accommodate new players changes were made to a winning system. Players felt marginalised, undervalued following their monumental achievements and in that moment the die was cast; the dressing room, if not totally lost, was, at the very least, severely split.
The purchase of Islam Slimani represented a huge investment for Leicester City and far and away the clubs record signing. He was never going to come to Leicester merely as a squad player with a role to play and Ranieri was never, not going to play him. Unfortunately the cost to the team of playing their most expensive new asset would prove disastrous. He has managed to score just five goals in 16 appearances with the club, not to mention the division - none of which is personal - that has been caused by his arrival.
The inclusion of Slimani up front with Jamie Vardy provided Leicester with two front men but more importantly, left them one light in the middle of the pitch. It was never a system that would work with a Leicester side that previously didn't two hoots about possession (they have on occasions won matches with as little as 30% possession) as long as they had the wherewithal to undress sides with their counter attacks which exploited Vardy’s red hot pace up front.
Ndidi apart, the eleven that started for Leicester against Liverpool were the same side that competed for Nigel Pearson prior to the arrival of Claudio Ranieri. Effectively what we witnessed was a return to where it had all began.
Much has been made of the loss of Kante to Chelsea and certainly his performances this season with the London club show just how much of a factor he was in Leicester success. But he is certainly not the only reason for the drop in perfomances seen at the King Power stadium this time around.
With new players now in the equation, and the obligation that he felt to play them, Ranieri’s fatal error was to live up to his nickname of the 'tinkerman’, eventually tinkering his way out of a job.
Leicester’s success brought with it what seemed almost like an obligation to go out and spend big money to maintain success. While a replacement for Kante certainly had to be found - and time will show whether Ndidi is the player to fill that role - the reality is that the other players brought in at huge cost have had a negative effect on the club.
The double whammy is that not only have the new signings not improved things on the pitch they have actually contrived to make them worse. More importantly, players who had fought so hard to achieve what Leicester managed last season, that had put in a shift albeit as squad players, had effectively played their part in re-writing the pages of Premier League history, suddenly felt disrespected and marginalised by the club’s new approach which seemed to be telling them, that despite past successes, they were not good enough.
Had some of the players felt that those coming in to replace them were in fact better than they were - and players generally know whether or not that is the case - then they may not have liked it, but they certainly would have accepted it. The problem is that they were genuinely not of that opinion.
In truth, no one really comes out of the whole saga smelling completely of roses although Leicester’s stunning win against Liverpool tells us a number of things.
Firstly that this is a Leicester side that really is too good to go down; secondly that maybe the players, whoever they were, had a point when they expressed their dissatisfaction, and thirdly that, in football as in life, it is never, ever, as simple a matter of right or wrong or black or white.
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