Very Specific Football Question No.8: Is Claudio Ranieri actually an evil genius masquerading as a doddery simpleton?

“I want to pay the players a pizza but my players don’t seem to want a pizza. Maybe they don’t like pizza.”

Not the words of a rambling old chef or a 12-year-old child, but those of an experienced Premier League manager. Wacky quotes are one of the reasons many English football fans have a soft spot for Claudio Ranieri. Another reason is that he has never won a thing in English football, and doesn’t have the aura of a man who ever will. The affable Italian has long borne the manner of a doddery grandparent: good for an amusing quip now and then, but so out of touch that you wouldn’t put him in charge of an electric kettle, let alone a football team. But Leicester did.

Here’s another one of Ranieri’s gems from earlier in the season: "I told my players ‘when you go on the pitch and you hear the song from Kasabian, that means they want warriors’. I want to see them as warriors for the fans. Kasabian are a fantastic rock band from Leicester and I think the guitar man, Serge, is Italian.”

Kasabian? Guitar man? What? Ranieri emitted this babbling nonsense after the Foxes surprised everyone by winning their first match 4-2. The manager’s perceived lack of gravitas has left pundits patiently awaiting Leicester’s inevitable demise ever since. But six games later, the Foxes are still unbeaten and Ranieri is sitting pretty in the top four.

Which begs the conclusion, maybe Ranieri is not so silly after all.

Let’s hear some more quotes about pizza: “I said to the players when we keep a clean sheet I pay for everyone a pizza. Maybe they wait for me to say 'OK, a good dinner instead’. They seem to be waiting until I improve the offer. Maybe a pizza and a hot dog!”

Again, the words of a buffoon. But could it be that Ranieri is playing up to the role? Pizzas, hot dogs, warriors, Serge? It’s hardly the rhetoric that will get his Premier League opponents rattled. It’s why no team has feared facing Leicester this season. Maybe that’s why no one has beaten them either.

It’s been 11 years since Ranieri was ruthlessly dismissed by Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, and in the ensuing decade he has been sacked five more times and won no silverware of note. But if nothing else, the 62-year-old has stubbornly stuck around. He appears to be relishing his unlikely return to the Premier League - following an appointment that was deemed “uninspiring” even by celebrity Leicester fan Gary Lineker - and it’s a league where he may feel he has unfinished business.

The ice-cool Jose Mourinho instantly won successive league titles at Stamford Bridge after replacing Ranieri, using largely the squad he inherited from his bumbling predecessor. Ranieri has waited 11 long, often painful years to meet Mourinho and Chelsea again. In Leicester’s superiority over the Blues so far this season, we may be witnessing the final stages of Ranieri’s masterplan. To avenge Abramovich, to usurp Chelsea, to destroy Mourinho and use the Portuguese’s blood as a condiment for his hot dogs. It gives another of the Italian’s recent zany soundbites a more sinister undertone.

“Jose Mourinho was the first person to send me a message saying, 'Welcome back Claudio’. ‘He’s a nice boy.”

What on the face of it seemed like classic goofy Ranieri could instead be interpreted as a chilling warning. Nice boys finish last, and Ranieri isn’t nice at all: he’s just been pretending.

“I believe in the afterlife,” declared the Leicester manager recently as he revealed that Ghost - with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore - is his favourite film of all time. Against all the odds, Ranieri has achieved Premier League reincarnation. But he’s not Swayze, he’s that psycho who lives on the subway, and he is coming back to haunt those who crossed him in the past.

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