Reaction to Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester City sacking last month was one of widespread disgust, but two wins later and the decision has already been vindicated.
The Foxes had lost five Premier League games on the trot and hadn’t scored a single goal in 2017. That was until Craig Shakespeare took over and led the club to two successive 3-1 wins at home to both Liverpool and Hull City.
They have since gone from being one point above the relegation zone with 13 games remaining to three points clear with 11 games to go, and although they aren’t out of the woods yet, they have definitely got their swagger back.
Amazingly, they are also just one goal away from getting into the quarter-finals of the Uefa Champions League.
Having lost 2-1 away, they now carry an all-important away goal into Tuesday’s return leg at home, and you wouldn’t bet against them getting a result in front of their own fans.
What a difference two weeks make in football.
This transformation just proves that sacking Ranieri was the right thing to do, because although he deserved a knighthood for what he achieved by winning the league with perennial strugglers Leicester last season, that was last season.
You can’t afford to get too sentimental in football, even if just nine months earlier he had performed miracles. This season there was clearly something wrong with the motivation of his players.
Either, as rumoured, he had lost the dressing room, and player power had forced him out — a charge that has been vehemently denied by the players. Or, the players had been shamed into a reaction after failing to perform for the popular Italian.
Whichever it is, Ranieri going was the unfortunate jolt they needed to put the spark back in their season, because after all, sacking one man is easier than sacking the whole team.
Shakespeare was the sensible choice to promote because he has experienced relegation dogfights with Leicester as an assistant over two spells dating back to 2008. And he was integral to last year’s title winning season, so he knows the players and knows the issues at stake, and whatever they are, he is doing well to quickly readdress them.
With the exception of Arsenal and Manchester City, Leicester now have a run of winnable league games and should comfortably ensure survival. If they beat Sevilla, as well, they could also find themselves in a dream quarter-final draw, outlasting the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham in Europe. So, there’s lot for fans to look forward to.
Leicester’s owners therefore shouldn’t be too dissuaded, and Ranieri-backers can’t be too vocal about the injustice of his sacking, because at the end of the day it was a necessary evil.
Looking at it objectively, no coach can survive five defeats in a row without a goal in six, especially after they won the league last season and had barely changed the squad in the summer. If anything it’s a justified blot in Ranieri’s copybook.
