Ranieri Sacked

I agree with a lot of the points you're making. Gino Pozzo has made some good transfer deals (mostly a long time ago), but the club has also made terrible decisions probably due to him being blinded by his experience in Italy, where competition is reduced, cheap defenders are fine, where it makes more sense to renew contracts of older players etc. Recently, decisions seem to have got worse and worse, as influential players have left and our culture has imploded.

However, whilst Leicester generally have spent money incredibly well, it is a bit disingenuous to make too many direct comparisons.

Salaries are often a much bigger risk than transfers, and your total salary spend in your first year in the league was double ours. It's a lot easier to win the competition for cheaper/ free transfers if you're willing to pay them more per week.

Take salary into account and I bet there would be a bit difference in our spend and thus our ability to survive giving a crap player 70k a week.

 

I mean, surely it's typical of literally any news outlet in existence!

 

So what time will the corner flag appear? I'm going for 11am this morning.

 

What an absolutely collosal farking mess this all is. Absolutely no joy in supporting this club anymore

 

The Observer gets ready. Page is already up, but has no content.

 

Can we keep Ranieri but get rid of the rest of the club?

 

Nice to see Claudio has moved on to better things.

 

Why's he still here? Very un Pozzo like.

 

That's why horses' heads aren't involved.

 

As far as I’m aware he isn’t. Was told Saturday and is already back in Italy.

 

I think they want to try and shed this look of quick fire sackings after a defeat. Make it look like we’ve spent a lot of time and effort to get it right this time. New coach is probably already on his way over ready for training tomorrow or Wednesday.

 

I've heard they're still waiting for the tombola drum to come to a complete halt.

 

Gives him further opportunity for inappropriate substitutions.

 

"you ordered Cucho, I give you Sema"

 

Ha. Genius that one Moosey.

 

Haha, make it appear as we gave it some serious thought. Nice.

 

Except at least then you can reject it & get a refund...

 

Who the hell was Mabasher on Talk Sport? quality rant!

 

They were out of my usual yoghurt so he offered me Ken Sema. Terrible substitutions

 

Dammit. Can see that it's already been done

 

I presume we'll never get it, but the actual inside story of Claudio's reign would be fascinating (as would any of our last roughly 12 coaches), primarily because I would just love to know what caused him to abandon the high-energy pressing style he was very clearly implementing and just totally drop it, in favour of passive, lethargic milling about.

It's not even like we turned into Burnley, and the reason he adopted a defensive style was because he'd completed his drilling on the training ground and our defensive unit was suddenly two telepathic banks, ready to interchange and intercept at speed and will. We didn't even turn into an effective defensive team in any way - we weren't putting in block after block, or heading away every single ball that came in - we just stopped making much effort in any area of the pitch, and nothing we did had any coherence. Why on earth did that happen?

I suppose the easiest answer that makes the most sense is 'the players stopped trying', but then, if that was the case, why were they trying up to the West Ham game? Is it just the classic Watford under Pozzo 'players turn up for the 'big' matches against big teams knowing there's no pressure and they'll be lauded for a heroic loss, but cannot be fuccked for the routine ones we could actually, and actually need to, win when the going is tough?

Whatever Claudio's thinking was or wasn't, I'd really love to know.

 

I think to be fair, the West Ham game can/should be written off a little bit as a function of covid challenges, not having any training sessions, lots of players not at match fitness/sharpness etc. But why we continued with that same lethargic style thereafter I don’t know. I really enjoyed the performances against City and Chelsea - there seemed to be a game plan and we never recovered that after the covid outbreak.

 

Burnley played out a 0-0 draw away at Arsenal with similar issues to us. I don’t think we can discount the West Ham game really. Obviously we had setbacks but they didn’t look bothered in that game either and that can’t be blamed on any of the reasons you have put down. No excusing it.

 

I am afreaid the world has moved on .... football, especially in England, is not a game for a 70 year old manager - its a younger persons game with new, fresh ideas, who's a great communicator and motivator that understands the mindset of the modern player and it tactically flexible ...... Ranieri is a lovely guy ,but his time has gone now. We need a young, dynamic, organised manger....... a like we haven't seen since GT - we als oneed a supportive board who will give than manager time to grow, learn and flourish. We need to change our ways at the club, because our approach at boardroom level is also out dated and its not working as it did 5-6 years ago

 

Yes, they were very encouraging and boded well for the coming fixtures. It's baffling that we never saw another performance like those.

Only possibilities seem to be that those performances weren't down to CR (i.e. it was the players doing it in the early stages of his reign, before his instructions started to take effect), CR was responsible for that approach but decided to change for an unknown reason (quite why would be anyone's guess), or the players downed tools.

The last one seems the most likely to me given the Rose rumblings and what was said there, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.

 

Burnley’s issues were not similar. Their training ground was not closed for even one day, never mind two weeks. They had one covid absentee before their game with us was cancelled. I am sure they would have been rusty, but they had almost a full squad (with 19 of their senior players fit) and played an Arsenal side who had played on Thursday.

I just wanted to add that I am quite peeved that Burnley got their game with us off due to lack of players (despite having just the one covid case) and somehow managed to get 9 players back in just five days. Seems a little dodgy to me. Either that or they have the best medical team in the country. That said, depending on who we bring in, it might be good to have the new man in charge for this one.

 

So why did Dyche say they trained twice with only 10 players? I didn’t say they were identical but seems churlish to say they weren’t similar.

 

Dyche did say they had only ten fully fit players at training last Monday but their training ground was never closed and training was never disrupted by Public Health England as we had. I think the closing of a training ground really screws with preparation for both fit players and recovering players so I don’t think it is churlish to describe those situations as dissimilar. Burnley also had hardly any covid cases - only one of their absentees that enabled their game with us to be postponed was linked to covid. In contrast we still had two or three out even by the time we played West Ham and as I understand it had something like 10 cases. So we would have had players rushed back who might not have been fully healthy never mind fully match fit.

Happy to agree to disagree and I am not excusing the performance against West Ham merely attributing the change in style as down to certain constraints faced at the time (ie players’ health and fitness following covid and disruption to preparation) to which the departure from a high energy high pressing style can be attributed.

 

Has this senial **** gone yet?

 

Worth remembering every one of our Covid cases was asymptomatic.

 

Leventhal and The Athletic now saying he’s been sacked.

 

Unfortunately Ranieri is in senial about his current job status

 

Confirmed. Dilly dong goodbye.

 

Dilly Ding, Dilly Gone.

Fair well Ranieri, we were immense against Man Utd and that 5-2 come-back victory away to Everton was history in the making.

Shame it didn’t work out for you, but the shamble’s we’re in, I don’t think there’s any manager that’s out there that could have made it work.

Onto the next unfortunate Manager.