Is this the most heinous act a manager can commit?
Claud nine
‘How could these snakes betray Ranieri, the man who delivered a miracle?’
That is the sub-headline to Martin Samuel’s column in the Daily Mail, and his outrage over Claudio Ranieri’s sacking at Leicester is palpable.
‘It is hard to imagine a more pathetic, dispiriting, thoroughly depressing decision has ever been made.’
Really? Honestly? We don’t know where to begin. So we won’t.
‘They were snakes, claiming to support Ranieri only to betray him now – midway through a Champions League tie in which the spirit of last season was forcibly evoked, some may say for the first time this season.
‘Yes, Leicester lost. But by scoring an away goal against a superior Sevilla side, a 2-1 defeat almost felt like victory.’
It also almost felt like a third consecutive defeat, and the latest match in a 15-game run in which they have won just three times. Four times, if you count the 2-1 loss to Sevilla, of course.
‘Ranieri was never afforded the respect he deserves. Not by his players, who drenched him in public as he was about to speak to the world’s media…’
Oh good, this again. We covered that whole thing way back in May. Nothing has changed. Except he’s now lost his job so we can drag it up again because it’s not completely irrelevant whatsoever. No siree.
‘It should have been Ranieri who was given the chance to complete this epic journey, whether it ended in safety or relegation to the Championship.’
It is a lovely thought, and it is a massive shame he was sacked in such circumstances, but Leicester are 17th in the Premier League table, one point above the bottom three. You can see why the owners have acted.
‘Imagine what their fans would have considered Ranieri’s due before this happened. What loyalty they would have considered sufficient for a man who could deliver the Premier League title and then a Champions League run. Five years? Ten? A lifetime?’
Prepare to be stunned, Martin, as many Leicester fans actually believe the owners made the right call, even if they do express immense guilt at Ranieri’s fate. The same fans would likely have welcomed the Italian signing a life-long deal in the summer, but circumstances change. His team selections have often baffled, his tactics have failed and, by all accounts, he no longer had the support of the players. Should the owners have stood by and watched their team slip to relegation, all while smiling and remembering last May? That’s really not how this works.
Mail order
Jamie Redknapp also weighs in on the issue in the Daily Mail.
‘It is disgusting what Leicester have done in sacking Claudio Ranieri.’
Unforgiving? Sure. Ruthless? Certainly. But it is difficult to describe sacking a manager who is in 17th place, who has reportedly lost the dressing room, who is making questionable decisions and who spent £30million on Islam Slimani as ‘disgusting’.
Mediawatch agrees that Ranieri ‘has been let down badly by his players,’ and that ‘player power had a big say in his departure,’ but this is nothing new. The whole playing squad can hardly be sacked.
Soul man
Ian Herbert of The Independent is by no means the only individual to describe Ranieri’s demise as ‘how football has lost touch with its soul’, but it did catch Mediawatch’s eye. After everything that has happened in the sport over the past year, a man in a relegation battle being sacked is the nadir?
Get low
The award for hottest take must go to John Richardson, however. Bravo.
Football has sunk to its lowest level with the sacking of Claudio Ranieri. Taken away some of the gloss off last season's fairytale.
— John Richardson (@riccosrant) February 23, 2017
Racism. Match-fixing. Terrible club owners. And that’s before even mentioning the harrowing revelations put forward by the likes of Andy Woodward recently.
Heck, it might not even be the lowest level at Leicester over the past two years. Why was Ranieri’s predecessor sacked again?
Important information of the day
Writes John Cross in the Daily Mirror:
‘The former Chelsea boss has invested so much in the club that he even has Leicester’s club initials on a personalised number plate on his Bentley convertible.’
Heinous
With a byline like ‘Britain’s best Sports Writer’, you truly do expect something special from Andy Dunn each week. Quite who bestowed such a tag upon the Daily Mirror journalist is beyond us. They probably didn’t read his offerings from Friday.
You see, Dunn believes that the FA ‘should have laughed at Sutton’s Wayne Shaw’ for his pie-eating banter. As he writes: ‘That they gave his tawdry stunt the oxygen of publicity by ‘investigating it sums them up. Clueless at times.’
The FA can be criticised for a whole world of different things, but for investigating an incident which breached their own regulations? ‘Clueless’. Sure.
Dunn goes on to describe the situation as a ‘stupid stunt’ and a ‘gimmick’, but he soon turns his attention to far more important matters than the inherent dangers of betting in football: Arsene Wenger.
‘It was a good moment for the FA to bury bad news. At a similar time as the FA’s investigation into Shaw’s prattish antics was announced, the written reasons for Wenger’s pathetic four-match technical area ban were released.
‘He had told match officials to “f**k off”, accused one of being dishonest and shoved the same person. Twice.’
Dunn then asks one of the great questions of our times:
‘Is there a more heinous thing for a manager to do than to accuse an official of being “dishonest”?’
Yes.
‘Wenger and his lawyers managed to weasel their way out of a stadium suspension by, among other things, apologising, citing the misdemeanours of other managers and saying the shoves were the instinctive reaction of feeling his personal space was being invaded. Shameful, just shameful.’
This can be roughly translated to: ‘Wenger fairly argued that he acted out of order, but apologised and showed remorse and, over a 21-year spell as Arsenal manager, has had relatively few issues with the authorities, particularly in comparison to some of his fellow managers.’
Dunn continues:
‘Repeat. He accused an official of being “dishonest”.’
Why the f*** has he not been arrested yet?
‘Wenger questioned the integrity of a man who earns less in a year than he does in a week.’
Ah, but of course. Not content with conflating two completely separate issues in Shaw and Wenger, Dunn resorts to the age-old money argument. How can you possibly bring yourself to criticise someone if you earn considerably more than them?
A reminder that this comes from Dunn, who presumably earns a little more than the recently unemployed Wayne Shaw, who he describes as ‘prattish’, ‘tawdry’, and ‘silly’.
‘Britain’s best Sports Writer’ ends with a flourish, stating that Wenger ‘got off lightly for calling an official “dishonest”‘. Mediawatch is now trembling with rage; we had almost forgotten how ‘heinous’ the Frenchman’s act was.
Into the Woods
Fresh from tipping Sean Dyche for the Arsenal job last week, David Woods is back again in the Daily Star. This time, he has words of praise for some bloke called Jose Mourinho.
‘Jose Mourinho looks like he’s on a crusade to embarrass his fellow managers by proving his stars can regularly play more than once a week.
‘The Manchester United boss is sending out ‘four-midable’ teams each and every match as he bids for success on all fronts.
‘He has shown up a number of managers who have opted to treat the FA Cup lightly by fielding weakened sides.
‘Most notably Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp, Burnley’s Sean Dyche and Claudio Ranieri at Leicester, who were all knocked out early.
‘Pep Guardiola and Manchester City also paid the price at Huddersfield last Saturday, landing themselves a replay next week they don’t need.’
Firstly, since when was the fifth round of the FA Cup ‘early’? Not to defend Burnley or Leicester, but Manchester United have advanced just one round further at this stage. And they face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the quarter-finals.
Also, would that be the same Jose Mourinho who had to bring on Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba as second-half substitutes in order to beat Blackburn? Was that not a ‘weakened side’ that were drawing with Championship Blackburn until the 75th minute?
United made eight changes to their starting line-up for that FA Cup tie. Leicester did make ten changes as they lost to Millwall, but Manchester City made eight and Burnley made only six. It’s almost as if Mourinho isn’t doing a great deal different to his rivals
Like rain on your wedding day
2017 is 2017, and so Swansea manager Paul Clement was asked about Sutton reserve goalkeeper Wayne Shaw eating a pie during a match against Arsenal. His reply?
“I thought it was quite funny. The pasty looked a bit dry – it needed a bit of brown sauce. It is just a prank that got a little bit out of hand.”
One of the many definitions of a ‘prank’ is:
‘a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion or discomfort’
Only one outlet features Clement’s quotes defending Shaw; we cannot find them anywhere on the internet. The 45-year-old keeper has most certainly ‘experienced embarrassment’ as part of this ‘mischievous trick’, and The Sun continue to bleed the matter dry.
Ask a simple question
Asks Neil Custis in The Sun:
‘The fact Wayne Rooney put out a statement yesterday told you something was up.
‘If there was no question of him going to China, then what was the need?’
Because people kept on saying he was going to China.
Recommended reading of the day
Darren Lewis on Claudio Ranieri.
Dan Kilpatrick on Tottenham’s European struggles.
David Hytner on Manolo Gabbiadini.