In Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare wrote about betrayal in high places. He told us how Marcus Brutus, a close ally of General Julius Caesar’s conspired with others of like mind to stab Caesar, literally, in the back.
Thousands of years later, the legendary writer’s namesake, a certain Craig Shakespeare, allegedly planned his own stabbing in the back. As you well know, Claudio Ranieri achieved the seemingly impossible by winning the premiership with a team assembled on less than what Arsenal paid for Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil.
He, our man Ranieri, used a simple strategy to get this miracle. He got his team playing defensively, N’Golo Kante and Danny Drinkwater protecting the back four. Then Kasper Schmeichel, the goalkeeper, or any other player from the defence kicking the ball towards Riyad Mahrez in midfield who then took advantage of Jamie Vardy’s pace to feed him a killer pass and it is a goal. While it will be untrue and unfair to conclude all Leicester City FC goals under Ranieri came via the famed route one, it is clear that majority of them did and the rest came through the anticipation of and the urge to prevent the router. The strategy was simple but it proved to be genius. Leicester won the league.
Ranieri, formerly known to English fans as the dead man walking, going back to his days as Chelsea manager , felt he was lucky he got away with the previous strategy and he knew other clubs would have had the summer break and pre-season to work on how to nullify the kick and follow tactics . He then introduced or tried to introduce, a new style of play to catch the chasing pack unawares once again.
However, Ranieri did not put to account the newly found status of his players. Once, they were hungry and unknown. Now, they are premiership winners and players with double or triple salaries. The owners felt they had world class players in the squad and it was their time to dominate not only English football but also European football. In their minds, they were the new Real Madrid or Barcelona. The players also felt same way. Jamie Vardy reportedly rejected a move to Arsenal because he was expecting a call from bigger clubs like Barcelona, Madrid or Munich.
So with players having unrealistic opinions of themselves. With club owners having unrealistic and false opinions about their players, it became difficult for Ranieri to get his players to buy into his new strategy, especially because it involved them having to put in more efforts and graft. They saw themselves as superstars who only had to get on the pitch, do what they did In the previous season where they were 5000 to 1 to win the Premiership and, as usual, dominate the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea.
They found a willing ally in Craig Shakespeare and stories that Craig was the brain behind the previous success began to surface. Senior players like club captain Wes Morgan, goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, striker Jamie Vardy and midfielder Marc Albrighton started clandestine meetings with the Thai owners of the club, with the alleged support of Craig Shakespeare. The owners believed the hype, they believed the players and erroneously sacked the manager who brought them the greatest success in their history.
At first, results under Craig went with the script. Leicester won their next few games and all righteousness seemed fulfilled. So all the cries from Ranieri that he had been stitched up fell on deaf ears. Ranieri went or record to say he was betrayed by someone behind him. He said he spoke to the person face to face as that was his style. He may not have mentioned the person’ name but almost everyone knew who it was. However, as it always does, reality seeped through and it became clear that Shakespeare is not the super star manager he and the lazy players painted him to be. He is simply a talented coach, a second in command and not a man capable of being a manager of a club that can be a regular feature in the premier league top four, not to talk of winning the league. No disrespect intended, but Leicester right now are in their rightful place in the premier league table. What Ranieri did by winning the premiership was a one off, a miracle. The earlier the club owners realised this, the easier it will be for their future manager(s) to succeed.
By and large, not many people are too sad nor surprised that Craig Shakespeare got the sackafter just eight games in which his only victory came against newly promoted Brighton. To most people, he got what he deserved. If a club like Leicester can sack a manager who won them the premiership, the next season, it is completely naive of a manager of Craig’s limited experience and success rate to believe he would be given the chance and time to lead them to the promised land. Hopefully he would have learnt his lessons now. Ironically Craig Shakespeare is now being replaced, at the moment, by his own assistant, Michael Appleton. What goes around comes around.
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