Italian is the bookmakers’ favourite to be the next Premier League manager to be sacked after Leicester’s fourth Premier League defeat in a rowIt was this weekend last year when the dream started to take hold. “So if you’re just joining us #lcfc are leading 3-0 and Robert Huth is on a hat-trick” was the wonderful tweet that Leicester City posted from their account during a victory at Manchester City that convinced Claudio Ranieri and his players, as much as the watching football world, that something incredible was happening.Twelve months on and the fairytale has turned into a nightmare. Leicester, make no mistake, are in real danger of becoming the first top-flight champions to be relegated since Manchester City in...
How did the team who eased to the league title return to the relegation quicksands so soon?It can be strange for those of us who remember Manchester City in the pre-money years to think that their new generation of followers might never fully understand why Joe Royle used to talk about a debilitating condition, unique to the club, called “Cityitis”. Suffice to say, though, that it could be particularly virulent at times and Royle, in keeping with many managers, never did go through with his promise to find the antidote.“Poor old Joe,” Colin Shindler reflected in his book Manchester City Ruined My Life. “He never understood that Cityitis is not a bacterial infection that can be cured by the antibiotics...
Jamie Vardy’s running off the ball, Riyad Mahrez’s dribbling and perhaps even the manager’s decision-making have been nowhere near good enough this seasonAnother week another refereeing controversy, yet there was curiously little complaint from Leicester City over the legitimacy of the Sam Vokes goal that denied them a point at Turf Moor.“There might have been a handball but the referee said no and the referee is always right,” said a philosophical Claudio Ranieri. That is fine if you want to be completely civilised about this sort of thing and it would not be a bad idea if some of the more strident managers and coaches took a leaf out of Ranieri’s book of mannered restraint, though we all know, and...
The original ‘nice young man’ faces an impossible choice between the relative sanity of Burton Albion and the emotional pull of his father’s old clubPerhaps this is an apt moment to remember an old story about the last time Southampton reached the League Cup final, back in 1979, and what it says about the way the sport has changed bearing in mind their opponents that day could be described accurately as the most hungover group of players ever to walk out at Wembley.Brian Clough always liked to keep it interesting and it turned out to be a wise move, sensing his Nottingham Forest players were a bit uptight, to decide the best form of relaxation at the hotel the night...
Will Daniel Sturridge get a chance to regain his verve? Will Ranieri fine-tune for a relegation battle? Will Ravel Morrison return to Old Trafford?A clutch of (fool)hardy Lincoln City fans queued through Wednesday night in sub-zero temperatures in order to get their gloved hands on the last tickets for their club’s biggest and indeed only fourth-round FA Cup tie since 1976. Those fans were evidently not discouraged by the fact that the National League leaders had suffered their heaviest defeat of the season the previous night, when they were beaten 3-0 by Barrow, whose rugged approach on a treacherous pitch fairly knocked Danny Cowley’s men out of their impish stride. The Championship leaders, Brighton, will probably not resort to such...