Reports: Leicester City Approached Claudio Ranieri To Return As Manager Eight Months After Sacking Him

Chris Wright

31st, October 2017

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Reports are emanating in the Italian press that after dismissing Craig Shakespeare earlier this month, Leicester City went cap in hand back to Claudio Ranieri and asked him if he’d like to manage them again, eight months after sacking him nine months after winning the Premier League title.

Ranieri is currently in charge at Nantes, where he has overseen an impressive start to Ligue 1 at a plucky little counter-attacking team with a tight defence and an even tighter budget.

As part of a wider interview with Ranieri, the Corriere dello Sport are claiming that the 66-year-old said “no thank-you” after being offered the chance to return to the Foxes shortly after Shakespeare was deposed.

When that call came, [Leicester] were firing their successor, Craig Shakespeare. Since Ranieri has a consolidated style, most British British, the answer was not a pimple but a simple “no, thank-you.”

We’ll allow you to wade your own way through the somewhat baffling auto-translation there.

The Foxes subsequently appointed Claude ‘Church Mouse’ Puel, who got off to a winning start with a straightforward, Leicester-under-Ranieri-style win over Everton last Sunday.

If it is true, it’s frankly rather embarrassing and yet another indictment of the slap-dash, haphazard way in which Leicester have been run since they canned Ranieri.

While we appreciate that nobody within the club has really been in this precise position before, a little more joined-up thinking (re: hiring, firing, spending, squad building, etc) would probably serve to go an awful long way.