You know that old saying that if you give millions of monkeys typewriters (old machine used to make words appear; like a word processor but better, clunkier, easier to make mistakes on; see ‘carbon paper’ section in History of 20th Century) for millions of years, one of them would randomly come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Unlikely, but its a ‘nalogy, innit. To show the possibilities of randomness.

Bit like Leicester City football club. They run around like typing monkeys for a hundred years, then one year, so randomly that at the start of that year their recent form had them made as bookies favourites for relegation, they won the Premier League. Stuffed Manchester United, laughed at the combined billions of Manchester City and Chelsea, showed Liverpool what never walking alone really does and demonstrated for Arsenal that coming 4th every year means very little. Their whole team cost £3.97. They were cobbled together at no expense off the building yards and scrap heaps of the East Midlands (and Algeria) and orchestrated into something way way beyond the sum of the parts.

And the true maestro who conducted that orchestra (to labour a metaphor to the point where I’ve actually started to feel a little nauseous), was Claudio Ranieri. The Tinkerman of former Chelsea fame. He took this star-less team of relegation-bound nobodies and forged them into nothing short of a miracle. He galvanised them. Created a team spirit that no other team could match, gave them a belief. And as most football matches are won and lost in the minds of the participants, Claudio did the impossible and gave these apparent no-hopers a total conviction to winning mentality.

8 months after lifting the League trophy Leicester have sacked him. Nah, he’s not good enough. We need someone who can win us things. Club’s going nowhere…

Ok, Leicester are looking perilously close to the relegation zone at the moment. Whatever Claudio fixed last year has definitely broken again. And I get that, I really get that. But this, I feel, is more sinister. ‘He’s lost the dressing room’. Footballing euphemism for ‘the players won’t play for him’.

Another of the game’s great malaises. Give a man a pound and he’ll buy an ice cream. Give him 50,000 a week and he becomes an arrogant tosser who suddenly believes he’s a genius, saviour and redeemer all rolled into one little package of sub-normal IQ. In a Bentley.

I can only hope that, whoever the new manager is, Leicester do go down, lose a bundle, get abandoned by their Thai owners with short-term memory issues and all these ‘sudden superstars’ end up playing for Macclesfield and busking outside Poundland to make up the mortgage.

Its nothing short of fucking shameful. Whether you agree with the manager’s decisions or not, you get paid a small fortune for giving your all on the pitch. Every game. Every minute. To do anything less is a dereliction of duty.

Shame on the lot of them.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx