Leicester City: Damning Indictment if players suddenly perform against Liverpool

After sacking Claudio Ranieri on Thursday, Leicester City now face a big game against Liverpool. Will the Foxes players suddenly perform now?

Leicester City host Liverpool on Monday at the King Power Stadium. The team look certain to be managerless with Claudio Ranieri having been sacked a few days ago. The merits of the sacking have been argued ever since.

The team were not performing. Not this season. And that is what, rightly or wrongly, the Leicester board are judging Ranieri on. The team have to pick up quickly if they are to avoid being the first ever Premier League champions to be relegated the very next season. Something had to change.

But how quickly will the Leicester City players pep up and start to improve now? Will that start on Monday against Liverpool? If that does happen so soon, and with no captain leading the ship, it will be a damning indictment on the Foxes squad.

For a new manager to come in with a new voice, new methods and a fresh outlook, and have a fast positive effect is fairly common. But Leicester do not have a new leader yet. A good performance against Liverpool will not be the effects of a new man at the helm.

A performance against Liverpool will be based on the players deciding to give things a go now. To turn over a new leaf. Which tells you they were not necessarily trying quite so hard when Ranieri was in charge.

Say what you want about the Italian, but Leicester City had no hopes of winning a Premier League title before he arrived. Zero. And now he has left the club the Foxes have the same hopes of wining a Premier League title. Zilch.

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Those players owe their new big-time contracts that they are sitting on to Claudio Ranieri. So to think they stopped playing for him is unfathomable. A Leicester team suddenly playing well against Liverpool wont be due to tactics or a new team direction.

It will be down to desire and nothing more. Who knows, perhaps Ranieri’s tactics had gotten stale? Perhaps the Italian failed to evolve the team after last year’s success? Maybe the players got bored of his style of play or management? Whatever.

But the one thing you would expect is that they owe it to him to play at 100 percent and then live with the consequences. In the end, it is Ranieri who is now living with the consequences. Ultimately, the team were not performing, so there is usually only one conclusion at that point. Whether you won the title last season or not.

The coincidental thing is that Leicester actually looked a little brighter towards the end of their Champions League game against Sevilla on Wednesday. Did the players already know what was to come? Or was Ranieri finally getting a reaction? We’ll never know now.

Next: Predicting Leicester vs. Liverpool, all weekend games

Either way, it wouldn’t be the first time that players lose faith in a manager – nor the last. It happens. Naturally. But those Leicester players, above most others, found themselves in a unique position last season due to the guidance and tutelage of one man.

To think they gave up on that same man just months later would be nothing more than a damning indictment of those player’s character. A good performance from the Leicester players against Liverpool on Monday would prove exactly that.

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