Players gave Puel a push
LEICESTER is the place where a king was found buried under a car park. No surprise then that their football club chucks managers under a bus without a second thought.
Claude Puel became the latest casualty as power slipped from his grasp and his reign was brought to an end.
From the moment he was appointed he was struggling, suffocated by a reputation for being, well, boring.
Puel had a real job on from the start and once the players decided they were not having him, it was only a matter of time.
If Claudio Ranieri, who headed up the most audacious title win of all time, could get the chop, then anyone could.
And though the Foxes’ star players balk at the suggestion of training- ground plots, the minute the likes of striker Jamie Vardy and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel showed murmurings of discontent, Puel was dead in the water.
Vardy knew what he was doing when he let it be known in a TV interview that Puel’s style of football was not suiting him.
It was up to him, he insisted, to adapt and get to grips with it, but everyone knew what the message was.
Only this week, Schmeichel’s father Peter, the legendary former Manchester United goalkeeper, was highly critical of Puel on TV and suggested that his son might leave.
Puel knew what was going on but, to his credit, when quizzed about it, basically said he’d had words with the player and he did not want to leave and everything was OK.
But Puel is a bright guy. If Schmeichel Snr’s outburst – and make no mistake, it was strong – was made without his son’s knowledge or backing, then there is some huge making up to do in that family.
Schmeichel Snr said: “Leicester City are a really good football club. They have good players, they just don’t have the manager who can get the best out of them.
“Once they get everything sorted out – and I leave it to you to interpret what that means – you’ll see Leicester maybe in fifth to eighth place where they belong.”
Most sound- minded observers would ‘ interpret’ that as meaning when Puel gets the bullet. A few days later that happens. The timing was right this time.
The ‘ Puel Out’ party has been active for quite some time but kept hitting one stumbling block – they were seventh in the table.
What they needed was something to really hang it on. Puel appeared to write off the Carabao Cup with a semi- fi nal place at stake; then crashed out of the FA Cup to Newport and suddenly the stitches were coming unpicked.
A poor run of league form followed and on Saturday a fourth successive home defeat, by Crystal Palace, was enough to put his head on the block. His nice demeanour, his dignity during the diffi cult times of the helicopter tragedy, when club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four others were killed, started to take on less importance. If it was going to be done then this was surely the time.
In true Shakespearean fashion, Puel suddenly looked like a haunted man who realised his fate was sealed and ready to offer his kingdom for a horse.
There might be one over by that car park, pal.