No solution for Ranieri as Leicester slide into relegation zone

They haven’t scored a league goal in 2017, there has been just one clean sheet since the first weekend of October.

Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri during a recent loss.

Claudio Ranieri was joking about death and the sandwiches ran out at Leicester’s Friday press conference. That’s the way life is now at the no-longer-jolly King Power stadium.

It’s like a fairytale has been amended by a killjoy FIFA civil servant, who has belatedly written to remind Leicester of those tenets of moneyed modern football that, last season, they had the temerity to break. Ranieri’s team have lost their past three games.

They haven’t scored a league goal in 2017, there has been just one clean sheet since the first weekend of October and no away victory since winning at Sunderland last April. Middlesbrough, Bournemouth and Leicester are the only Premier League sides in 2016-17 not to register consecutive wins. Ranieri’s gallows humour is his respite from such statistics. The prospect of being the first English titleholders to be relegated since Manchester City in 1938 is suddenly, horribly, real. From cham­pions to Championship? From fearless to feckless? What has gone wrong for the Cinderella club?

The recruitment

You take the Premier League champions and add a further £80 million ($130m) of talent: what could go wrong? What Leicester are discovering is an old principle. If you buy badly, better not buying at all. Leicester’s recruiting has ­arguably made them weaker. A tight, intimate squad was one of their great strengths yet adding eight players of seven different ­nationalities to the group appears to have diluted spirit. And the ­arrivals’ output has been deeply disappointing. Replacing N’Golo Kante was the priority yet Nampalys Mendy seems too slow for the Premier League midfield maelstrom and while Wilfred Ndidi has the tools of a fine defensive midfielder, he’s 20 and, in the opinion of a recent opponent, “still a kid”.

Only Islam Slimani has produced consistently but he has been absent too often. Why Leicester went through two windows without buying a top central defender to help the ageing Robert Huth and Wes Morgan is a mystery. Fans question whether director of football Jon Rudkin is right for the role and there are mixed opinions of Eduardo Macia, the head of ­senior player recruitment, among those who worked with him at ­Liverpool.

The tactics

Leicester last season were clearly defined: low block, lightning counterattacks, 4-2-3-1. But, of course, they had the phenomenon that is Kante — who is now pivotal to Chelsea executing a similar style.

“Kante,” was Shinji Okazaki’s reply when asked recently why Leicester aren’t the same but he added: “We are still searching for the best way to play (without Kante) The spirit hasn’t changed. But we don’t know where to direct our spirit when we are on the pitch, to be honest. Maybe we are still confused about that situation.”

This is damning of Ranieri, who said that what he’d added to transform Leicester to champions was “my little tactics”. Before FC Copenhagen away he announced a switch to 3-4-3 two hours before kick-off. He went three at the back versus Chelsea and lost 3-0 then tried a diamond midfield against Southampton, and lost 3-0, conceding “maybe my players didn’t understand my idea very well”.

On Friday he defended the tinkering: “I tried to change the team because I watched and we needed to try something different, but something different didn’t change. I tried to help my team.”

The message

Every third sentence from Ranieri on Friday seemed to be, “we are fighters” — but, as Claudio also likes saying, blah blah blah. Last season the consistency of his message, and its upbeat nature, was a charm and strength. But in different straits, don’t players need to hear something different too?

At its worst, Ranieri’s jokes and catchphrases can seem like schtick and the danger is of disillusioned players seeing their boss as putting on an act they feel tired of. In ­August, Ranieri announced the target was finishing between third and 10th and now it’s “40 points”. Realistic, perhaps, but can such grey ambitions inspire players whose mission, not long ago, was immortality?

The rub of the green

Ranieri admits luck was with Leicester last season. Decisions, injuries, bounces of the ball all went their way. Fortunes have changed: even Burnley’s staff were surprised Sam Vokes was allowed to handle before scoring when beating Leicester 1-0. Kasper Schmeichel breaking his hand in Copenhagen and Jamie Vardy’s red card against Stoke are among other things to have gone against them.

The stars

Four players performed to world-class levels in 2015-16: Schmeichel, Vardy, Kante, Mahrez. But Kante left and Schmeichel had his injury. Mahrez? He’s Leicester’s top scorer only because he’s their penalty taker and he is not performing as if fully engaged. His ambition is to play for Barcelona and he knows he might need a bigger Premier League club as a stepping stone.

And Vardy? Last season his chance conversion rate was akin to Lionel Messi’s so it’s natural his goal output has dropped, and he is getting less of the quick, direct service he thrived on in 2015-16. But he has only scored in three league games. “There are strikers who one year score every time and one year up and down. He is the same Jamie,” said Ranieri, hardly offering reassurance.

The manager

Achieving success and maintaining success are two different skills and few managers have both. ­Arsene Wenger never retained the title, nor did Brian Clough, nor did Bill Shankly. Mourinho has tended to burn out at clubs after three- year cycles. At 65, Ranieri has had 16 jobs and only twice stayed longer than three seasons anywhere.

It was revealing when Ranieri felt the need to exhaustively run through his CV, highlighting the accomplishments. He “accidentally” missed out one job. Atletico Madrid — where he resigned with the club on the brink of relegation, and Atletico did go down.

THE SUNDAY TIMES