Is Shakespeare’s sacking the right move for Leicester City?

Following yet another disappointing result, Leicester City and their manager Craig Shakespeare have parted company. This ends a six year tenure with the club (eight if you include his first spell). Many will point to his lasting just eight months charge, or four in permanent charge, but in the modern era his service to the club has been more than is expected from most backroom staff.

By all accounts Craig is a great guy, loved universally at the club by players, staff and media. Once again we’re all sad to see a manager go, but with the Foxes currently sat in the relegation zone, it’s not hard to make the argument that this move is best for the club.

That’s not to say there aren’t factors in his defence though. Recruitment has been a problem for the last couple of years and the players coming in these days mostly seem to be a bad fit or simply bad players (except Harry of course).

The mishandled Drinkwater-Silva transfer situation has certainly left him short of the quality he desired in the middle of the park. As our newest writer Alex pointed out recently, however, Silva’s absence did provide Shakespeare with an opportunity to try something different. 4-4-2 after 4-4-2 after 4-4-2 should stand as proof of his failure to adapt.

The fixture list has been mentioned too and there’s certainly a point to be made there: our only losses have come to four of the best teams in the league. Those only account for half of the games played now, however.

Opponents of the eight teams we’ve faced so far have averaged just over 11 points. Leicester’s haul of 6 points is nearly half, and that’s just to be average. This team has much higher aspirations than average.

Craig Shakespeare oversaw some excellent Leicester City performances, most notably the incredible Champions League quarterfinal win over Sevilla and for that we should of course be thankful.

His greatest success, however, did appear to be in the re-application of a system that Claudio Ranieri put in place. His own tactical acumen remained unproven.

Frankly, it still does. While he has experimented somewhat with personnel changes, his in game adjustments have been either slow or erratic, and have yet to prove very successful.

My suspicion, for what that’s worth (hint: little) is that Leicester City could well be better off with someone else in charge. Shakespeare is an excellent coach and a well loved assistant, but maybe not the best available manager.

That of course depends highly on who else is available. Some interesting names have been floated, as they always are in the wake of a position opening up, but are those names interested?

We’re also not the only job going right now, as I’m sure our American fans will be aware.

Let me know who you’d like to see brought in as a replacement. I’m also curious as to how attractive people think this job is. Can we draw in the biggest names?