Leicester City 3 – Integrity 0

Where did that come from? Leicester City played a blinder this morning and left a listless Liverpool vanquished by a 3-1 margin.

It was as if someone had stopped time and rolled it back 12 months. All the old aggression, intensity and spirit was back. The Jamie Vardy opener, via a ball over the top, was a carbon copy of so many of his strikes from last term. This was the old title-winning form, not the shackled dead man walking stuff that we have witnessed over the past few months.

Speaking of dead men. Banners and chants in honour of the deposed Claudio Ranieri were in preponderance. Claudio must have been at home on his sofa wondering where this performance had been hiding. It is exceptionally unlikely that caretaker manager Craig Shakespeare could have unearthed any secret formula in just a week at the helm.

For all intents and purposes, the performance was a mirrored rehash of what worked so well last season. There was nothing especially new here. It was just the old plan played out by the same participants in the old way but with a burning certainty and intensity of purpose. Something that has been missing for some time at the King Power.

So, what has brought about this change and why now? It can only have been the players. Perhaps, stung by the criticism in the press, they elected to thoroughly stick it to their critics. Whether player power ganged up on the manager and forced him out we will never truly know. Certainly many, including Jamie Vardy and Kasper Schmeichel, have subsequently come out to declare that this was not the case.

The sense of righteous indignation seemed to prove itself capable enough to light a spark of passion throughout the team. It is a strange paradox that in battling for their reputations, the Leicester players may in some ways have tarnished them further. If they can play like that tonight then why not last week or last month?

The honest man can only point to effort. It is easy to forgive a lack of skill or competence. Sports fans accept this as part of the natural bargain that they maintain with their teams and heroes. These stars have the right to bungle, freeze or make ridiculous howlers.

This is a path trod by all of us at some point regardless of whether we have a career on the sports field or not. Mistakes are usually vilified for a while, the player’s competency to salary equation examined to Einstein proportions in pubs, and then everyone moves on.

Lack of effort doesn’t or shouldn’t work like that, though. This is the breaking of the bond between player and fan. It picks up the conundrum and throws it back hard in our face. It makes us question why we bother, why we invest the time, emotional energy and ever increasing financial cost when the same commitment isn’t shown by our teams.

Lost faith should not be easily regained, but in the tribal world of football, it always is. With the spectre of relegation, the Leicester fans will get behind their team and quickly move on.

It is hard to know exactly what has gone on at Leicester but it is relatively easy to come to some simple conclusions. Perhaps a desire for an enforced manager change has been characterised by a slow reduction in effort and desire. Maybe Vardy and Schmeichel are correct that there was no covert player deputation to the chairman.

Instead, it may have been a more indirect and cowardly attack played out in plain sight and slow motion via a steadily declining effort and commitment on the pitch. We don’t know.

There is a tired old cliché that is bandied about constantly in football these days. It fits into four trite words: “Lost the dressing room”.

A short inane sentence that hides a multitude of disagreeable sins.

It is difficult to imagine a reality whereby a manager could win the league with a rag-tag team and those same largely journeyman players lose confidence in that manager less than a year later. It could possibly be that those same players no longer see themselves as rag-tag or journeyman anymore, and with a title medal swinging around their neck, something altogether loftier. Perhaps that is what lies at the core of the problem.

Relegation doesn’t happen to superstars. They just change strip, collect a decent pay cheque somewhere else and leave the fans in despair. If transience was a product, it would be a worthy sponsor of the Premier League.

It is the brutal end to the fairy-tale that hurts most of all. Last season, Leicester City presented us with a glimpse of something special. They came from nowhere to triumph over the predictable dominance of the financial heavyweights. They reignited a dream for fans that anything was possible for their teams.

Up until last week, the Leicester City story was a beautiful one. But now it can only be viewed through the ugly prism of Claudio Ranieri’s sacking. From now on, it will be impossible to think of one without the other and that is a very cruel outcome indeed.

Most of all, Leicester City and their owners have cheated themselves of their legacy. In 50 years, when all else is forgotten, they will be remembered as the team that won the title as a 5000 to one shot and sacked their manager the next season. Sticking with Ranieri and even going down with him at the helm would have been seen as admirable and an extension to the legend.

Instead, all we have is the memories.

How quickly they fade.