Have a read...

* by 'they were shocked' - I mean the coach I spoke to

KTF - yes your memory is spot on. I was criticised by JG on here for saying that Ranieri had sacked the sports psychologist - JG maintained that the sports science dept was fully intact and that we still used Ken Ways services.

Getting rid of the sports psychologist at a time when the players probably needed him more than ever was a very bad decision by Ranieri and the club. If anything, we should have been adding to our mental health team due to the added psychological challenges for the players, not dismissing them. Poor oversight I'm afraid.

comment by Foxello (U6985)
posted 34 seconds ago
Getting rid of the sports psychologist at a time when the players probably needed him more than ever was a very bad decision by Ranieri and the club. If anything, we should have been adding to our mental health team due to the added psychological challenges for the players, not dismissing them. Poor oversight I'm afraid.
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I agree and someone should have stepped in to make sure it didn't happen. Ranieri shouldn't have been allowed to dismantle the sports science team and I'm shocked it was allowed to happen.

I think the most frustrating thing I've found this season, with regard to any changes to the foundation on which Ranieri so brilliantly built last year, is that they aren't improvements, actually I'm not sure they are even 'different' ways of doing things in some cases - there are areas where I feel we may have just completely abandoned aspects of what we built on over the last 3 years, and fundamental aspects which, whilst I would willingly have sacrificed if someone had said it meant winning the league, were not only unnecessary to sacrifice, but they weren't actually sacrificed until after we'd won the league ....and I am left simply asking - 'Why?'

And the only answer I come to everytime, from a perspective of supporting Ranieri, is that he simply wanted to take us in a new direction but greatly overestimated the quality of our individual players (in contrast to their quality as a team) in terms of how they can continue to perform at, at least, an adequate level, whilst these pretty mass changes were implimented (and ultimately meaning we sacrificed fundamental imperatives for our success as a brilliant team last year, but ultimately a collective that was much much better together than the individuals it incorporated)

I think KTF that any manager coming into a club wants to instil his own philosophy and own way of doing things. Ranieri was unable to bring in an assistant or head of recruitment at first and that actually helped us hugely and made the transmission almost seemless

This season it was time for him to implement his philosophy on the club, to do what he probably would have wanted to do when he joined. So out goes Ken Way, Walsh leaves and that paves the way for Ranieris trusted recruiter - Eduardo Macia. Out goes the pressing game, in comes the more Italian 10 men behind the ball etc - keeping shape at all costs

The problem simply is that his changes haven't been effective. The dismantling of what made us great was unnecessary - what was need was incremental improvements - evolution not revolution if you will

*Walsh left of his own accord of course....

I find this article a bit of an awkward read, like it has an undertone of "What I do is really important and I'm available, but I don't want to be seen drawing too much attention to that" about it.

That's not to say that's a bad idea of course, and my personal opinion is that there is an awful lot in sports psychology. But surely he can only guess at what's gone wrong this season?

Well I think we can all agree that his services are badly needed right now, or someone else in that field....

Wouldn't hurt. I think they need an urgent review of the fitness coaching as well.