A Butterfly Flapped its Wings, and Leicester were Relegated

Leicester were relegated today, their loss to Liverpool hardly a surprise coming off the back of a truly dismal run of results. Lest we forget Leicester were in 16th place and above the relegation zone, when Steve Cooper was harshly sacked. Enter Ruud Van Nistelrooy who amongst other things oversaw a run of eight consecutive home losses without scoring.

But it’s a cruel twist of quantum mechanical fate that got us here. Remember Erik ten Hag? The Manchester United manager who was definitely getting fired in the summer yet somehow hung on to guide the team to further mediocrity in the early part of the season? Finally the board acted, ten Hag was shown the door, only this time he actually exited through it.

Enter, as temporary savior, Ruud Van Nistelrooy. There are shades of what happened when José Mourinho was sacked and another former United legend Ole Gunnar Solskjær took over. Both times, the Man Utd players were seemingly liberated from whatever tactical and/or emotional shackles had been placed on them by the former boss. And just like that, Utd start winning again. 

After Mourinho, the board stuck with Solskjær but the uptick in form turned out to be temporary and Utd began a slow and painful decline. Solskjær looked like a lost boy on the touchline and his exit was confirmed in November 2021. After a brief Ralf Rangnick stint in the hot seat (surely the answer to a difficult trivia question one day), enter ten Hag.

Exit ten Hag on October 28th 2024. Enter Ruud. Not wanting to repeat the Solskjær mistake, Nistelrooy’s reign at Man Utd was always going to be temporary, especially with Ruben Amorim available. Nistelrooy oversaw just 4 games, of which they won 3 and drew 1.

Can you see the butterfly flapping its wings? Can you line up the dates? Leicester needed a new manager just as Van Nistelrooy was seemingly performing miracles in Manchester. “We’ll have a bit of that”, said the very short-sighted Leicester Board. And so it was that Ruud Van Nistelrooy, a man with almost no EPL managerial experience, became manager of Leicester. In 20 games in charge, Leicester have won 4, drawn 1 and lost 15.

An extraordinary number of things had to line up perfectly for Van Nistelrooy and Leicester to be in this position. Maybe butterflies just don't like Leicester.