Ranieri emerged as Leicester's true champion while the party rumbled on

Two years before Claudio Ranieri led Leicester City out for its first-ever European knockout clash at Sevilla on Wednesday, the Foxes were withering at the bottom of the Premier League table. It took a remarkable turnaround for then-manager Nigel Pearson to haul it from that mire, but the subsequent departure of captain Esteban Cambiasso, and controversy behind the scenes when three players were filmed partaking in a racist sexual act in Thailand, promptly sobered matters.

The video from the post-season tour featured Nigel's son James Pearson, and his exit was followed by the dismissal of his father by the club's Thai owners little over a month later. Leicester had been gutted, and few tipped the club to stomach anything better than 18th place the following campaign. Relegation appeared a certainty.

Then Ranieri, a questionable appointment after his woeful overseeing of Greece, produced the impossible. Leicester's title win was built on team spirit. Seeing the belief that endured after the previous season's survival, the Italian tightened the bonds that had formed throughout the squad. Pizza parties and fancy-dress frolics ensued, and a team comprised of former non-league players and has-beens stormed to the title. It's a story that has gone down in sporting folklore.

Twenty-five Premier League outings later, Ranieri has been handed his P45. While the groundwork crumbled underneath him, it would be folly to view Ranieri as the architect of his own demise.

What a short memory the unforgiving world of Premier League football has. And one would suspect with each passing week after Thursday's sacking, off-the-pitch tales will emerge which reflect the blatant apathy among certain members of Ranieri's former squad.

The evidence of his throng dining out on the tag of champions was evident merely days after the season had ended. Wes Morgan, a man bestowed with tags such as "stalwart" and "leader" over the previous nine months, skipped the beginning of Jamaica's Copa America campaign at the start of June - 34 days after the title was wrapped up - due to his beer-swilling commitments.

"He partied in London and Thailand," said his then-national team coach Winfried Schafer when explaining his absence.

It never stopped. Award ceremonies were rife, and Christian Fuchs wrote an article in The Players' Tribune on Oct. 26, 2016, which began: "So Jamie Vardy was having a party." It was an underdog story the protagonists would never tire of retelling.

Ranieri is due some criticism. On the first day of pre-season training, the Italian should've made it clear that those heady days in May were banished to the previous campaign - that they were to play, rather than strut, like champions - but the way the players turned their backs on the man who guided them to the highlight of their careers is unforgivable.

One reason for the wanting form of Vardy and Riyad Mahrez was the deep defensive lines now deployed by opponents, but this was something Leicester had already addressed. In the opening 18 matches of the 2015-16 term, Leicester scored 2 and conceded 1.4 per game. The final 20 bouts saw both numbers drop: goals scored stood at 1.55, and strikes surrendered plummeted to 0.55.

This wasn't a collective of poor footballers - they romped to the summit of the English game, and proved they can adapt when their attack was blunted by rivals belatedly learning how to deal with them. That lesson went astray this season - and that's not the fault of the departed N'Golo Kante. Ranieri's throng simply checked out.

"I could be (too loyal), could be," Ranieri admitted earlier in February. "It is difficult when you achieve something so good, you want to give them one chance, two chances, three chances. Maybe now, it is too much."

It was. The loyalty that Ranieri deserved from his players was lost in the galas and lagers that follow success and, whether this season ends with relegation or not, there will be a loitering unease around the King Power Stadium surrounding players that have avoided much of their workload lately - particularly if there's a sudden upturn in form.

"After all that Claudio Ranieri has done for Leicester City, to sack him now is inexplicable, unforgivable and gut-wrenchingly sad," local hero Gary Lineker said after hearing Thursday's news.

It certainly is, and his downfall was orchestrated by the players he heroically conducted in one of the greatest feats in sporting history.