Friday 24 February 2017 07:49, UK
Jamie Carragher believes any sympathy neutral fans had for Leicester's struggles this season will evaporate following Claudio Ranieri's sacking.
The Foxes made the controversial decision to fire the man who won the Premier League just nine months after he lifted the trophy but with the team a single point above the relegation zone.
Carragher feels fans of other teams - who enjoyed seeing the underdog Midlands club win the league - will now not be upset if Leicester are relegated.
"I think a lot of people wouldn't have wanted to see Leicester go down with Ranieri as the manager but I think a lot of that sympathy will go now," he said.
"There will be more sympathy with teams at the bottom of the league and I don't think there will be many tears shed outside of Leicester if they go down, because of this decision.
"They were everyone's second team but that's well gone now."
Carragher also feels relegation for Leicester would not be as disastrous as is being made out, with the club having a reputation as a team which regularly moves between the top two divisions.
"People make out that it's a disaster if a team goes down but Leicester have always been a yo-yo club," he said.
"They always have done that and it wasn't going to change because they won the title. What were they expecting when they signed Ranieri?
"If someone said they'd win the league and then go down, every Leicester fan would have said yes to that."
Leicester have not won in the past six games and Carragher believes the players should take some responsibility for the team's struggles this season and that winning the league has "changed" some of them.
"What they did last season was proof that you should never give up and they did fantastically well," he said. "Those players will never achieve anything like that again and I think if there's one person that hasn't changed in that dressing room this season it's the manager.
"Some of the players have changed. With the contracts they have, you see some of them in lifestyle magazines, maybe some of it has gone to their heads a little bit.
"Last season was a freak. We loved it and we were all willing them to do it but we all know really that Leicester aren't that good.
"We expected the quality to drop off, not this far of course. I'm devastated for him. A lot of questions have got to be asked of the owners and of the players.
"I think they should have a statue of him there and I think they should start that in the morning."
