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The "fairytale" that saw Claudio Ranieri lifting the Premier League trophy after guiding Leicester City to the title "ended with a jolt of reality: a fall down the table for the club and the sack for the manager," according to Murad Ahmed of the FINANCIAL TIMES. In the "new football," the financial stakes are "too high to be clouded by sentiment." Leicester is currently in the relegation zone and "going down a division would cost the club" £100M ($124.7M), according to Deloitte, "about four-fifths of the club's revenues from last season." Tim Bridge, a senior manager at Deloitte's sports business group, said, "Separate from all the arguments about glory and winning trophies, from a financial survival perspective, staying in the Premier League is many clubs' priority." If reports "are to be believed," Ranieri "lost the dressing room," with his players "rebelling against the Italian's tactical shifts and a more strenuous training regime." But a "more sober-minded analysis suggests that Leicester hugely over-performed last season, and may be only slightly underperforming this season." The "best way to predict a team's league success" is to look at how much it spends on players. Leicester spent £57M on staff in the '14-15 season, according to Deloitte, the third-lowest wage bill in the league at the time. Net transfer spending on new players was £17.6M ($22M) this season, according to data from the Transfermarkt website. By comparison, the Premier League's "financial powerhouse," ManU, which earned £515M in revenues last term, "spent hugely on players this season," with net transfer spending of around £117M ($146M). Stefan Szymanski, author of "Money and Football: A Soccernomics Guide," said, "Leicester should have been a mid-table team last year, and they should have been in the mid-table team this year" (
FT, 2/24).