Graeme Souness launches scathing attack on Leicester players for celebrating Champions League victory

The reigning Premier League champions reached the Champions League quarter-finals three weeks after Claudio Ranieri was sacked as manager, much to Souness's frustration

Graeme Souness said Leicester's players will let down their manager again as they did with Claudio Ranieri (Getty)

Graeme Souness launched a stunning verbal attack on the Leicester City players following their dramatic 2-0 victory over Sevilla on Tuesday night that secured the reigning Premier League champions a place in the Champions League quarter-finals.

Leicester have won all three matches under newly-appointed manager, Craig Shakespeare, and look like their old selves once again after struggling for most of the season under Claudio Ranieri, the man who took the club to its greatest ever triumph.

Ranieri was sacked the day after Leicester’s 2-1 defeat by Sevilla three weeks’ ago, nine months after winning the title, but the away goal scored by Jamie Vardy at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium proved enough to take the Fixes through to the last-eight of the Champions League as they secured a 3-2 aggregate victory over the reigning Europa League champions.

The victory at the King Power Stadium sparked wild celebrations similar to those seen last May when Leicester won the title, but the display did not impress former Liverpool midfielder Souness, who claimed the players will “let you down again” in the future.

“They won the league playing that way,” Souness said on Irish channel TV3 Sport. “When you're a manager and you've won the league, are you going to turn up the next season and change things? If it ain't broke why try and fix it?

“He would have been doing the same training, talking to them the same way, preparing for the games the same way, travelling to the games the same way - everything the same.

“Some of those players at the start of the season believed all of a sudden: ‘We're big players, we're champions’ and took their foot off the accelerator and got in their big comfy armchairs, with their Bentley in the car park and maybe changed their house. They took their foot off the accelerator.”

Souness went on to address the apparent dressing room fallout that occurred during the final days of Ranieri’s reign, claiming that a snowball effect took place that resulted in the players letting down their manager.

“What does the manager (Ranieri) do then? The manager has a go at some of them - and points it out to them,” Souness added.

“And then he falls out with two or three of the influential players in the dressing room and then you've got the followers in the dressing room - all of a sudden he's fallen out with most of the dressing room.

Schmeichel saved two penalties over the two legs (Getty)

“That's what I believed happened and those players that are rejoicing out there and thinking they're back, that they're big players.

“They'll fall of their perch again - guaranteed - because they've done it once they'll do it again - they'll let you down again.”

Both Vardy and Schmeichel rejected reports of a dressing room coup (Getty)

A number of players, including Vardy and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, addressed the reports of a squad faction turning against Ranieri and claimed that no such thing happened, while winger Marc Albrighton, who scored the second goal last night to secure Leicester’s progression to the quarter-finals, confirmed he had personally thanked Ranieri for what he had done for his career.