Claude Puel was always going to find it hard to be a popular man at Leicester City.
When your job is to dismantle a team of heroes and legends, whose names are forever etched into immortality, move them on and replace them, you know you have got a job on your hands to be liked.
And when your task is also to change the team's very identity, to take it away from a style that had brought success beyond wildest fantasies, denying supporters the adrenaline-fuelled, in-yer-face football they loved having pumped into their veins, you are on the back foot to start.
Claude Puel was not going to be popular and could not see his journey with Leicester through
Puel was not liked. Not by the majority of the Leicester fans nor a section of the players. And when some of those players are huge characters with massive influence you need one of two things.
You either need the power of communication; the ability to sell your strange vision to the masses. Make them understand why your way is the best way and convince them to run blind with you into the unknown and embrace the turbulence that will come with it.
Or you need results. The most powerful and valuable currency a Premier League manager can possess. Points.
In the end, Puel had neither. His lack of charisma, more in front of the camera than behind it, rightly or wrongly left supporters with no faith. His lack of results left the owners, in their minds at least, with no choice.
The heavy loss to Crystal Palace was the Foxes' fourth straight home defeat
Leicester's defeat to Crystal Palace was their fourth successive home defeat in the Premier League. That's not happened to them since Martin O'Neill was in charge in January 2000. And they've had some pretty garbage managers since then.
Six without a win. Conceding the first goal for a 19th game this season. Eight points off the relegation zone.
Leicester won 70 points in 56 league games under Puel. That was fewer than 10 clubs in the competition since his appointment, including Palace, Bournemouth and Burnley.
This is a club with European ambitions. Even if the supporters have often confused that with expectation, this was too much.
Leicester are in the process of building a £100m training ground. They have plans to expand the King Power Stadium. By the time the fourth goal went in on Saturday, only a third of the 32,000 the ground currently holds were left.
Let's be clear, though. Puel's vision in principle was the right one. Speaking as a Leicester fan as well as a journalist, I admired what he was trying to achieve.
Leicester were in the relegation zone when they sacked Craig Shakespeare in October 2017
It is important not to forget where Leicester were when Puel took over. They were not title chasers anymore. They were relegation fighters, and had been under two previous managers before him: Claudio Ranieri, the miracle man himself, and then Craig Shakespeare.
When they sacked Shakespeare in October 2017, the club were in the relegation zone. Ranieri had been binned off the previous season just before they got there. That style of uber-direct counter-attack football had nearly got them relegated twice. It did not work anymore.
If Leicester were to become the Premier League's 'best of the rest' on a consistent basis, they needed something more. They needed to build for the future.
That's why Puel was brought in. A man whose main selling point was his track record in bringing through youth players: Eden Hazard, Alexandre Lacazette, Thierry Henry. The old guard, successful but ageing and one-dimensional, needed moving on and replaced with younger, more technical, more malleable players.
The Frenchman had the difficult task of dismantling a team of heroes, legends and title winners
The likes of Robert Huth have been released while Riyad Mahrez was sold to Manchester City
And that's what Puel did. Tried to, anyway. Heaven forbid here was a manager wanting his team to keep the ball.
There were always going to be teething problems. He get them to ninth last season, although that ended with empty seats, boos, and calls for him to be sacked as fans saw a real chance to finish in the European places disappear.
Puel was given the summer and in Ricardo Pereira and James Maddison he attracted two outstanding prospects. They lost Riyad Mahrez, though, and that is all too quickly forgotten when people wonder why Leicester struggled to break teams down without him.
But it
