The Warm-Up: Claudio Ranieri was an imposter all along

You know the world has turned upside down when you can regard Leicester taking Liverpool to the cleaners as 'a return to business as usual'. After Claudio Ranieri was so brutally, heartlessly and cruelly sacked last week, Leicester sashayed to a 3-1 win over Jurgen Klopp's side on Monday night, with two goals from Jamie Vardy and an absolute blooter from Danny Drinkwater.

Perhaps this was a sign that Leicester were right to sack Ranieri after all. It may have been unsentimental and cold, but the facts were clear: Leicester were circling the drain with everyone's favourite football uncle in charge, but with him gone they looked freer, full of verve and the old directness.

Or perhaps it was actually a sign that Ranieri has been holding them back all along. Just imagine what they could have achieved without him dragging them down last season...

Well this all sounds quite concerning. Things haven't been going brilliantly for Mario Gotze this season, after returning to Borussia Dortmund from Bayern Munich. Gotze has only made 10 league appearances this season and played just 24 minutes of football this calendar year, and now there is at least some explanation as to why.

Dortmund have been investigating the possible cause for his multiple muscle problems, and have come to the conclusion that he must be withdrawn from the first team forthwith. A club statement said: "Those investigations revealed the player has metabolic disturbances, rendering it absolutely necessary to withdraw him from team training for the time being."

Which all sounds rather concerning for the man who scored the winning goal in the 2014 World Cup final. "I'm currently undergoing treatment and will do everything in my power to be back in training and helping my team to achieve our common goals as soon as possible," Gotze said.

Get well soon, Mario.

We present to you the following words, said by Robbie Savage on BBC Radio 5Live, about how insecure he was as a player, without comment.

Well, almost without comment. Only to say: suddenly things make an awful lot more sense...

“I was the most insecure person ever, to the point where when I signed for Derby and was having a shocker, you know those chat boards? I made up a name, went on them and used to say, ‘Robbie played well today, didn’t he.”

“Seriously, I was that insecure I used to phone newspaper reporters up if I got a six or a five in the paper and say, ‘What are you talking about, what game were you at? I was at least an eight or a nine!’

“I was so insecure as a person, I’d have the best game in the world and I’d still think, am I going to be playing next week? I’d phone four, five, six different people to say I played well.”

A mob of angry football fans may never be described as the sharpest collective tool in the box, but a group of Crystal Palace fans excelled themselves after their 1-0 win over Middlesbrough at the weekend.

For they spied the Boro team bus, glistening in the winter sun, and decided that it simply couldn't be allowed to continue without being defaced. So deface it they did, spraying 'CRYSTAL PALACE FC' on the side of the vehicle, then presumably strutted away in the safe knowledge that they had shown those northern interlopers what for.

The only problem being, of course, that it was actually a bus leant to Boro by Crystal Palace, and it is now apparently going to cost something like £40,000 (which, incidentally, sounds a lot for a paint job) to reply.

The Leicester City chairman and vice-chairman will presumably have got plenty of criticism, stick, abuse and so forth for their decision to bin off cuddly old Claudio, but let us allow them a moment of smugness. The decision will ultimately only be proved right or wrong depending on how Leicester do at the end of the season, but for now we shall let them revel in the lack of sentimentality they needed to show.

It's a slightly trickier business identifying who is responsible for transfers than it used to be. Time was, you could simply blame the manager for any duff purchases, but these days it could be anyone – manager, sporting director, head of recruitment, chief scout, chief executive, meddling owner. No matter, whoever it is at Liverpool should be taken out back and given a sound thrashing with a slipper, because in the second-half of their defeat to Leicester Jurgen Klopp switched to a back five, only two of whom were actually defenders. For a team that are supposedly trying to win the league, that simply will not do.

You'll need a subscription, but we promise it'll be worth it to read George Caulkin's lovely tribute to Dave Parnaby, Middlesbrough's retiring Academy chief, in the Times.

If you can bear to watch it, toes curling and stomach knotting in embarrassment, it was on this day 12 years ago that Delia Smith, having apparently enjoyed the Carrow Road refreshments in full, decided that the Norwich crowd needed a bit of a pep up. So she grabbed the microphone and gave them both barrels. Oh, Delia.

Plenty going on this evening if you scratch 'neath the surface of football's glitzy exterior. In fact, we've got what is probably the game of the season down on the south coast, as top of the table Brighton host second-placed Newcastle. Elsewhere the infinite sadness of Aston Villa continues as they play Bristol City, while it's Blackburn v Derby. Plus there's a full slate of games in Leagues One and Two, a few fixtures in Spain and even a few matches in Scotland. Plenty to keep you from talking to your loved ones.