Following Wednesday's loss against Porto and exit in the UEFA Champions League, AS Roma immediately announced that Eusebio Di Francesco had been sacked, with Claudio Ranieri being the favourite to land the job.
Di Francesco got the Roma job at the start of last season, and after successfully guiding to Italian club to the semi-finals last season, the expectations were relatively high, and it was clearly an unexpected early exit from the UEFA Champions League this season, going out in the Round of 16. The club has massively underperformed in all competitions this season, with Roma being 5th in the Serie A, after suffering a humiliating 3-0 loss against rivals Lazio in the Derby Della Capitale last week. Apart from this, Roma suffered an embarrassing 7-1 defeat to Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia, that summed up the disastrous season that they are having.
The replacement to Di Francesco was immediately rumoured to be Claudio Ranieri, who has also recently been sacked, after being dismissed by Fulham after only three months in charge. The Premier League winner never really managed to reach the heights and have a successful managerial season after the incredible 2015-16 season where he led Leicester City to a surprising title win.
Ranieri has previously managed Roma, between 2009 and 2011, with him leading them to a respectable second-place finish in 2009-10, yet in the following season, he was forced to resign, after some bad results and by falling-out with the club's captain, Francesco Totti.
Ranieri is rumoured to be in charge of leading Roma to a steady finish this season, with plenty of reports suggesting that his role will be that of a caretaker manager till the end of the season, rather than a permanent one.
Whilst the job will be extremely tough, Roma are still in with a very good chance of overtaking Milan or Inter and getting into the UEFA Champions League spots, which would have certainly been the aim at the start of the season, following plenty of new signings and outgoing players, such as the sale of Radja Nainggolan to Inter, who was a crucial cog in the midfield for several seasons.
Roma are yet to announce Ranieri as their new manager, and with their next fixture being against Empoli on Monday, they have to act quick in order to avoid straying too far away from the UEFA Champions League spots, with Lazio, Torino and Atalanta all being just three points away from them.
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