What do you call a tinkerman who doesn’t tinker? That’s the question facing the headline writers these days as the new Leicester City manager changes his spots. Or maybe it’s too early to say that.

Either way, it’s a lazy nickname. A nickname given to a foreign manager on account of his foreignness, it would appear. One of the earliest foreign imports to the Premier League, Claudio Ranieri was always a little more eccentric, seemed to have a little less substance than his counterpart Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. Fair enough, the press had a little fun at his expense, but it was a limp nickname.

Ranieri came into the Premier League when English football was still very British. The culture of the English game has changed a lot in the last 15 years. When the ‘tinkerman’ came to the Premier League, the idea of rotating your squad was a strange one. Far from looking like a manager who wanted to use his squad to its full potential and save his players from burnout, Ranieri looked like a man who didn’t know what his best team was. He looked like an eccentric, foreign fool, not cut out for the rough and tumble of the Premier League.

But that’s not what he is, and it’s not what he was then either. Ranieri has always been a manager who likes to manage what he has – he knows how to get the best from the group he’s given, and he can mould and shape it to his vision. As one of the first foreign coaches, he wasn’t really given the chance to achieve success with what he had when he was at Chelsea; he was pre-judged.

Now, he’s older and wiser, but he’s still the same old pragmatist he always was. It’s not that he wanted to rotate his squad simply for the kicks that rotating your squad gives you. He rotated because he thought it was best. It’s pragmatism, rather than philosophy that drove the tinkering. At Leicester, he’s taken an ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix’ approach to running his club. He asked the board for a few things this summer – among other signings, Shinji Okazaki has impressed already and Gokhan Inler is a real coup for the Foxes – but the rest of the setup is very similar to what Nigel Pearson left at the club. A team that won seven of their last nine games in the league.

But if Ranieri hasn’t changed too much, the Premier League certainly has. The money that has teemed into English football in the last 15 years has attracted the best and brightest from around Europe. It’s changed the face of English football. English clubs are more integrated in Europe – Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea have all won the Champions League since Ranieri left English football for the first time, Arsenal reached a final and Manchester City are angling to become a European power too.

The Premier League has seen an influx of global talent, both in terms of managers and players, foreign money owns 13 Premier League clubs and 14 Championship clubs. English football is a much different place than the one Ranieri entered 15 years ago.

So we’re going to have to find a new name for Ranieri. One that shows how far the English game has come, where it respects the different approaches to management and systems and incorporates all ideas into the game. All of those different approaches are what has made the Premier League the most watched league in the world, it’s what brings in the money.

It’s only been two games, but already Ranieri has confounded his critics. The tinkerman tag just isn’t relevant any more, and if the ‘tinkerman’ couldn’t success 15 years ago, maybe plain old Claudio Ranieri will find the Premier League a more receptive audience this time around.

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