Stop the tinkering - After last-gasp defeat to Marseille, Inter's Claudio Ranieri must banish Sneijder & Zarate back to the bench

ANALYSIS
By Mark Doyle

Marseille coach Didier Deschamps claimed in the build-up to his side’s Champions League last 16 tie with Inter that Wednesday night's first leg should not be billed as “Deschamps versus Ranieri”.  The Frenchman was right: he did not deserve equal billing. The game was always going to be all about Nerazzurri boss Claudio Ranieri – and so it proved.

Deschamps had, of course, been alluding to the fact that he had been at the helm of the Monaco side responsible for one of the most damaging defeats of Ranieri’s coaching career.

During the tail end of the Italian's four-year reign at Chelsea, Ranieri took his Stamford Bridge outfit to the principality for the first leg of a Champions League semi-final tie that all and sundry had expected the expensively-assembled Blues to negotiate with little difficulty.

However, on that fateful night in Monte Carlo, with the two teams locked at one goal apiece, Ranieri embarked upon a series of tactical decisions which look set to define him forever.

The 60-year-old Roman withdrew Jesper Gronkjaer during the interval and replaced him with Juan Sebastian Veron, who was horribly short on match fitness after only just recovering from back surgery. Then, after Monaco had been reduced to 10 men following the dismissal of Andreas Zikos for a clash with Claude Makelele, Ranieri elected to replace full-back Mario Melchiot with Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink before throwing on defender Robert Huth in place of midfielder Scott Parker.

INTER'S WOEFUL RUN
COMPETITION Coppa Italia Serie A Serie A Serie A Serie A Serie A Champions League	OPPONENT Napoli Lecce Palmero Roma Novara Bologna   Marseille	RESULT   0-2 0-1 4-4   0-4 0-1 0-3   0-1

The end result: a 3-1 victory for 10-man Monaco. Ranieri took the blame for the capitulation and admitted afterwards that his side had “lost the plot” in the final 15 minutes. He may as well have been talking about himself.

Ranieri’s reputation was irreparably damaged by the defeat, which the Blues failed to avenge at Stamford Bridge a fortnight later, and it came as no surprise when he was removed from his position by Chelsea’s ruthless Russian owner Roman Abramovich at the end of that season.

Strange, then, that Ranieri chose his return to the south coast of France to underline just why the ‘Tinkerman’ moniker he despises so much will never go away.

After a run of six games in all competitions without a victory, he desperately needed a positive result at the Stade Velodrome – and yet he elected to go against everything he stands for by picking players ill-suited to such a task.

The name of Mauro Zarate on the Inter team-sheet stood out like Marco Materazzi at a Zidane family union. Ranieri has made little use of the infuriatingly erratic Argentine since taking charge at San Siro in September and yet he called upon the services of the on-loan Lazio forward for one of the most important games of his short tenure. Ranieri needed honest endeavour and sensible decision-making from all of his troops and yet he put his faith in a lethargic attacking player who specialises in taking the wrong option.

The only surprise in terms of the Zarate experiment was that it was 62 minutes before it was abandoned. Indeed, it was abundantly clear after a dreadfully wasteful first-half display from the Argentine - one in which he made just one decent pass - that he should have been hauled off at the interval.

And then there’s the curious case of Wesley Sneijder. Both Marco van Basten and Sandro Mazzola lambasted the Dutch midfielder for his poor attitude of late. And it’s undeniable: Sneijder has cut a disinterested and disillusioned figure every single time he has set foot on the field this season. His obvious sense of frustration has also manifested itself in a succession of bookings for acts of petulance, as well as a truly dreadful challenge on Walter Gargano during a 2-0 Coppa Italia defeat by Napoli at the San Paolo last month which inexplicably failed to even yield a caution.

However, it has become increasingly evident that there is no room for Sneijder in Ranieri’s Inter. And Ranieri himself knows this. He has admitted as much - in public. And yet he will not drop the Netherlands international. The Nerazzurri boss has instead spent the past few weeks tinkering with his line-up, chopping and changing his personnel in midfield and in attack in a vain attempt to uncover a solution to the Sneijder problem.

 No respite for Ranieri | The pressure has intensified after the defeat in France