UNITED KINGDOM: Shinji Okazaki is the unsung hero in this title-winning squad and is surely undroppable after taking full advantage of Ranieri's latest tinkering on Saturday.
The Japan striker's importance to the champions cannot be underestimated and, while much of the focus has been on the form of Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, Okazaki is vital to the way Leicester play.
Against Crystal Palace he covered the most ground and it is his lung-busting commitment, the way he links attack and midfield and his steely resolve that makes him
invaluable.
He has been occupying the substitute's bench for most of the season so far but must surely be guaranteed a starting place against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday. "I'm ready for every game so this season has not been too difficult for me," he said.
"When I play maybe I think I can help the team because I can help the centre midfielders, the strikers and the wingers. Whatever I do I can help the team. This was our football like last season. It reminded me of that."
Okazaki's performance did not go unnoticed by Ranieri and his team-mates, and will undoubtedly have generated headlines in his homeland.
Journalists follow him to every game, frequently interviewing him for more than 20 minutes even if he does not play, and it is impossible for Okazaki to slip under the radar when he returns home.
He said: "Things were a little crazy when I went back to Japan in the summer. A lot of people would come up to me and say 'what happened?
"I can't explain it to them, though, it was just an amazing season. The first month after we won the Premier League, I couldn't go out in Japan. I have to stay home. I usually get mobbed, but it is good. I don't feel like a popstar. It is not that bad.
"It was a story that everybody around the world tuned into - and Leicester City is now a very famous club in Japan and I am proud of that."
Okazaki's determination to chase a lost cause helped to create the opener, Ahmed Musa scoring his first goal since moving from CSKA Moscow.
Okazaki delivered the crucial second goal - his first in the league since March - before Christian Fuchs rounded off a resounding victory with a 22-yard missile. Leicester have now gone 20 league games at home without defeat and, while nobody expects them to win the league again, this performance should kill off any premature talk of a potential relegation battle.
It also proved that Leicester can flourish without Vardy, who started on the bench after struggling to overcome a groin problem since Tuesday's Champions League victory over FC Copenhagen.
Palace were left to rue their failure to make count a period of dominance in the first half, with Yohan Cabaye the only player to beat an inspired Kasper Schmeichel near the end. A more worrying statistic for Alan Pardew, their manager, is their inability to stop conceding goals - this was their 14th league game without a clean sheet.
"If we did that, the pressure on us to score two or three goals wouldn't be there," he said.
"We scored today, but we didn't get a clean sheet. That's the key.
"I know everyone was saying that Leicester's form in the league has been poor but you just knew that this squad and the character they had within the squad to win the league, it was going to surface at some point - and it surfaced against us."