That is bad news for Foxes chiefs Micky Adams and Dave Bassett, who watched from the Liverpool directors’ box as Chelsea fought for a dramatic win thanks to goals from Juan Sebastian Veron and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink after Michael Owen grabbed a penalty equaliser.

Mutu’s international clearance did not come through in time for the Liverpool trip, but should be ready for the Leicester clash and Russian star Alexei Smertin could be the latest acquisition, as he is strongly linked with a £5m (€7.1m) move from Bordeaux this week as Roman Abramovich continues to spend.

Ranieri put all that activity aside to say: “It’s a fantastic start, a great start, but I have told my players they must work hard because they are not a team yet.

“But that is normal, when you change a lot of players and they arrive all at once it is not easy. But I was very pleased, the new and the old players showed the same character.

“They played with their hearts and soul, I am very, very pleased with them.”

Ranieri made it clear that he felt there were plenty of problems on the pitch still to overcome that needed constant assessment during the game.

He said: “This victory is very, very important to us because it will give us lots of confidence. The first 20 minutes before the goal, Liverpool played fantastic football, they were mobile and quick.

“We made too many mistakes because everything is new to my players. But after the goal I spoke with Marcel [Desailly] and Juan [Veron] to explain the best positions because in midfield Liverpool always had more men.

“They played with a diamond shape in midfield and I only had Geremi in front of my defenders, he was always surrounded by three men.

“It was a very big problem for us, particularly [Harry] Kewell and [Danny] Murphy.

“But after the first goal Chelsea believed in victory and played very good football. They also showed fantastic character.”

Ranieri tried to avoid singling out particular players for praise, although he did accept that John Terry was man of the match.

But he also gave former Manchester United misfit Veron a pat on the back after his goalscoring display.

Ranieri said: “I would rather look at the end of the season to assess people like Veron, he played well and for me he is a great champion and today he showed what he can do.”

Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier had seen his side fight back after at times being outplayed in the first half, and grab what looked like a point-saver with a twice-taken Owen penalty.

But Liverpool failed to hang on and Houllier insisted: “I feel sorry for the players, they put in a lot of effort and Chelsea only had two chances in that first half and scored one.

“We had half a dozen and couldn’t score, that’s a little problem for us.

“I felt Chelsea were lucky at times, and I gambled with Milan Baros and Steve Finnan going on as well as [El Hadji] Diouf to try to change things.

“People still keep telling me that we are negative but we had all our forwards on and had 19 shots so I don’t call that negative.”