Craig Shakespeare, who will manage Leicester City until the end of the season, helped guide the Premier League champions through times when "organisation wasn't good" under Claudio Ranieri, Kevin Phillips has told Sky Sports.
Phillips, who became part of the Leicester coaching staff after ending his playing career with them, helped guide the club to Premier League survival under Nigel Pearson in the 2015-16 season.
Along with Shakespeare, he was retained by the club when Pearson was sacked at the end of that season and Ranieri took over.
The Italian began his career with a 4-2 home win over Sunderland that proved to be the start of the most improbable title win in Premier League history.
But Phillips said Leicester owed a lot to Shakespeare, who kept things going during spells when Ranieri was absent visiting his ill mother in Italy and then returned to make late changes to training regimes.
"I worked there for a short period under Ranieri and at times the organisation wasn't good," he said.
"If it wasn't for Shakey it could have fallen apart a lot earlier. Of course the manager takes all the credit for winning the league -- which he deserves an awful lot of -- but it would have been a lot more difficult without Shakey being there.
"We'd have our sessions planned for the players and literally as we were walking out onto the training pitch Ranieri would come over and say: 'I want to do this now with them,' and he'd change it.
"We were like: 'Fine, go on then, you take it.' But he'd say: 'No, no, you take it'. And he's telling us to put a session on that he wants and we don't know what it is. We had to adapt."
He said Shakespeare -- who has masterminded two wins from two Premier League games since taking over at the King Power Stadium -- "can adapt in tough situations" and added: "You also have to give the players credit.
"They kind of policed themselves last year. They managed themselves really well."
Leicester, who sacked Ranieri in February, only nine months after their title triumph, take on Sevilla in the Champions League on Tuesday as they look to overturn a 2-1 deficit from the first leg.