Mistakes at Leicester City? At least 17 and those responsible shouldn’t stay another day
Since Leicester City’s relegation from the Premier League was confirmed, a lot of people have had a lot to get off their chests. Chris Rice is feeling detached from the football club he loves.
It has been a couple of days since our relegation was finally confirmed and we were all put out of our collective misery. Replacing that misery is, unfortunately, yet more misery. A summer spent reflecting on what went wrong, what is to come and what might change. It’s the latter, for me, that is the biggest cause for this fresh wave of misery.
The club, or more to the point Top, has really mismanaged their way into a tight corner here. He strongly values his personal relationships with the senior personnel at his businesses and in the case of Jon Rudkin, Susan Whelan and Andrew Neville they have been in charge during periods of immense success, and of course immense tragedy. The senior leadership team at the club is a tight knit group that has been shaped and strengthened by those successes and that tragedy.
The danger right now is that Top’s personal relationships with these key stakeholders in our decline will blind him from the obvious facts staring him in the face. A club falling so rapidly from the heights we were at, with the squad and infrastructure that we had, can’t happen without incompetence and ineptitude playing a starring role.
Time for a list
On and off the pitch the club is, and I don’t use this word lightly, a shambles. So many of the post-mortem styled articles over the last few days have listed out all that is wrong with this club and this one won’t be any different.
In Top’s statement he listed out all of King Powers achievements at the club and he did so, seemingly, for context. I’m doing the same thing here also for context.
So here goes, in no particular order *deep breath*…
1. Letting half of the squad run their contracts down
2. Not selling want-away players
3. Giving huge long contracts to poor and/or injury-prone players
4. Selling your club captain and club legend on the eve of the season, but not replacing him
5. Appalling recruitment
6. Allowing Rodgers to heavily influence recruitment (see point 5)
7. Hiring his incompetent mate as Head of Recruitment (see point 5)
8. Incredible levels of injuries throughout the club
9. Allowing Rodgers to heavily influence fitness and conditioning (see point 8)
10. Promising Rodgers a rebuild
11. Not giving Rodgers a rebuild
12. Allowing Rodgers to throw a tantrum at every opportunity about the lack of a rebuild
13. A matchday experience so bad that other clubs regularly ridicule us
14. Treating fans like the enemy, in a season when unity was so badly needed
15. A ticketing and retail operation that makes you wonder how King Power made their money in the first place
16. Building a training ground that has been compared to a holiday camp and has encouraged players to live outside of Leicestershire
17. … and last, but not least, sticking with a manager that had clearly past his sale by date 2 years ago, then sacking him one match after the final international break of the season.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve missed out at least ten more, but I’m too miserable to carry on.
A shell of a club
The biggest criticism I can throw the club’s way, however, is how detached I have personally felt from the club over the past couple of years. That isn’t just because of results, it’s because the team I’ve been watching, and the club as a whole, don’t reflect the Leicester City that I love.
The club feels as far detached as physically possible from what the fans want and crave. In essence we feel like a shell of a club, with the memories of 2016 and 2021 rattling around hauntingly inside.
What is clear is that as a collective group the leaders at the club have made a long series of terrible decisions. The plan over the last 24 months appears to have been to close their eyes very tightly and hope that the collective genius of Rodgers, Tielemans and Maddison will see us through. We’ll Be Fine FC.
Jon Rudkin is currently getting the most flak, not helped by his perfect impression of a cardboard cut out when Harvey Barnes scored the opening goal on Sunday.
As head of football operations he is the man who understandably should be taking the largest portion of the blame. He’s also the person best placed to explain this sorry mess and communicate the plans to solve it going forward.
Don’t hold your breath though.
Turning the tanker
When Nigel Pearson was here, he and his team took care of devising the blueprint and vision for the playing style, recruitment and sports science. They were given autonomy over a large chunk of the club, to great success. More recently we allowed Rodgers the same autonomy, with disastrous consequences.
As a result of this the club have decided that the different departments within the club should be controlled more separately. Not a bad idea, but when it’s Rudkin making these appointments then there is always disaster lurking around the corner.
Why not hire Southampton’s Head of Recruitment? A club who have declined year on year recently, in part due to poor recruitment. Also, when has poaching from Southampton ever failed us?
So, what now? Previous relegations have been followed pretty sharply by a sense of optimism, whether that be in the form of Micky Adams, Pearson or a group of sensible, hungry signings. A sense that a purge and reset may be helpful in the long run.
Currently, this optimism feels a long way off. Maybe we’ll get the managerial appointment right and maybe we’ll have a stellar transfer window, but what about those people at the top? The people ultimately responsible for this capitulation?
What are the chances of those people being held fully accountable? About 5,000 to 1, I reckon.
