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Stevosevic

Worst ever top flight Leicester City team?

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Taylor wins this by a country margin, "Oi, Martin take this Lennon fella, I've got Matt ****ing Jones". It was apparent after the first ten minutes of that Bolton game that we were history.

 

I'm not sure we learnt the lesson though. In May 2001 it was already clear, after record expenditure and a record-breaking run of losses, that Taylor was going to end badly. We didn't pull the trigger until the end of September and came to regret it.

 

With retrospect, we have to wonder what might have happened had we been a bit ruthless in our past. O'Neill's position shouldn't even have been queried in March 1996, as it was, but there are quite a few disastrous regimes we had perfectly good reasons to call time on long before we did. In addition to the obvious Taylor / Hamilton examples, what if Adams' resignation had been accepted after La Manga? We were on the verge of survival at the time, having just beaten Birmingham. What if we'd got rid of Sven when his promotion charge collapsed in early 2011, before he'd broken the bank the following summer? 

 

Not sacking a manager on the downward slope has come back to haunt us more than once in recent years. But our record of actually sacking managers isn't a bad one.

 

Hamilton's sacking led to survival under Pleat. Pleat's sacking led to survival under Lee. The decision not to renew Lee's contract led to three (eventually successful) play-offs under Little. Nobody could seriously argue with Taylor's sacking. Levein's sacking led to survival under Kelly. Holloway's sacking led to revival under Pearson. Sousa's sacking led to us going from bottom to the verge of a play-off place. Sven's sacking eventually led to promotion under Pearson.

 

Only two sackings can seriously be questioned. And there's little in Rob Kelly's and Martin Allen's subsequent careers to suggest that the decision didn't make sense.

 

So I never understand why Leicester fans are so scared of sacking their manager. And there's a reason why there's such a good correlation between successful sackings and the club being on a downward spiral at the time; just as there's more instances of regretting not having pulled the trigger when a side is in freefall, than regretting having pulled it.

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Well that's just wrong. More sides have stayed up as a percentage in the past five years than in the five years before promotion under both of those managers. We went into this in another thread.

 

So, taking that into consideration, he's done an even more awful job than it initially appeared.

Well, seeing that it's not what I said, it is not wrong at all. I was making a point about the disparity in the league between the top teams and the ones at the bottom - all of it money-related.

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If they had been available or if the funds had been made available - in the end, it's all down to conjecture.

 

You can only be let down by something if your subjective expectations surpass reality.

so  let's clear this up once and for all.

with all the money behind us and lack of debt this was the best  season  for two decades to get a foothold in  the PL and build upward.

and it's been wasted.

 

how low were your expectations???

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Well, seeing that it's not what I said, it is not wrong at all. I was making a point about the disparity in the league between the top teams and the ones at the bottom - all of it money-related.

 

You were saying that us being bottom (while Adams did a little better with a newly-promoted side and O'Neill did a great deal better with a newly-promoted side) can largely be put down to it being harder for a small, newly-promoted side like we are now to finish higher up the Premier League. 

 

Well, in terms of finishing 17th or above, it quite categorically isn't. So if 17th is what we class as 'higher' (and it is, of course) then you are wrong.

 

As for greater disparity between the top and bottom, look at how many sides had won the Premier League up until O'Neill's departure in 2000. It's always been dominated by the biggest spenders. Or consider why O'Neill was ever considered to be such a great manager in the first place (namely, that in those days it was very rare for a promoted team with no sugar daddy to finish high up the table, and more often than not they went down).

 

And there are still smaller teams who become successes in this league (Southampton, Swansea, West Brom, Stoke, West Ham - all of which have occupied similar and, in some cases, better league positions to us in the O'Neill era) but we're not going to be one of them, not this time. Not with this manager, unless this manager has a far greater capacity to learn and get better than he's demonstrated this season.

 

That's not because it's harder to get a result out of Manchester City now than it was to get out of Manchester United in the late 90s. Because that's not true either. It's because we're bloody awful and almost every other Leicester side ever to play at this level has been better than us.

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Peter Taylor was infinitely worse than any other manager at Premier League level. He took a good team and stripped it bare, offered ludicrous contracts to rubbish and ruined everything he touched.

 

Its harsh to talk about Basset and Adams who were picking up his pieces, but at least got the team competitive and managed to bring in Paul Dickov who turned out to be one of the catalyst's to the following seasons promotion.

 

This is a decent team, but its being managed terribly.

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so  let's clear this up once and for all.

with all the money behind us and lack of debt this was the best  season  for two decades to get a foothold in  the PL and build upward.

and it's been wasted.

 

how low were your expectations???

We would've had to spend a lot more money on a lot more expensive and experienced players, essentially getting close to a wholesale change (with a few exceptions).

 

The management decided against it for whatever reason - be it down to trust in the manager or because they didn't want to spend that big in the first place. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

The lack of debt argument is a good one in relative terms because it should soothe everyone's fear of having to go through another four abysmal years full of threats of extinction above our heads and dull football served with a lot of exotic no-names like in between 2004-2008.

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You were saying that us being bottom (while Adams did a little better with a newly-promoted side and O'Neill did a great deal better with a newly-promoted side) can largely be put down to it being harder for a small, newly-promoted side like we are now to finish higher up the Premier League. 

 

Well, in terms of finishing 17th or above, it quite categorically isn't. So if 17th is what we class as 'higher' (and it is, of course) then you are wrong.

 

As for greater disparity between the top and bottom, look at how many sides had won the Premier League up until O'Neill's departure in 2000. It's always been dominated by the biggest spenders. Or consider why O'Neill was ever considered to be such a great manager in the first place (namely, that in those days it was very rare for a promoted team with no sugar daddy to finish high up the table, and more often than not they went down).

 

And there are still smaller teams who become successes in this league (Southampton, Swansea, West Brom, Stoke, West Ham - all of which have occupied similar and, in some cases, better league positions to us in the O'Neill era) but we're not going to be one of them, not this time. Not with this manager, unless this manager has a far greater capacity to learn and get better than he's demonstrated this season.

 

That's not because it's harder to get a result out of Manchester City now than it was to get out of Manchester United in the late 90s. Because that's not true either. It's because we're bloody awful and almost every other Leicester side ever to play at this level has been better than us.

I was saying that money had eaten a lot of the equality between teams in the top half and the ones at the bottom since we last graced the Premier League ten years ago.

I don't understand why you continue to put words in my mouth. You seem to tend to quote me on an almost completely different basis for an argument - are you reading my posts thoroughly at all? :D

 

I was also arguing that basing an opinion about our position in this league on points only is a one-sided approach, that (looking at the development over the past ten years) money has flooded this league and that there's (much) more greatly gifted foreign talent in the division than in 2003 and even more so than when O'Neill was in charge. The top teams, who are all highly unlikely to ever get relegated, have successfully established themselves and are maintaining their influence by a large web of talent scouting, reaping what they've been able to sow either with their scouting system or with their youth academies. The clubs in the middle (your Newcastles or Stokes) are all somewhat playing catching up with the trend.

 

Also, the Premier League is 23 years old now. And we've only had a few spells on this level, not even accounting for 50% of its existence:

1994-95: 29 points (19th; relegated)

1996-97: 47 points (9th)

1997-98: 53 points (10th)

1998-99: 49 points (10th)

1999-00: 53 points (8th)

2000-01: 48 points (13th)

2001-02: 28 points (20th; relegated)

2003-04: 33 points (18th; relegated)

 

80% of those finishes were under O'Neill and I'd argue, in the context of the club's entire history, the whole experience in between 1996 and 2001 (or 2002, depending on how you look at it) was a fluke and that such a success (over the five, six seasons that it lasted) will remain the exception to the rule. I can't see anyone ever repeating that feat in years or even decades to come.

 

It's not hard for you to compare us now with the sides O'Neill put out under those circumstances and claim "almost any other Leicester side at this level has been better than us", because it's going to remain bloody tough for any future Leicester side to live up to that heritage.

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PEARSON AINT GOT A CLUE SET OUT TO  DEFEND A GAME FOR 90 MIN & ONE UPO FRONT RUNNING AROUND LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN.

 

PEARSON U AINT GOT A CLUE RESIGN CAMBIASSO & PHILIPS TO TAKE OVER TILL THE END OF THE SEASON THEY CANT DO NO WORSE

 

PEARSON RESIGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

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Still maintain this is the worst top flight City side I have seen.

Littles team was hamstrung by hardly any cash and little investment when we got up, his best strike force being out for most of the campaign and then wanting out when he realised the board were not backing him with cash and Villa wanted him.

When McGhee came a board member had to scrump up the cash for Robins and we got Parker from a deal with Draper going to Villa.

Roberts ended the season has the top scorer on 11 in all competitions if I remember correctly.

Taylors ineptness slowly destroyed O'Neills legacy but there was still some quality there if badly used before he was rightly sacked and Mike Basset took over the sinking ship.

Adams sides put up quite a fight but were always undone in the final 10 minutes but he was also hamstrung by lack of investment and the mid season debacle with the rape accusations seem to have really messed with the teams spirit :dunno:

What hurts most about this time in the top flight is the fact we have broken our transfer record twice, have decent owners who are prepared to invest and yet bar the first handful of games we have been pretty mediocre and are rightly bottom of what peeps have referred to has a poor Premier League this season.

We started the season as a Wolverine and have slowly turned into a hedgehog.

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PEARSON AINT GOT A CLUE SET OUT TO DEFEND A GAME FOR 90 MIN & ONE UPO FRONT RUNNING AROUND LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN.

PEARSON U AINT GOT A CLUE RESIGN CAMBIASSO & PHILIPS TO TAKE OVER TILL THE END OF THE SEASON THEY CANT DO NO WORSE

PEARSON RESIGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Nice

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To me the side looks like what it is: a team whose manager hasn't properly addressed its glaring weaknesses.

 

We spent nearly all of our promotion budget on two centre forwards, and they've hardly played any game time together. We've not addressed our weakness at left back, or on the left wing, and we've counterbalanced our attempt to address weakness at CB by dropping our best-performing CB in the process, and playing a guy who has looked consistently out-of-sorts alongside a guy who is 36, just recovered from a long-term injury and was deemed not good enough at this level three years ago. We tried to address our weakness at RB by bringing in an equally inept right back, failed to add any steel to the centre of midfield, stuck repeatedly with formations which unlikely to deliver points and our manager hasn't once acknowledged that our performances were sub-standard.

 

Tonight wasn't a disgrace, though 22 shots to 6, 30% possession and a 0-2 loss should tell its own story, regardless of refereeing decisions. But 18 points from 27 is a disgrace. It's like losing 10-0 and saying that all of the goals were unlucky, or impossible to defend.

 

Make no mistake, after the dust has settled and we find ourselves a much-fancied Championship side again (much like we were when Pearson took over), we'll look back on this season as a calamity of errors, a catalogue of incompetence as appalling as anything in our club's lengthy top flight history.

 

Quite.  :appl:

 

I blame the owners for not getting rid of Pearson in November and then having kept his job, Pearson for not showing enough knowledge and imagination to grasp the opportunity he has been given.

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What really annoys me is, the defence needed improving big time from last season and 90% of Leicester fans knew this. I had doubts Morgan Konchesky and Wasyl wouldnt be up to it (Wasyl has been decent). Its been suicide this season with both Simpson and Morgan being absolutely useless for ages, unbelievably, Pearson is still blind to this. And as for not even putting Albrighton or De Laet on the bench? Well, this is getting boring now.

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Why compare to past seasons?

 

It's never been more uneven for promoted teams... teams at the top are practically unbeatable and then with teams who've been in the Premier League for years on end, like Stoke, Swansea, Villa, Sunderland, Newcastle, West Ham and all the others having an absolutely enormous advantage over a team like us who's had a decade out of it, even teams as bad as QPR & Burnley, who've been up - had the £90m, gone down & back up again should be way out of our league.

 

I don't think it's that often all 3 of the promoted sides go back down, and even though the other two have had the massive cash injection into the clubs from recent PL campaigns & associated parachute payments... it's proving tougher than ever

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PEARSON AINT GOT A CLUE SET OUT TO  DEFEND A GAME FOR 90 MIN & ONE UPO FRONT RUNNING AROUND LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN.

 

PEARSON U AINT GOT A CLUE RESIGN CAMBIASSO & PHILIPS TO TAKE OVER TILL THE END OF THE SEASON THEY CANT DO NO WORSE

 

PEARSON RESIGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

 

Yes let's get rid of a manager and give the job to two unproven footballers to run the club. Of course they can do worse. At the minute, we're still within reach (not exactly relegated are we).

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Yes let's get rid of a manager and give the job to two unproven footballers to run the club. Of course they can do worse. At the minute, we're still within reach (not exactly relegated are we).

 

One of whom, who is proving a pretty disastrous striker's coach/mentor... never mind overall manager

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To me the side looks like what it is: a team whose manager hasn't properly addressed its glaring weaknesses.

 

We spent nearly all of our promotion budget on two centre forwards, and they've hardly played any game time together. We've not addressed our weakness at left back, or on the left wing, and we've counterbalanced our attempt to address weakness at CB by dropping our best-performing CB in the process, and playing a guy who has looked consistently out-of-sorts alongside a guy who is 36, just recovered from a long-term injury and was deemed not good enough at this level three years ago. We tried to address our weakness at RB by bringing in an equally inept right back, failed to add any steel to the centre of midfield, stuck repeatedly with formations which unlikely to deliver points and our manager hasn't once acknowledged that our performances were sub-standard.

 

Tonight wasn't a disgrace, though 22 shots to 6, 30% possession and a 0-2 loss should tell its own story, regardless of refereeing decisions. But 18 points from 27 is a disgrace. It's like losing 10-0 and saying that all of the goals were unlucky, or impossible to defend.

 

Make no mistake, after the dust has settled and we find ourselves a much-fancied Championship side again (much like we were when Pearson took over), we'll look back on this season as a calamity of errors, a catalogue of incompetence as appalling as anything in our club's lengthy top flight history.

This".........top post spot on.

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Why compare to past seasons?

 

It's never been more uneven for promoted teams... teams at the top are practically unbeatable and then with teams who've been in the Premier League for years on end, like Stoke, Swansea, Villa, Sunderland, Newcastle, West Ham and all the others having an absolutely enormous advantage over a team like us who's had a decade out of it, even teams as bad as QPR & Burnley, who've been up - had the £90m, gone down & back up again should be way out of our league.

 

I don't think it's that often all 3 of the promoted sides go back down, and even though the other two have had the massive cash injection into the clubs from recent PL campaigns & associated parachute payments... it's proving tougher than ever

 

If we look at this season alone, we'll see that the reigning Champions have dropped plenty of points this season to lowly opposition. In fact games against the top quarter of the Premier League have been responsible for over a quarter of our current points total, so it doesn't suggest they're disproportionately 'unbeatable', nor does the fact that the reigning Champions are only nine points ahead of Southampton, or that Liverpool (who were among those who raided their squad over the summer, and were very nearly Champions last season) are only two points ahead of them, while Spurs (who are also supposedly among the elite) are behind them in the table.

 

We have to look at previous seasons as a guide because this one isn't finished yet. And we were promoted in a climate where 2/3 sides stayed up, and two thirds of sides over the past five years had stayed up. Ignoring this and saying that the past doesn't matter poses a great deal more problems. For instance, if the past doesn't matter, then we should only be judging Pearson on what he's doing now, rather than considering what he did in a Championship which is also, presumably, a different climate now and will be when we go back down to it.

 

Judging the difficulty of staying up in a Premier League which is, in comparison to the rest of Europe, weaker than it has been in a generation, purely on the strength of the bottom three placings in March - and ignoring all previous evidence - seems like taking selectiveness of facts to a new extreme.

 

 

 

80% of those finishes were under O'Neill and I'd argue, in the context of the club's entire history, the whole experience in between 1996 and 2001 (or 2002, depending on how you look at it) was a fluke and that such a success (over the five, six seasons that it lasted) will remain the exception to the rule. I can't see anyone ever repeating that feat in years or even decades to come.

 

It's not hard for you to compare us now with the sides O'Neill put out under those circumstances and claim "almost any other Leicester side at this level has been better than us", because it's going to remain bloody tough for any future Leicester side to live up to that heritage.

 

So you're resigned to us never being an established Premier League force again unless we have another 'fluke' like our success in the late 90s? I saw nothing flukey about it at the time, personally. And it wasn't the exception to the rule, in post-war football we've spent just under half of our time in the top flight. We've challenged for the title, been to eight domestic Cup Finals (winning two of them) and enjoyed plenty of respectable league finishes. 

 

The exception to the rule was not the mid-late 1990s, nor even the early to mid 1980s, or the mid-1970s, or the 1960s, or the late 1950s, but rather the last ten years. Or even this season; if we secure our lowest ever points total at this level, then it will also be an exception to the rule, by the very nature of it being our lowest ever points total at this level.

 

Leicester's history is one divided evenly between respectable Premier League finishes, yo-yos between the top two divisions and mediocrity in the second tier. The better managers, rather than just one flukey manager in the late 1990s, tended to lead us to the first of those three scenarios. The weaker managers tended to lead us to the latter.

 

Pearson is not one of our weaker managers, but at this level he appears to be.

 

For a side with that kind of history, it's going to be hard for us to achieve our realistic aims with a man who performs this badly at this level. So we come back to Pearson again. Is this debate really about what's best for Leicester City, or what's best in terms of viewing Pearson as a great manager of the club? It may well be that the only way we can seriously consider him to have been among the better managers in our history, is to entirely rewrite our history and pretend we're a club which once got into the PL, fluked it and did alright for a few years before returning to the doldrums where they belonged. But it's still incorrect.

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To me the side looks like what it is: a team whose manager hasn't properly addressed its glaring weaknesses.

 

We spent nearly all of our promotion budget on two centre forwards, and they've hardly played any game time together. We've not addressed our weakness at left back, or on the left wing, and we've counterbalanced our attempt to address weakness at CB by dropping our best-performing CB in the process, and playing a guy who has looked consistently out-of-sorts alongside a guy who is 36, just recovered from a long-term injury and was deemed not good enough at this level three years ago. We tried to address our weakness at RB by bringing in an equally inept right back, failed to add any steel to the centre of midfield, stuck repeatedly with formations which unlikely to deliver points and our manager hasn't once acknowledged that our performances were sub-standard.

 

Tonight wasn't a disgrace, though 22 shots to 6, 30% possession and a 0-2 loss should tell its own story, regardless of refereeing decisions. But 18 points from 27 is a disgrace. It's like losing 10-0 and saying that all of the goals were unlucky, or impossible to defend.

 

Make no mistake, after the dust has settled and we find ourselves a much-fancied Championship side again (much like we were when Pearson took over), we'll look back on this season as a calamity of errors, a catalogue of incompetence as appalling as anything in our club's lengthy top flight history.

Absolutely spot on. 

 

What a gut wrenching season this has been, thanks to the total lack of competence Pearson has displayed.

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So you're resigned to us never being an established Premier League force again unless we have another 'fluke' like our success in the late 90s? I saw nothing flukey about it at the time, personally. And it wasn't the exception to the rule, in post-war football we've spent just under half of our time in the top flight. We've challenged for the title, been to eight domestic Cup Finals (winning two of them) and enjoyed plenty of respectable league finishes. 

 

The exception to the rule was not the mid-late 1990s, nor even the early to mid 1980s, or the mid-1970s, or the 1960s, or the late 1950s, but rather the last ten years. Or even this season; if we secure our lowest ever points total at this level, then it will also be an exception to the rule, by the very nature of it being our lowest ever points total at this level.

 

Leicester's history is one divided evenly between respectable Premier League finishes, yo-yos between the top two divisions and mediocrity in the second tier. The better managers, rather than just one flukey manager in the late 1990s, tended to lead us to the first of those three scenarios. The weaker managers tended to lead us to the latter.

 

Pearson is not one of our weaker managers, but at this level he appears to be.

 

For a side with that kind of history, it's going to be hard for us to achieve our realistic aims with a man who performs this badly at this level. So we come back to Pearson again. Is this debate really about what's best for Leicester City, or what's best in terms of viewing Pearson as a great manager of the club? It may well be that the only way we can seriously consider him to have been among the better managers in our history, is to entirely rewrite our history and pretend we're a club which once got into the PL, fluked it and did alright for a few years before returning to the doldrums where they belonged. But it's still incorrect.

We've never been an "established Premier League team" since the league's inception twenty-three years ago, because we spent the majority of that period outside of the top flight (roughly 65% of it).

Again, you fail to see the picture that I've painted or the point I'm trying to make. I was talking about the bigger historical context (which is a given). Six straight years in the best league of the country pales in comparison to the league's history.

 

The club has spent more time outside of the top flight than being a part of it.

 

And it is getting harder to establish yourself in the Premier League.

 

To round this off, please tell me what "our realistic aims" are supposed to be according to your gospel?

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Pearson pushes Taylor for worst manager.

 

Have to agree with this. Can't understand the spell Pearson has got so many people under. Any other potential manager for this club gets slated for his results and deemed unworthy, yet Mr. Pearson isn't judged by the same criteria. Very curious!  

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Have to agree with this. Can't understand the spell Pearson has got so many people under. Any other potential manager for this club gets slated for his results and deemed unworthy, yet Mr. Pearson isn't judged by the same criteria. Very curious!  

 

Surely you have to take into account the circumstances, where they took over from, the state of the club?

 

Otherwise Pearson would be the best because his win rate was the highest. He isn't as good as O'Neill, Gillies and Bloomfield though, clearly.

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Surely you have to take into account the circumstances, where they took over from, the state of the club?

 

Otherwise Pearson would be the best because his win rate was the highest. He isn't as good as O'Neill, Gillies and Bloomfield though, clearly.

 

Can't deny that Pearson has a decent enough record as a lower league manager. But that was then and this is now. We are discussing Premiership or top flight performances. Pearson has been an utter disaster this season. As a player, when you play with the big boys you need to wise up instantly or get replaced. The same goes for the manager I fear!

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