Stadt

Fantastic as always, incredible eye for detail, coincidence and serendipity @kushiro

Good to know we operate in a way befitting a business turning over nine figures!

I think it’s more likely the club just operate on a whim and not procedurally at all. If you didn’t trust your DoF you’d replace him, not go over his head and leave him in his post.

Almost finished the first

Started on True Detective, very compelling. HBO nail their big budget series.

It’s only ever managers who get sacked at Leicester and were slow to do that. It’s only Shakespeare who got the boot early. Rodgers, Puel & Ranieri were given lots of time.

Seems to happen a lot

It'll look great until the utilities companies have to dig something up months after completion, then just tarmac over it

Keep the save but move clubs, **** them over

Get on the phone to directors, owners, agents, chief scouts, heads of recruitment - offer loan deals, offer favourable deal structures whatever. He'll be doing some of this already obviously but he's not good at it. It's also his (partially or largely) it's fault they're on silly deals too. Some clubs shift deadwood better than others. Torino were interested in Praet, ok they might have lowballed us but has it been better paying his wages and barely playing, or should we have cut our losses? We don't move players on well, club aren't blank slates with binary 'player will sell Y or N' options, DoFs have agency. Everton https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-everton/alletransfers/verein/29 Southampton https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/alletransfers/verein/180

"It's not that simple, someone has to want them, these sorts are on big contracts and big wages, no one will pay it but us"

Nothing ever happens

We blew CL qualification twice and didn't strengthen in January either time, we're in pole position to go up now but it's not unassailable. Just a little bit more dynamism in shifting players out, a few permanents, few loans gives us the headroom to get us the 6/8 option we sorely lack. Instead we're hamstrung by previous clangers, transfer ghosts (Praet, Ward, Smithies, Soumare etc). Rudkin can't kick things on because he's forever shooting himself in the feet.

He's been here since 2003, a lot of people owe their current roles to him so there won't be many rocking the boat. Not-losing-face and loyalty are seemingly core tenets of KP's leadership, hence why nobody gets sacked aside from the manager - even then it's slow. He's: Leicester City Director of Football Leicester City Academy Director OH Leuven Director Head of Ops (or similar) for King Power Racing He's either excellent at his job or he's overworked, it's not the former. New appointments with solid track records like Paul McGuinness, Dmitri Hajalko, Inigo Idiakez, Mladen Sormaz and Eduarrdo Maia didn't stick around for very long. There could be all sorts of reasons but it's not encouraging. The Sam Wallace article before relegation says, "No-one from the Leicester hierarchy talks publicly. The club is run by two executives who have access to the ultimate decision maker, Vichai’s son Top and the new king of owners King Power. Susan Whelan runs the commercial side of the club as chief executive but does not touch football decisions. Rudkin reports directly to Top, as he did Vichai, and is his boss’ chief advisory voice on all matters from signings to managerial sackings and appointments."

Fire away

The Bruma and PVA loans were fine, not a 5 and a 4. Beckford definitely not a 6. Knockaert wasn't a 9. Upon was more of a 5 or a 6 not a 3. Mendy was a 5 or 6. Ward 4 !!!! Perez and Praet 5 Daka should be a 6 Coady 4

People don't talk about adverts very often now, what was the last classic ad?

Yeah, it was a half measure when the club made the section - if they'd have just grasped the nettle and moved everybody out (as is their right per T&Cs) it'd be better.

And the same size as the part of your brain UFS lives in

Who comes in for Fatawu is the obvious question. Davies for them at LB is one of their key men but he doesn't seem all that physical to me but his delivery is great. I'm not a big McAteer fan but I think he works hard enough to track back and he should be threat in transition as well as aerially.

Huth has completed a course in sport directorship or something along those lines. I can't remember who said it but in a podcast I heard somebody in the game refer to loans manager role as a great pathway to being a DoF too. David Weir did it at Brighton.

It's monkey see, monkey do with standing - people just go with the crowd, what percentage of an away end want to sit but stand, 10, 20%? Plus our ground has very little segmentation to it, there's lots of current sitters who'd prefer to stand but it's just not possible where they are. For whatever reason they just haven't moved to a standing area, open up an area as a designated standing area and people would move into it, that'd involve some proactivity from the club though.

With clubs notoriously underpaying non-playing/managerial staff I suppose a or 2x or 3x salary increase would be hard to turn down

I wanted them to invest in us at one stage because of Sormaz's role there, I got that one wrong

From the Percy articles last year it was Rudkin that gave Rodgers carte blanche, whichever way you slice it, he's a serious problem. It's reductive to say it's all him as Top and Whelan are his superiors but as the literal director of football responsible for negotiating transfers and contracts - he should veto signings like Ward, Vestergaard, Praet when they were never going to be starters, represented a big outlay and long contracts with unsustainable wages. DoFs have agency (or should have), it's like he's just a functionary, a rubber stamp, rather than the strategic vision behind the footballing operations. Given he supposedly didn't even interview Maresca we have serious issues behind the scenes. If Rudkin is key to KP's horse racing he's far too close to Top, the DoF should be an independent voice rather than a lackey.