Kitchandro

The Martin apologists have already spawned on this thread I see. The objective has to be some long term optimism and enjoyment from watching football. With Martin we get a certainty of continuing to play horrible to watch, slow football that will be utterly destroyed at the level we are aiming to play at. It would be an unforgivable, totally unprofessional appointment on the level of Cooper and RVN. I want nothing to do with the club if he’s the manager. I mean I’ve already stopped watching but I guess I’ll start burning my retro shirts or something if he’s our choice.

Can’t wait for the justifications from some fans for going to this.

He’s not trying to win. You can’t argue that he is. Another unchanged side. We should be able to cancel his contract for breaching it.

This bloke is on the wind up, no question.

That’s not the way Russel Martin teams play. So he wouldn’t do that.

And Ranieri. People act like he never even existed. We wouldn’t have won the league with Pearson’s tactics.

Personally I think players should live in the area. It’s a local sports team, you’re supposed to representing the community. Footballers have an immensely privileged lifestyle without contributing anything tangible to society. The mitigation is that they’re supposed to be inspiring the local community. If you don’t fancy living in or around the city, you’re essentially disrespecting it and you’re certainly not connecting with it. I’ve said it before, a club without pride in itself is worthless. The players aren’t proud to be a part of it.

We’ve had these owners for 15 years, different managers have brought different fortunes. Of course it can make a difference. Whether it will result in a complete turnaround in fortunes is another matter. But we can organise a defence better, score an actual goal, win a match even. And if a new manager has a longer preparation he could make us competitive in the long run. The thread asks what we would do. Top would hire a crap manager, I’d hire a good one. But the club needs some self-respect first - Ruud needs to go without question.

I honestly think that back 4 was better. Some of them had solid Premier League careers after.

We weren’t 95% down a few weeks ago when he could also have been sacked. So it’s a weak argument. If we are down, and the manager we have is completely irrelevant, put him on gardening leave (or whatever it is), and we’ll just have the team run by, well, literally anyone. Give it to Andy King, give it to a fan, let the players run it democratically. If the players are so bad that they can’t possibly be coached better than this, as is regularly suggested on here, why bother having a manager? The reason he should have been sacked already is because yes, we should have some pride. It cannot possibly get any worse. It’s impossible. A club without pride has no worth whatsoever, it then merely exists as a business and is therefore meaningless as a sporting and community entity. Because local sporting institutions are about pride and competitiveness. In any case, a professional football club worth so many millions should be trying, not giving up. That’s what I expect. Sack the guy out of principle. Because you care and have standards. That’s a very good reason to do something in any context.

Top ambitions makes it sound like we think Top is ambitious. The media already think it’s all about Rudkin so they could easily read it as Rudkin’s decisions are undermining Top. We need to be clearer about what the message is.

Isn’t the point here though that our success was not based on money? It was down to Pearson and Walsh knowing what players to get. They were bringing in nobodies from Man Utd reserves and the French 2nd division. The wages we were spending were likely a hangover from the Sven days. The point is we were successful because of managers like Pearson and Ranieri. Signing a few cheques doesn’t mean squat if you spend it like Sven, Rodgers and Cooper did. So if the conversation is about the foundations of our former success - it’s all to do with recruitment strategy and standards. Things we had under Pearson because he recruited well and had standards. Those foundations were not Lloyd Dyer or Steve Howard, they were the ability to consistently recruit the right players for reasonable fees.

I think you make some excellent points here, but I’m interested in the bit in bold. See below: The obvious thing to me that ties all this together is what attracts the sort of fans that support the team like this. For me it’s everything to do with a club being fashionable. Exciting football makes a club fashionable to an extent. Being media darlings, constantly referred to as mad dogs, is another factor (Millwall and Leeds play up to a stereotype, as do the Scots, Geordies do by taking their shirts off etc). Old, unique, atmospheric stadiums are another factor. The club is a world away from that clip. We’ve moved to a generic bowl too far from the pitch (I know that clip is an away game but still relevant). We’re advertised as a family club (AKA a corporate club). There’s no perception of a fanbase acting like a working class community representing themselves and having an identity to live up to. In other words, for several reasons, we aren’t the sort of club that is going to attract the sort of vocal fans in a certain age range who are defiantly passionate about their local club…anymore. We’re not cool enough.

Who signed Reid, Ayew, Skipp and that bloke from Palace who can’t get in the squad again? ’No manager could do a good job with these players’ is not a defence of Cooper, it’s a damning indictment of his abilities.

BECAUSE one manager being crap doesn’t mean another one isn’t. It’s a basic concept. Neither manager should have been hired and I refuse to believe there isn’t someone out there who can’t 1) have a more positive attitude and 2) try a different system like 2 up front and/or 3 at the back.

He’s a billionaire. Not your mate.

I think you’re missing the point - the flip side of yours. If fans are treated like customers, an inconvenience, people the club can squeeze for all they’ve got - they are rightly going to be less forgiving when things aren’t on the pitch aren’t good. Because what else is there? Fans aren’t enjoying themselves at the football anymore, it’s not ‘their thing’, it’s a corporate, empty, meaningless sport and our club is one of the worst examples. So their mood is already off before you factor in losing every week. One thing I would have added to the article is years of negative football. Not being good enough is one thing, almost never being entertained is another. Again, that makes fans less forgiving when results don’t go well. I remember some games, like that 5-2 defeat to Arsenal in 2015, where I could accept losing because we really gave it a go.

Some great points on here. Reminds me of West Ham. Everyone outside of West Ham think their fans are ungrateful and stupid for being anti-Moyes. I know after our experience with Rodgers that their fans are absolutely right. And winning a 3rd rate European trophy (essentially the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy but you get to go to Eastern European one-horse towns instead of Stockport) is no defence. Football is completely different when you’re paying through the nose to watch the only club you’ll ever support. Especially when there’s opinions coming from rich people who are paid to watch random games and changed their clubs as often as some people change their trousers.

Crap teams always pick up more points than you think they will. Main examples being about 10 teams everyone thought might beat Derby’s lowest points record but they always manage to clear it with room to spare. Even under Tater Peeler / Basset / Adams we got 28. I think we’ll get about 10-12 more points, eventually we’ll get some luck or play a team out of form / on the beach. Finish 2nd bottom.

Nah, some of us are fed up of years of negative football that we had under Puel, Rodgers and then Cooper. The main reason I stopped going (though there many other reasons for not starting going again). The club has absolutely no worth if you don’t want to watch them. It’s a spectator sport.

Not the point really, it would nice of them to do their job and at least briefly analyse the problems that might have caused us be in such a state. When it’s Man Utd, Newcastle etc, we get that. It’s like they just expect us to be this bad ‘because it’s Leicester’. Was even the case when we got relegated with top 6 players. The nose dive from this club over the past 3 years warrants attention. We shouldn’t expect to be so far behind the likes of Fulham, Palace, Bournemouth, Brentford, Forest. These are nothing clubs and it wasn’t an inevitability.

The media aren’t reporting this so it obviously didn’t work. They’re reporting only that we’ve turned on the manager.

I don’t really get the argument that ‘it won’t make a difference’. I’d still rather have a better manager in charge. Even if he can’t turn fortunes around this season, a progressive manager with a good style of football might be something to build on - maybe even entertain us a bit - a crazy idea I know! He might improve players and get the best out of them. Great managers do that. I would prefer that to 4 months of just accepting our fate and going down with a whimper. And it’s irrelevant we can’t trust the board to hire the right man, this is a discussion forum, all of it is theoretical anyway.

Time to point out that one person being crap doesn’t make someone else good, because that doesn’t seem clear to some people. Almost no one can come out of today with any credit. Yes Kristiansen was at fault for the 2nd, but Justin is still awful. Yes Vardy, Mavididi and Buonanotte were shocking - so is Ayew (except he’s a pointless player even on a good day and that’s the point). Yes, Cooper was a terrible appointment. And yes, Rudkin and Top are mostly to blame for this predicament - but clearly Ruud is completely the wrong man for this job. We start games poorly with no game plan or attacking threat and his subs today were unacceptable. Losing 7 in a row. Regardless of everything else, Ruud isn’t getting anything out of the players. If we won’t roll the dice in the transfer market, we need to do it with a new manager. A professional football club, with the money they are all on, can’t just accept relegation and give up (even if I have).