indierich06

I dunno, 5 years since we won the FA cup and performances were on the slide before then. Half a decade is a long time.

Don't even remember this bloke from the academy - good record in League One last season though.

He was hired to do firefighting job with a bunch of players who are checked out, disinterested and bereft of confidence. To be clear he should NOT get the job for next season, I agree that he should have done better with the games we had, but I think the main reason we got relegated is because of a) the boards utter mismanagement of this club over the last few years and b) the players who simply don't want to be here. I doubt any manager could have got much more out of these absolute freeloaders, and I can't wait to see the back of the overwhelming majority of them, as I suspect do most fans. BUT Rowett is bang on when he says that we need to use this as a chance to have a cultural reset and rediscover our identity - and we can't leave that down to Top and Rudkin who just bury their heads in the sand, make the same mistakes over and over again, with no real clue what they want to do, or how to achieve it. I don't think they should just implement whatever Rowett says - but if he comes in and tells them we need to build a hungry squad, ditch the high wages and the egos, rebuild the underdog spirit that we had under Pearson, then they need to hear that. This is probably the only time they will hear someone with an actual football background tell them how it is - I doubt they are seeking out opinions on how they can do things differently, simply because Top and Rudkin have never taken responsibility for anything that has happened to this club, unless it's positive.

I think having some young players who actually want to play for the club will get a large proportion of the fanbase more engaged. Who are these European quality midfielders we've had recently by the way? Skipp, Soumare, Winks, Choudhury? Even Tielemans, Maddison and Ndidi were ****ing turd by the end.

He is absolutely right on this front btw - I don't think he's the right man for the job, but I hope the board listens to what he has to say rather than just telling Rudkin to crack on.

https://www.tipsbladet.dk/nyhed/superliga/kristiansen-om-fck-jeg-har-en-livline-derinde Vague stuff in here about him possibly returning to Copenhagen. Please for the love of god be true!

Seems like that's just the way of things now. Clubs decide what style of football they want to play, what players they want to buy. The manager has some input, as we've seen unfortunately with the likes of Steve Cooper, who I think was partly responsible for bringing the likes of Ayew, Skipp and BDCR to the club, but by and large the managers seem to identify types of players they want or positions they want to strengthen, and then the club goes out and finds players that meet those attributes. It makes sense to an extent if the club has got an established identity and way of playing, and a dedicated scouting network - they want to find a manager who will suit the players they already have at their disposal. But in our case, it seems to be that we just buy random players and appoint random managers, and none of it makes any sense.

Agree on this. The manager is likely to have very little say in the recruitment of players anyway, so if we keep getting this wrong, it won't matter who we get in. The most important thing I think we need from a manager at the minute is someone who can be a man-manager and reset standards/attitudes at the club - style of play is almost immaterial if the attitudes stink.

I think it's more likely that they'll just mothball large parts of it, cut the staff to the bone, close the hotel aspect of it until we're back in a position where we can afford to run it. Maybe even sell off parts of the land - we really don't need 14 full size pitches. Then probably sell Belvoir Drive instead.

He's only down the road from Seagrave as well, probably wouldn't even have to move. Pay rise, better facilities than he'll get anywhere in the Championship. Feels like a no brainer, but watch this lot **** it up.

Yes, agreed. I don't think it even needs to be a 'hard man' or an authoritarian necessarily. Pearson always seemed to be able to command respect and set standards without needing to resort to those kind of tactics. The players all loved him and would have run through walls for him.

From what I've read, investment via the ownership, in terms of gifting the club money (not loans though) is basically fine, and if Top wants to, he could more or less invest as much money as he wants, and this would count as turnover for the purposes of the salary cost management protocol. There is also a transitional period for newly relegated clubs as well, so we should be able to spend 75% of our revenue on player wages in our first season as a League One club rather than the standard 60%. Financial losses and restrictions on investment don't apply in the same way as they did in the Premier League and the Championship - although there is apparently a staggering calculation which means that only 60% of investments over one million can be included in turnover. In simple maths, if Top invested £10m, then £6m of that would be added to turnover. And then, because of the 75% first season transition allowance, it would give us an extra £4.5m in terms of additional wage headroom. Birmingham used stadium naming rights (£9.5m p/y) to boost their commercial turnover in League One. Shirt sponsorship would be a lever that King Power could use again. These sponsorship deals seem to be a lot less regulated in lower leagues. The question is more whether he actually has the ability to do that, given the state of King Power's finances and the fact that so much of his personal wealth is tied up with the King Power Group. Actually, who knows if he even has the desire to do that?

No, but I think the context of Fuchs' existing relationship with this club and its fans, coupled with what he's achieved at Newport and the fact that he clearly wants the job, means that he will be talked about in connection with the vacancy. For what it's worth, I think the club are more likely to go with a 'name', but as I've mentioned in previous posts, I think the key job this summer is to get someone in who can reset standards across the football club, and that's something he appears to have done in an - albeit short - stint at Newport. Although he never played under Nigel Pearson, he was a Pearson signing, and the majority of that squad who won the Premier League really embodied the spirit and standards that we have been sorely lacking in recent years. So, in terms of helping the club to rediscover and reconnect with its identity, Fuchs could be an interesting option - I really think we should be prioritising a man-manager over a tactician this time around. I think it's probably too soon for Christian Fuchs, and he would do well to get some managerial experience under his belt at a few different clubs, maybe at League One level, if he can get a job at that level - I think there would be other clubs in the division that would be willing to take a punt on him after what he achieved at Newport.

The only thing that really excites me and gives me hope about the future of this football club is some of the exciting talent that we've got coming through the academy, both in terms of players that are currently out on loan and performing really well in League One and Two, and in terms of the players we've got at the club who have started to make the breakthrough to the first team as well. Tom Wilson-Brown, Sammy Braybrooke, Jayden Joseph, Henry Cartwright, Will Alves and Jake Evans should all be involved in the first team squad next season after doing well on loan. Then you've got the likes of Ben Nelson, Jeremy Monga, Louis Page, Olabade Aluko who are already with the first team - though I accept that some of these might end up getting sold - as well as Kevon Gray, Kirsten Otchere, and Logan Briggs, who are all knocking on the door as well in the u21s. Darren Motsi (although looks as if he will probably leave the club this summer), Lorenz Hutchinson and Riley Carr in the u18s too. That's a core of about 16 players that we really should be looking to build the future of the club around, even if we do end up having to sell a couple of them. I just think it's such an easy win for the club as well because the fans are so desperate to see players in the squad they can connect with, and homegrown players who have been with the club for years are always more likely to generate this connection than mercenaries brought in from outside. I do think fans will be much more patient with our younger players - though given the abuse that Choudhury, Thomas, and Nelson often get on a regular basis, rightly or wrongly, perhaps not. If we can get rid of the majority of our current crop of players, who are overpaid, have poor attitudes, and think they're too good to play for Leicester City in League One, and then build a new squad around this mix of young players and smart acquisitions which give us experience and maturity, then there is a real opportunity for us to not only bounce back in League One next season, but for us to really see a transformation of Leicester City and a reset of standards at the club. That is the slim hope that I'm holding on to, and if that's what comes out of us being relegated to League One, rather than limping on in the championship with this same crop of players who just don't care about the fans or the club, then that will probably be a good thing.

I do agree with all of this, and I think the stats show that we actually performed better than the results suggest, but at the end of the day, it is a results game. One of the key reasons for everything that has happened this season, outside of the utter incompetence at board level, is the players themselves. I think they've lost interest, and I think the majority of them don't want to be here. So I do feel for Rowett in that regard, as it's very hard to motivate a set of people who have basically thrown the towel in. My main reservation about hiring Rowett full time is that we're going to have to focus on the products of the youth academy quite a lot - there is going to be a significant rebuild this summer, with a lot of players leaving the club and a lot of new players coming in, and I'm unsure if I want someone like Rowett to have a say in the nature of that rebuild, given his clear preference for more experienced journeyman players. He didn't really utilize any of the youth players in the squad during his short time in charge of the team this season. It could be said that he was trying to rely on more experienced professionals to grind out results instead of taking a chance on youth, but there's nothing to suggest, based on his managerial history, that he'll suddenly pivot towards building a side around youth as well as experience. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if he were keen on keeping someone like Jordan Ayew at the club as an 'experienced head' - something I think would be extremely toxic for both the 'new' playing squad and the fan base. I also find a lot of his starting line-ups and in-game management to be baffling, to be honest as well. I know he's only got a limited pool of players to pull from, but some of the substitutions he makes are genuinely strange - like when we played our way back into the game against Hull, scoring two goals, only for him then to take off James, our best player, and bring on Winks and immediately throw points away. Whoever the next manager is, they're going to need to oversee a complete reset of standards at the club. I think that's the most important thing that we need to crack for this League One season. Whether that's someone who knows the club like Fuchs, or Pearson, or someone entirely different. Professional standards at Leicester City Football Club are at an all-time low, and that needs to change rapidly. I do actually think this relegation will help in that regard, in terms of the number of players that are going to be leaving the club. It's a real opportunity to clear out some bad apples and start afresh. We just really need to make sure we get this summer right in terms of the managerial appointment and in terms of the recruitment we do, and unfortunately, our recent track record in this department is pretty poor.

Agreed - clubs will look at a lot of the players in this squad and think they were simply underperforming for a season, and it's more just down to the toxic environment at the club. In some cases they're probably not wrong, to be honest. Whoever is in charge of negotiating player exits this summer has got a really difficult job on, the club are going to want to secure fees for players to help finance a rebuild, but the fees are going to need to be low enough that the buying clubs will be able to then spend a bit more on the inflated wages that these players are currently on. If it's Rudkin, then we're in trouble, as he has got a very, very poor track record on this front.

You just know he will end up scoring some 40-yard screamer after being anonymous for the rest of the World Cup. Hopefully that will push his price up by a few million quid.

This has got to be a windup 😂

I mean, he sounds great - but why the **** would he come here?

I think there's one bloke whose job is pretty safe

We have an option but he has final say. I doubt he will be short of suitors in the Championship.

Tbh there will probably be Championship clubs looking at a striker who's just bagged 20+ goals in League One, which basically puts us out of the running.

Would obviously be great, but there's no suggestion he's in any trouble at Stoke if there? Doubt we'd be able to lure him even if he was out of work tbh.

Fuchs has done an 'ok' job at best - of course you have to take into account the fact that he took over when they were rock bottom of the league - but his stats don't make for great reading to be fair. They concede fewer goals under him - makes sense given he was a defender - but their PPG and GPG aren't anything to write home about. Again, it needs context - but historically Newport are better than this.