indierich06

It's been mentioned in the Goodbye Vardy thread, but I thought it would be worth running a poll to see what the opinions are of people on this forum as to whether Vardy should return for one last season in L1. Would it tarnish his reputation? Would he still be an effective option for us? Would he help to restore some of the standards around the first-team squad?

One last dance.

Am I the only one who thinks this would be a good signing? Free transfer, experienced, relatively low wages. We're going to be basically building a squad from scratch. Yeah, we need to invest in players, but we're also going to need bodies through the door that are not going to cost us a load of money? Wednesday want to keep him, there are Championship clubs that are also interested in him - I don't think this is one that we can really afford to turn our nose up at?

"Scouts from Leicester, Barnsley, Oxford United, and even Doncaster manager Grant McCann, watched Abdul Abdulmalik, a Boreham Wood player and, in my opinion, the best player in the National League, live yesterday. He lost the final yesterday, but he's going to play in the EFL."

Yes, this clearly shows that Rowett is still in the mix for next season because if he wasn't, then they could have just sacked him and announced that they were looking for a new manager.

I think we're seeing that it's very easy to talk a good game from the outside looking in. It's very easy to talk about the need for high standards and for the importance of culture - but then you get these people through the door, that all seems to go out the window. They revert to the same old problem of picking established pros in the belief that that will somehow get us out of the problems that we're in, when any of the fans can see that it's their attitudes and lack of interest that are the real issue. We've had two managers now who have not had the courage to sideline 'big' names and focus on talented young prospects, all in the pursuit of getting results, even when it's shown not to work. How can Monga be any worse than Mavididi? How can Page be any worse than Skipp or Winks? How can Evans be any worse than Ayew or Daka? How can Aluko be any worse than Thomas or Kristiansen?

Any assurances they give Page about game time probably won't be worth the paper they're written on, given that they probably said then same to Monga last season when we got relegated from the PL to get him to stay. Reaping what we've sown yet again.

Feels like a long time.

To be fair, who the hell else would you make captain in this squad? Ricardo is pretty much the only model professional we have, and probably one of the very few players who the fans don't actively hate.

If Vardy had been playing for a top 6 club, he would be lauded as one of the greatest English strikers of all time - he would have had many more England caps and goals too. People call Kane world class, Vardy has won more than him playing for a much smaller team, he's got the 11-in-a-row record... absolutely unbelievable striker. Mahrez and Kante definitely in the same bracket as well.

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?