Freeman's Wharfer

I hope he gets booed to the rafters the day he steps back in the King Power stadium in the opposition dugout. Speaking Spanish to Firmino whose mother tongue is Portuguese sums the cretin up. More about trying to showcase his Spanish than make his player at ease.

People are saying that it’s harder than it might look, so let’s have a look a couple of other clubs who have to be careful around FFP and what they managed to get done this summer… Southampton’s player sales for a fee: Ward-Prowse (West Ham) Tella (Bauer Leverkusen) Djenepo (Standard Liege) Nlandulu (Bolton) Chauke (Burton Albion) Orsic (Trabzonspor) Diallo (Al-Duhail) Livramento (Newcastle) Salisu (Monaco) Lavia (Chelsea) Olaigbe (Cercle Brugge) Bycroft (Swindon Town) 12 players shifted for a fee. Not all superstars that were cherry-picked. Many that will have been on decent wages and who were brought in for significant fees. Sold to all corners of the globe and all levels of the English football pyramid. Now let’s look at Everton: Price (Standard Liege) Nkounkou (Saint Etienne) Kean (Juventus) Simms (Coventry) Samuels-Smith (Chelsea) Cannon (Leicester) Iwobi (Fulham) Gray (Al-Ettifaq) 8 players sold for a fee. Again, sold around Europe and lower down the English pyramid. A nice fee in there from the Saudi gold rush to boot. Now let’s look at ourselves… We sold 5 (Maddison, Barnes, Castagne, Hirst and Odunze) for a fee. Three out of five I’d have been able to find a buyer for myself. Four out of five were sold to clubs in the English pyramid. So what is it about Leicester City that means we struggle to sell where other clubs don’t? How come we are unable to do business on the continent or in the Middle East? Why can other clubs shift players they don’t want, or need, for a fee, whereas we can only sell our coveted assets or release players on free transfers? Those of you who say it’s not like Football Manager are right. It requires a little black book of contacts. It requires a network. It requires favours from old friends and proactivity to get out and make connections before clubs even realise they have a need for a player. Is Mr Rudkin doing that? Did he build those agent and club connections when he was running the academy? Was he out in the market making things happen during the Thailand PR tour this summer or sat next to Top at functions and meaningless games like some sort of glorified Executive Assistant? You might want to cut him some slack. But until I’m told different than it’s his remit and his job to get players out of the door in a beneficial manner, I’ll continue to point the finger and demand a little more for the good of the club.

Pity he didn’t want to in that first half today

None of my business what my colleagues get up to at the weekend in their spare time. I don’t care how they vote, who they sleep with, what they say on the internet, what they eat or drink, where they go. I care about how they conduct themselves in the work place and how they get their job done. They’re colleagues, and that’s therefore the only business of theirs that I have any right to even start to take an interest in.

Massive fan of Union FS but can’t get behind the reluctance to entertain the idea of a singing section next to the away end. The main point is that it splits up those who want to sing at home games (regardless of the type of chants they like to sing). Say we have 3,000 of those people in the stadium, 1,500 in L1 and 1,500 at the other end of the stadium only dilutes the impact of either group (I’m in L1 and have seen singers leave to go to SK1). Those using the Brighton cup game as evidence it wouldn’t work is a bit unfair. It was a midweek Carabao cup game with about 25,000 in the stadium and not representative of a normal league game. The big opportunity this club and fan base has is the expansion. Move the family stand, make it safe standing and get Union FS and L1 evictees in there together and we’ll have something to work with. I already know it’ll be an opportunity missed.

Yeah, group of Coventry lads about 5 yards in front of us layed into some Leicester lads completely unprovoked. Strangely enough it was a group of stewards who arrived on the scene to break it up. From the sounds they carried on and found some new targets later on. We got massively lucky pre-match. Ended up walking the wrong way round the stadium and got to where the away end was but on the Coventry side of the police line. They started trying to break through the police to get at Leicester fans outside the away end and the police started hitting them back with batons. One of them had a full balaclava on with only eye holes. We had our Leicester scarves on in the middle of all this and a couple of them called us out but fortunately managed to turn back out of it sharpish. I stopped a few other Leicester fans heading that direction as well. The whole funnelling of fans around the stadium, and being able to end up in a bottleneck like that with the worst of their home fans, was poor crowd management. Sounds like it also happened with Leicester fans trying to get back to the train station as well.

It was an average end today. Not a bad one, an average one. But Hermansen, Faes, KDH and McAteer all asking for more noise in that second half. Can’t exactly say the away end helped in any regard with the 10-men challenge.

Rudkin’s inability to get unwanted players out of the door is hurting us again. If it’s not a big money departure of one or our best players, we’re horrendous at doing anything other than letting people walk for free or loans. I refuse to believe that a decent DOF over the past few years couldn’t have got a fee and sorted out a swifter exit for the likes of Perez, Mendy, Benkovic, Ghezzal. We must have a reputation within the game now that LCFC won’t turn down a loan offer and make you take a player on a permanent if you really want them. Praet, Ndidi and Iheanacho will all potentially walk from the club this summer with no fee in return. These are players that are current internationals for countries of relatively decent calibre in the international game (and not the first to go for nothing after Tielemans, Amartey and Soyuncu). If you believe no club in the whole of world football would have been willing to pay for them then you’re deluded. A good DOF has agent contacts, links with clubs, pedigree and experience in the transfer market. We have the bloke who used to run the academy. Clubs who cashed in on the Saudi gold rush in the summer didn’t just get lucky. They knew it was a possibility and had proactively built connections and relationships with the buyers. Rudkin probably doesn’t even know the country dialling code.

Judging by the amount of comms I’m getting as a season ticket holder about tickets for Ipswich at home, there’s quite clearly a bit of concern behind the scenes that what will be a big game, live on tv, where Maresca will want vocal backing for the team, isn’t selling as well as they would like… Seems to be the flood gates are open for the extended network of season ticket holders!

Great to see the club has offered to meet to discuss. Did you ever get any answers to those questions you submitted in the summer? Given we’re now into a new calendar year, are you going to ever tell the fanbase what you asked and what was said?

You want these lads to lose their livelihoods because in their free time, on the weekend, they made a helicopter gesture with their hands down the football?! Wow!

Just me that, when people do a little helicopter gesture with their hand, chooses not to get outraged or offended by it or anyone else the same? Anyone else rather police time and resource was spent on other things and that people didn’t pick up criminal records and football banning orders for distasteful hand gestures? Seems like this is happening with more regularity and there’s plenty of our fan base up in arms about it. I’d imagine those two things are linked and that, if everyone shrugged their shoulders and moved on with their life, it might eventually stop happening.

Why does this club struggle to sell players we don’t want so badly? This guy was player of the season last time he was on loan in The Championship and has had Premier League experience where he did ok since. We’ve know for 4.5 months or more that he wasn’t wanted here. How have we ended up with just a loan back to The Championship? Our ability to shift players we don’t want on anything other than loans or free transfers is appalling.

Great idea

Let him walk from LCFC when he decides to. He wants another year? Give it to him. He wants another two years? Give it to him. He’s the greatest we have, and will ever, see in a Leicester City shirt. There’s no room for pragmatism here, in my book. This incredible period ends only when he decides it is time to, even if we have to wheel him out on the pitch or pop him out on the wing with his zimmer frame.

Apart from the time he let an Ipswich player stroll past him in the 93rd minute and pop a shot off at goal unchallenged… no

Have had a season ticket in L1 since 2008, and haven’t sat elsewhere for a league game in that period, but today moved to the Family Stand to take two of my nephews to their first ever game. A couple of observations: 1) I could hear SK1 far better from the Family Stand than I usually can in L1. The acoustics of this stadium are so strange but, as people have said before, the design is obviously intended to project noise onto the pitch. Being more face-on to the singing section, you could hear noise coming from there (kudos to them for giving it a bit when the rest of the ground was pretty drab). There’s probably a lot of L1 thinking the Kop is quiet when it’s not and vice versa 2) My two nephews (both under 8 years old) were at their most engaged when there was a bit of noise around us. The club clearly want to cater for a family demographic but might not seem to appreciate that little kids want atmosphere in the stadium more than 75% of the other demographics that fill the stadium. A noisy stadium will keep these kids wanting to come back. 3) Begrudgingly, there might be a place for clappers. But it’s in the Family Stand only. My nephews were too young to join in the chants but perfectly happy to bash along to a bit of noise and it helped keep them engaged. Despite being anti-clapper myself, I’m fine with them being handed out in only that stand, to only those who opt to take one. If you need one anywhere else then that’s more than a bit odd

Has to be some sort of agreement that he will play in x amount/% of games. He’s coming on in situations that don’t dictate any need for him. Was the same with Kane when he was here. Pearson kept resorting to chucking him out on the right wing just to be on the pitch when he was nowhere near having an impact as a striker.

Would send him back ASAP if we had the option to. He plays like a lad that doesn’t really have much skin in the game. Plays like he’s just been sent to play a bit of nice football from his real club but there’s nothing really riding on it for him. A player that’s fully invested, playing like a man who’s making a living from the game, doesn’t let their player stroll past him in the 93rd minute. As thing stand, we have a kid who plays like he believes he’s here for a nice jolly and will be back to the cushy surrounds of Chelsea when he’s done.

You manage their minutes in a way that allows you to play your strongest side for the full 90 in your biggest game during the busy period if needed. If they needed to come off today then the failings were in the last couple of games leading up to today.

Substitutions cost us there. Iheanacho stank the place out and Casadei just lets their player stroll past him in the 93rd minute to pop a shot off at goal. Call Enzo out when he’s good, but has to be called out when he’s bad and he got that one wrong tonight. Main thing, however, is that we didn’t lose.

I also think we’ll fall just short. Something like 104/105 points. It feels like people are taking for granted just how ridiculously good that return from the first 23 games has been. We’ve hardly drawn any matches and, as you say, we still have to go to some tough away games like Leeds and Ipswich as well as still having to play the second best side in the league (Ipswich) twice.

We’re halfway through the season and sitting on 58 points. Reading’s all-time record is 106 points. Are we going to beat it?!

This is the other thing. Anything bad about the club and it’s operation it’s all “I expect Top isn’t even aware” and “it must be lower down the chain”. Anything good, like free beers or investment in the training ground it’s “thanks Top” and “how lucky we are to have these owners paying out of their own pocket”. The club is a business, and a good owner has oversight of the entire operation. Take your Thailand tinted spectacles off please, people!

The Foxes Trust is defunct unfortunately. I would hazard a guess that Union FS respect what they were first set up to achieve, want to keep ties cordial given they’re a fellow supporters group, but can rely on them for absolutely nothing by way of any meaningful impact. The power of individual fans firing off emails will hold more sway here than anything the Foxes Trust feebly do.