Freeman's Wharfer

Was the interim CEO who wants to get more involved with the day to day running of the club there to lead in-person last night?!

Drop it on the Friday night after all the journalists have packed up and gone home for the week. Hope the game on Saturday takes the attention away from the reaction. Tells you everything you need to know about how the Club realises the shady nature of all this.

She wasn’t the director at the Club who dictated what could or could not be shared from any meetings with the Trust. Nor the one who worked on the terms of reference of the Fan Engagement Plan and put NDAs in place for those on the Fan Advisory Board. I suspect you wouldn’t find many on the Trust board who had interaction with her and felt she was the real or biggest problem at LCFC.

Don’t think I’ve ever heard so many individual negative shouts about a player from an away end. We’re in a loveless marriage with this bloke.

What pubs are people drinking in pre-match? Doing a bit of a crawl in the city center with this being a Friday night

Always think being Men’s 100m World/Olympic champion must be pretty damn cool. You can legitimately go round saying you’re the fastest person on the planet.

Never expect from someone else what you would do yourself. Often find the times I’m most disappointed or angry with someone is when I have expected them to handle or react to a situation in the way that I would have and they have done something else. If someone’s being a bit crappy, don’t hold them to your own standards you set for yourself and it’s so much easier to be the bigger person and move on or not let it affect you.

Okoli at 4… does this cover chances for the opposition or something?!

One of the small things I enjoy about this level is seeing an opposition player who you can see is on his way up and above the level. Rudoni yesterday was an example of this. He’ll be in the Prem sooner or later and it will make complete sense to me. I could see us going a whole season with no opposition fan looking at Soumare and thinking he’s a cut above. That, given his reputation prior to arriving and some of the clubs he’s played for, says everything. He may do one or two things a game that show some quality somewhere within him, but he’ll never be the star of the show.

Saw a quote from their manager saying they’d taken a bit of a risk with his training schedule and would have to look at how they do it moving forward. Vardy probably called the shots on what he needs/wants for a few years here and it has worked for him but not so easy to do with a a new club, manager and language to navigate.

Coventry played a system that left Grimes their only central midfielder between two blocks of attacking and defensive players. That meant there was a lot of space if Leicester could beat the press by that Coventry attacking block and this is where it was crying out for a midfielder to run with the ball and take advantage of that space. Soumare often had the opportunity to run with the ball into space (which is why people are saying he ran with the ball a lot today), but he did it so slowly and without real hunger that the opportunity passed us by and Coventry often had chance to recover. We’d have gained something had he been taken off like he was at Oxford.

He’s been decent for the last 9 months, certainly decent enough that it would be bad business to have lost him for nothing. 4 years feels a lot (3 years with the option of a 4th feels more appropriate) but at least he’s of an age that we should still get plenty out of him over that term. This is not akin to 3 years for an ageing Vestergaard. Hopefully this gives him the confidence to kick on and make that position his for the next few years.

It’s a strange one that it looks better in slow motion and it’s usually the other way round with tackles. In real-time, he absolutely flew into that tackle and small margins from the Oxford player getting badly hurt. There were minimal protests on the pitch to the red and only a few more from the away end. It was a red card.

One of the lowest IQ Leicester away ends I’ve been in today. Some seriously concerning comments and chants throughout the duration. Majority of lads I know from UFS have degrees, good jobs, sense and compassion. Judging by today, the fan base needs more like them and less like the scourge that was in that stand this afternoon.

Really good summary and, in some ways, reassuring for people to see and acknowledge what UFS and the Trust are up against at times. 17 attendees in total there last night and the club use these sessions to funnel in what they want to for discussion at the higher levels of the Fan Engagement Framework. The Trust achieve a survey with 3,214 responses and that doesn’t seem to hold the same weight… You could blame the fan base for not going to these things and having their say, but I suspect many have lost faith in the impact of these sessions or that the Club will do anything based on what is said. This would be backed up from the Trust end of season survey finding that only 4% of fans agree the Club takes action on issues raised in the Fan Engagement Framework. Plenty of things very clearly raised and agreed on in the room last night. The test will now be what we see change off the back of the session…

There are decent parts of the city center in pockets. But unfortunately there’s been no effort to link them together in a way that means you don’t have to walk through some bad parts to move between them.

They’re being run by a madman who’s making erratic decisions and acting on impulse. But they’re still in a far stronger position than us despite having had nowhere near the success and opportunity we’ve had in the last 30 years. Says it all about the unforgivable decline of our own club.

Has that money hit the charities’ accounts yet? And when it was taken in July/August why did they still not have it by the following May? The 4 dedicated charity fixtures were a bit random and seemed to be a reason to hold onto the money a bit longer. I remember hearing some speculation that there is a PSR advantage to holding the money in the club’s foundation/charity account and those 4 fixtures seemed like a way to hold it for a tad longer (in a “once we’ve also got these 4 games done we’ll hand it over). Has the club confirmed anywhere that the money has actually gone, when and what it’s been used for?

Has anyone seen or heard what happened to the £25 loyalty tax we were all forced to pay at the start of last season?! Surely it would be easiest PR in the world for the club to show all the fans who were held over a barrel to keep a physical season ticket card how that money has helped their chosen charities…. Or has it not reached them yet?!

Nice of the selling club to let us know that we have the option to buy.

Who’s taking accountability for this one then? Your only signing when you were cash strapped in January and he’s barely played and now walks out of the door to another club with us no doubt still paying a decent chunk of the wages. In a club with standards and accountability, someone would carry the can for this one. Not here though.

Reminder that a loan with an option to buy is a liability rather than an asset. To keep them we’ll have to spend and if we don’t then the squad gets smaller and we lose value vs having even the solid yet unspectacular players like McAteer, Ndidi and Justin on the roster. Its not a ‘clear out’ if the vast majority of players leaving are the ones in the middle of the pack rather than those who detract rather than add value at the bottom of the pack (Decordova-Reid, Faes, Soumare, Daka etc)

Surely you’re not serious?! So we’ve sold some solid squad players (like Justin, Ndidi and McAteer) and two of our three best players (Hermansen and BEK) for fees that could have been much higher. And then we’ve just borrowed a couple of other players and signed a freebie. Meanwhile Daka, Faes and Soumare are still here taking home decent wages and on that pathway to being more players we paid sizeable fees for and they walk out the door for nothing. This window - and the virtually zero spent - shows that the financial situation at the club is much worse than anyone probably anticipated at the start of it. And that’s a situation for which Rudkin is largely culpable.

From those who claim to know what he’s like, it sounds like, at best, we’ve hopefully got a bit of a Piroe-esque striker. Won’t get involved much or do much in the build up but will find the net with decent regularity if chances are created for him.

And, suddenly, the arrogance and petulance of the man all makes complete sense…