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Rowett In!

This is where any excitement relating to a change in manager is brought crashing back to earth on the realisation that we have the exact same players as before.

It's happening

@em9999 is right. The players are highly paid, elite, professional sportsmen. It should be an absolute, non-negotiable prerequisite that they give 100% effort. Unfortunately there is a culture at the club where it seems acceptable for several players to merely turn up and go through the motions. This has been going on for too long under too many managers for it to be seen as the fault of the manager. Tactics? Yeah, that's on the manager. But lack of effort is something that appears to be allowed by the leadership of the club and encouraged by too many players. The manager has a role to play in picking the players up mentally after a hard fought defeat, or getting an extra 5-10% out of them before a big game, but generally we have too many players that have consistently given about 70%. And we can't get rid of them.

Should be enough for the play offs

Ha yes! I meant it in terms of FoxesTalk time! He doesn't deserve a Rowett Out thread an hour before his first match kicks off based on his first team selection. The truth is, he is going to struggle for proper training time with the fixture congestion coming up. I hope he makes perfect decisions from minute one, but the reality is, he may need to see things with his own eyes before learning the detail of the squad. That might take 2 or 3 games at least (I hope I'm wrong).

Ultimately some managers just fit. They do well at one club and bomb at another, there's no guaranteed success with anyone. I sense a certain amount of snobbery towards Rowett from some. There's no evidence that he's going to be a terrible fit here. He should be given time and backing from the fans. We all know what a circus he's walking into, I'd be surprised if he wasn't coming in with his eyes wide open. He has to work with the tools he's been given, there is no magic bullet. It's a tough job but it sounds like he's here until the end of this season, he will have very little time to impact training over the next 3 or 4 weeks at least (he should have been in three weeks ago) so us fans need to just get behind him.

Which means we're only a week away

I actually think Okoli is a half decent defender in terms of getting in the way, making blocks etc. Problems arise when there's an expectation of him competently kicking the football.

Makes perfect sense. We spent a week waiting for Enzo to call back, a week interviewing candidates... Reluctantly about to give it to Rowett, then Dyche gets sacked and we spend another week trying to convince him to come. After telling us no for the 50th time, we go back to Rowett.

I suppose most of his first day will be spent generating social media content for the club to put on YouTube. #priorities

Am I right in thinking that he hasn't actually signed yet? I'm not going to get too excited until it's a done deal. I love the fact, that if it happens, it's actually a sensible decision, but one the board have essentially been backed into making.

I can imagine he was initially knocked back, it was offered to someone else, they knocked us back, maybe we offered it to someone else who also knocked us back. Then we go back to Rowett and try to explain we've had a change of heart. I hope he's told them that his salary demands have now gone up by 5k per week. The irony of of it all was that Rowett was pretty much the obvious choice from day 1 and should have been in 4 games ago. This club is rancid. I just hope we can get behind him and he can start getting a tune out of the players.

Exactly this. I think I said something similar in the Cifuentes Out thread... that this talk of who the new manager is diverts attention away from Top, and when a new guy comes in, people concentrate on a potential upturn and by the time the fanbase turn on the new manager because all of the same problems that we've seen through the last 6 managers will still exist, we'll be so close to the end of the season there's nothing that anyone can do. The major benefit for Top and Rudkin is that the attention is drawn away from them. At least King is someone the fans can get behind, who we know has the club in his heart. At the end of the day nobody wants to see the team relegated and the fans need to separate their frustrations. Team performance is woeful, but we need to try and get behind the team to push them over the line. At the same time, the second problem is the almost criminal way the club is being run. That needs a serious, co-ordinated and sustained response. Two problems that need fixing in two different ways. It's a very difficult balance to strike.

Nobody else is coming. It could be a choice between King or Ayew as player/manager and nobody wants to see that. At least there's goodwill towards King.

Everything with this club is done at a snail's pace with no communication. No proper manager = money saved. I truly believe the club's financial situation is absolutely dire - much worse than most realise. We are skint and having to penny pinch everywhere. No manager is one less wage to pay. There's no intention to hire a manager before the end of the season. Just announce King until the end of the season and be done with it so we can get behind him and hope we limp over the line. At least people will know where they stand.

Is this day 22 or something now? We have 5 games in the next 22 days. Any new manager basically has zero serious training sessions. I kinda get it if this was over the summer with people being away etc, but this is inexcusable.

And this is one of the reasons we are where we are. And it's not just LT. Professional players HAVE to look after themselves. It's these little things that compounded over time lead to problems. A Mars a day keeps the doctor away? No! And this shouldn't need explaining to a professional athlete. If this happens everyday, for years, by most of the squad then it will lead to sub-prime fitness levels across the board. Which is actually where we are. The late Steve Jobs of Apple fame described building a team with A, B and C grade players. He would stop at nothing to hire A-grade players. These are the people that are passionate about the project, are super motivated, self-starters, tailor their life to achieve great results and love to work with other A-grade players, actively seeking them out. Get them together and they'll challenge and push each other forward. BUT, A-players will only tolerate B-Players. B-Players are the ones who are largely competent but only ever go through the motions. They never set the world on fire, they do what's expected and generally do enough to hold their weight but are nothing special. The real danger comes in when you get C-players involved. These are the guys who generally perform poorly, are ill-disciplined and can actually be damaging not only to team performance but to the brand as a whole. Now, whilst A-players can tolerate B-players, when C-players start turning up, the A-players just up and leave. What's more dangerous is that while an A-player in charge of recruitment will go all out to hire other A-players, put a B-player in charge of recruitment and they will happily recruit C-players because there is no danger that a C-player will outshine them. The whole thing is a downward spiral. I think this plays out at Leicester. All of our A-players have packed up and gone. We won't try to hire A-players (at board level or coaching staff) because if they did get through the door they would call out the dross that's here already. On the playing side, we just don't have any leadership that will demand high standards from the rest of the squad. Riccardo probably should, but it must be so draining as he's probably a lone voice, certainly no more than one or two others. The rest don't have the right mentality - they accept and possibly promote poor discipline. We have too many C-players, hardly any B-players and no A-players (Jordan James?). We don't stand a chance of attracting A-grade players for the first team. Nigel Pearson had it right where a big part of player recruitment focused on mentality and ensuring that they would always look to do the best for the team and better themselves individually. What we have now is just nonsense.

At this rate the club won't survive long enough to make it to League 2.

These are valid points to be fair. Tactics and over-arching strategic structure of the club should be better - do everything you can to get the best out of the players and then everything else takes care of itself. BUT these are highly paid, elite athletes who have a job that many people would give anything to do, part of their job is to take their career super-seriously and do everything they can to be in peak condition. They don't get get a pass here. If their fitness isn't up to scratch, they can and should do something about it. And all of the tactics and structure in the world doesn't excuse individual errors. There's only so much coaching that can go into telling a defender to get goal side of an opposition attacker, or a midfielder not to play mess up a simple 15 yard pass and give it straight to the opposition, or a striker not to turn away from goal when they should be trying to force the opposition defender to do something that may invoke a missed tackle or a free kick. So yeah, it's not all on the players. There could be a better set up around the situation, but they could and should be doing little things on a personal level to make them better individually. The mentality of the team is poor and the players themselves can improve that.

You could well be right. Top might actually not be that interested in the football club. It was his father who bought the club, his father who had dreams for the club, his father who paid close attention to what was going on with the club. I never got the impression that Top was anything other than along for the ride. I doubt very much, if it were Top that had built the KP brand, he would never have purchased the club. Now though, it all rests on his shoulders. I believe that Top has a sense of loyalty to his father and is holding onto the club because he thinks that's what his father would have wanted (keeping the club), rather than doing the right thing (selling the club). There must be a huge emotional tie to the club and even though he probably knows the club would do better without him, he just can't let go. I fear that he doesn't have the passion or know-how to turn things around and he won't leave until there's nothing left.

I think 46 or 47 will be enough. I can't see us getting 50, that would require a monumental upturn in form for us and Blackburn.

Cambiasso is a GREAT shout

Around the corner.

Sean Dyche will not come here. There's been several times over the past 5 or 6 years where Dyche could have been a LCFC manager. A lot on here turned their noses up to that prospect, now he gets to turn his nose up at us. That's hard far and fast we've fallen. In the summer it sounds like we spoke to him but couldn't afford his wages. And that was when we were one of the favourites for promotion. Now we still can't afford his wages and we're on the brink of relegation to League One. Dyche is an established Premier League manager and whilst he might be short of options right now for a Premier League return, I could see him being tempted with a top Championship club where promotion in his first season would be a reasonable assumption. But us? Right now? No way! He has a reputation to protect and even if we could meet his salary demands I can't imagine he'd want to come here with a risk of a Championship relegation to blight his CV. He'll be happy to wait until summer and assess his options then.