inckley fox

The Bassett side was bad, but not rotten through-and-through. It had Walker, Elliott, Sinclair, Impey, Izzet, Savage, Dickov, Piper. Some of them were ageing a bit, and I wasn't convinced the squad would do as well as it did after relegation, but I think it actually benefited from us having to offload some of the dross - Akinbiyi, Laursen, Wise, Cresswell, Marshall all left and we tightened up a year later. Bassett came close once or twice to turning a corner - I remember us losing to West Ham in a tight game where we'd have got out of the drop zone with a win. They were definitely better than this lot by a margin. They arguably underachieved that season and kept throwing points away. Lacked 'moral fibre', was how I think the manager kept putting it. The Adams team a couple of years later was a bit cobbled together and bargain basement, but it was usually competitive. The Little/McGhee side was poorer, but had a lot of players who'd play a part when we stayed up in 96/97: Grayson, Whitlow, Walsh, Parker were all in that team. Heskey made his debut that year. Joachim and Draper were there too. So yes, this is the worst top flight side I've known. I've heard a few people who go back a way further than me say that it'd give the McLintock side a run for its money, and of course the remnants of that side ended up 17th after it went down. At least they had Wallington, Weller, Sammels, Rofe, Whitworth, even Worthington early in the season. All guys who'd excelled in the not-so-distant past. Too many of our current side - Faes, Okoli, Vestergard, Kristiansen, Soumare, Mavididi, Daka etc. - will never be up to it, and never have been. It's hard to compare it with our second tier sides, but I suspect it's inferior to many of the better ones, regardless of what it looks like on paper. As for the rubbish ones, the Pleat era side actually had some better players than we've got now (Walsh, Mills, McAllister, Newell, Osman, Campbell, Wright all featured at varying points in time). The sell-to-buy policy crippled it. The post-Adams period was perhaps the lowest for me, though the side that went down in 2008 had a better defence than this one.

Definitely. Our downturn began last season.

I hope not.

I take your point entirely but, for example, I can't hold Bilal to be as responsible for our plight as I would Wout Faes. Within that steaming shite-strewn stew we've been served up, I'd consider Vardy to be a manky string of carrot rather than a resplendent floating turd like, say, Soumare or Winks. If that makes sense.

I agree entirely with that. But I don't see how he's one of our major issues right now. Not only because I think no striker could thrive in this team at this moment, but also because the only real issue with Vardy is the failure to replace him, or at least offer an alternative. Maybe even a strike partner. None of that is his fault. As for his influence, I think reports of his role in Ranieri's departure have been long-since discredited. He was also supposed to have been one of the few not to turn on Cooper. So it doesn't seem like he's a great problem in that regard. There are plenty of other more glaring issues to address, in the short term at least, than Vardy.

How? Other than being ancient?

Cooper isn't a substandard manager. He struggled in difficult circumstances, and fans who thought we were top ten material turned on him, followed by a set of players who had nothing like the credit in the bank to turn on a manager. As such his position became untenable while we were still 16th. He had to go, and almost certainly would have got us relegated, but a huge part of the reason for his departure being necessary was the fact that people weren't willing to get on board. A whole load of nonsense was subsequently peddled about him being way below the mighty Leicester in terms of his credentials, and that notion has seen other clubs point out how silly the Leicester fans and players have been. There's no doubt that we haven't covered ourselves in glory with the Cooper-Ruud switch, as of yet. Was he the best appointment? Quite possibly not. Was he some sort of chancer way out of his league? No. Was Ruud the upgrade that his detractors claimed he was? No. And can he blame Cooper, as opposed to years and years of mismanagement, or a squad packed with utter dreck, for being ill-prepared? Definitely not. The funds Cooper had weren't spent wisely - that's true. But we signed one asset, made a couple of howlers, brought in a good loanee, and then signed some squad filling individuals who have ended up featuring way more prominently than they should have. It's not a starkly inferior window to the one where we brought in Daka and co., or the one where brought in Kristiansen/Souttar and co., or the one where we brought in Coady/Cannon and co. The suggestion being that our recruitment is systemically poor, regardless of who is in charge.

Well, that might be a good call. I've watched him from a distance but don't know enough about his style of management, nor the set of circumstances he's had to deal with, to be certain. People also mention Rohl, of course. Without question, those are the sorts of coaches I'd be interested in. While I have no particular interest in how 'English' we are, it might be a good time to go back to the Pearson-era ethos of developing a home-grown backbone to the squad. I remember when we signed Mahrez he said 'we can sign players like him and Knockaert now that we have a native core to the squad established'. If we want to uproot the dressing room politics, it might be a good starting point.

He'd have been an unintelligent, uninspiring choice who, like Ruud and Cooper, has looked like he's not cut out for management at the highest level. I'd honestly prefer a bright, upcoming manager from the lower tiers if he's (a) adaptable, and not stubborn enough to be unwilling to entertain new ideas and (b) a character who doesn't mind being unpopular with the players (unlike Ruud, according to that BBC article) if that's a necessary consequence of making them brutally aware of their own shortcomings.

The risk is we splash out now on a manager tasked with survival, and without a vision for the long-term. If and when they sack Ruud, they need to either bring in a guy for next season and make clear that survival isn't necessarily the expectation, which is a big call, or allow a member of the coaching team to have an extended stint as caretaker, and save the money for a guy who can start with a clean slate in the summer. The alternative would be an interim team, but they tend to be quite costly. I certainly think it'd have to be accompanied by a significant boardroom change at the club. If it were, the mood around the place would at least mellow a bit. It's very hard to see Ruud having any joy this season. He's simply waited way too long to explore solutions. And there's absolutely no reason, as many have said, to believe he's the one for a rebuild in the second tier. The question is whether he's even managerial material.

He's probably got more in common - in terms of circumstances/outcomes rather than style - with Bassett rather than Taylor. He's making a hash of an admittedly difficult situation. As for Taylor himself, there were quite a few arguments put forward at the time by people who felt he'd been hard done by. I didn't agree with any of them, but they went along the lines of 'he inherited an ageing squad which was held together by a manager's unique charisma, started the first season superbly, was undone by a freak cup game (at the end of our best FA Cup run in two decades) but still got a respectable 13th place finish... and it was too early in the following campaign to sack him'. The dismal nature of the relegation and the subsequent financial catastrophe kind of swept that argument away, but I suppose there are at least achievements of sorts you can point towards with Taylor, even if they're set against a backdrop of complete Armageddon.

Speaking of the last four appointments, it's worth adding that the successful 'first two' have their share of the blame for where we are now. Rodgers recruited poorly, with his success depending on the youth set-up, and the Pearson-to-Puel era squad-building. Obviously his negligence led to the first relegation. Maresca had the most expensive second tier squad ever, and still nearly blew promotion, with us falling well short of automatic promotion form in the second half of last season. He also introduced a possession-based game which was simply never going to work at this level with the squad we've got, then buggered off, leaving us scrambling for a more tactically flexible manager. It was the worst kind of short-termism.

I don't think we do know that. Which manager would you be talking about? Or is this going back to the totally unfounded Ranieri-era rumours? If we ever intended to be a serious top flight proposition then we should have set up to use Vardy sparingly. Regardless of our failure to do that, he's still the least of our problems right now (especially given the alternatives). And no striker on earth would thrive in this team.

Yes, but at least he only played 15-20 games before I had the pleasure of seeing him fired.

I've just never seen such a void of new ideas from a new manager. Shape? Nothing. Personnel? His major statement has been to drop Facundo, our principal goal provider. Style? An attempt to appease those who felt we needed to enjoy a bit more possession. Which has also been a spectacular failure. He's been outright awful, with no caveats, even considering the circumstances. Just a complete failure to come up with solutions. But my god, what a glorious aura he has.

I honestly can't remember a player I've disliked as much as him.

Cliff's fine. He's thriving.

There is literally no reason to believe that the guy is even a vaguely competent manager. To the contrary.

While I agree with you that it's hard to judge any manager when he's been thrown into such a difficult set of circumstances, I'd also add that (a) Cooper also came into a really difficult set of circumstances (pending points deduction; limited funds, squad of players which had largely suffered relegation at this level last time round, fans with an irrational hatred of him and the ghost of Maresca with his brand of football that was always going to fail at this level, with this squad). (b) He's thus far offered no new ideas in terms of shape or personnel, and his tweaks in style have consisted of an unsuccessful bid to improve results by upping our possession stats. (c) There aren't many of Cooper's appointed coaches left. And (d) there is nothing in the manager's track record to suggest he can secure promotion (or be a survival specialist for that matter). I have sympathy for him and agree that it's hard to tell whether he's any good or not. But is there any reason to believe that he offers any long-term solutions? I'd advocate for seeing how the coming weeks and months pan out before leaping to decisions. Throughout our history we've gone down with managers that were popular enough to get a second chance (Johnson, Lochhead, Wallace, Hamilton, Adams) and it's only ever worked out once (O'Farrell). If he starts to come up with bright new ideas and improves things, then by all means debate keeping him, but if the collapse continues don't - whatever you do - invest in the long-term vision of someone who's given you absolutely no reason to believe that they can do the job. Other than the 'aura' that impressed Top so much.

He was pretty lively, I thought, considering it was hardly a game for the strikers. The commentators rightly pointed it out. I have no idea why people keep feeling the need to single him out as a major problem for us, given the clearly very major problems we do have on display. The lack of meaningful cover/competition for him is a huge issue. Not him.

Totally. I didn't really agree with how they went about it, but I don't think you can say they failed to make a point.

It's the complete absence of new ideas that I find so depressing.

It doesn't bother me that he's flying the flag for a section of the fans that don't agree with me. I just think it's his track record for doing this which means the writer of the article was misguided in choosing him as the counterargument. There are others who might have a lot more credibility. After all, he was the ultimate apologist in the Shipman-Pleat years. Thank god the likes of Martin George and Brian Little had more ambition than he did.

I agree totally with the sentiment, and think it's essential for the future of the game that they get to grips with what's basically the trading of children for significant sums of money. Surely there's something fundamentally immoral in that, and it wouldn't be hard to establish some norms which protected youngsters and the academies that nurture them. But I'm not sure we're entirely innocent either when it comes to Monga, or did I misread something?

He's still a heck of a lot closer to a solution than Daka is.