inckley fox

He might be symptomatic of the problem, though. Those who are nicest about Top absolve him on the grounds that he knows nothing about football and has entrusted Rudkin with that side of the business. And yet it was Top who took the lead with the Ruud appointment, acting on concerns of senior players who have not looked the part, and bypassing those like Rudkin who supposedly come from a footballing background. If - as seems likely - that appointment improves nothing, then it wouldn't be out of keeping with the pattern of consistent mismanagement, and the chairman being the most culpable for it.

He's made some weird, weird calls. I'm sure he has his reasons, and it's way too early for me to call for him to go (as with Cooper, until it became clear that the toxicity from fans and players was making his position untenable) but my god he looks like he's struggling. I just get the feeling that he hasn't read the room at all with us.

Would he not get any credit if we won because of individual brilliance, then?

My memory might be hazy, but I think the midfield was often James and Drinkwater in the promotion season, and that it was - especially in the second half of the campaign - typically King who he'd vie with for the shirt. It was in the 'Great Escape' season that he tended to be ahead of both of them, until the injury. As for whether there was ever any indication that he was PL standard: well, three points spring to mind. Firstly, that your form in the second tier can also indicate whether or not you're good enough for the Premier. The only nice things we've got to say about Winks and even Ricardo, in recent years, are based on how good they looked at that level. When he was in the second tier, he was often preferred to players who later featured regularly in a title-winning side, so that in itself is something of an indication, even if it's a not-entirely-reliable one. Secondly, he was pretty decent in the 'Great Escape' season. Better than Drinkwater, who we know was PL standard, and King. We were well into our end-of-season run when he got injured, and the fans were widely impressed by how he'd been getting along. Thirdly, his injury problems were among the worst we've seen in the past few decades at the club, and it was no surprise that he was half the player he had been afterwards. Even so, he put in some fine performances (specifically one against Chelsea, if I recall) which earned him a new contract, and reminded us of just how good he could have been. Further injuries intervened, he dropped off even more, and in the end the new contract seemed a bad idea with the benefit of hindsight. But I reckon it's a tad unfair to say there was never a suggestion that James was PL level when you're talking about someone was was, at the time, a young player who'd been in a great second tier side and who'd done well in a mid-season campaign - often preferred to two eventual PL-winners - and who still occasionally looked the part at that level after a series of crippling injuries.

I have no idea what any centre forward in the world could have offered us in that half. It's hardly been a paradise for goal poachers. Occasionally, as in the last game, he's been wasteful and deserves criticism. But over the years there have been plenty of games when we've had one of the greatest ever strikers on the pitch, barely touching the ball, and this forum has been awash with people blaming him for it. When that clearly isn't the main issue at play.

Again, I'm not sure you're characterising the nature of these injuries accurately. Most players in most squads pick up some sort of injury over the course of a season. The Winks injury and (hopefully) the Hermansen one are the norm rather than the exception for players. Ricardo wasn't first choice under Cooper, and had been in and out of the side even when fit under our previous PL managers. He may have played 40 games at a lower level, in a custom-made role in a system which many thought would see us too exposed at this level, but you also have to look at how these players were doing in recent years at the highest level. That kind of analysis certainly doesn't suggest him to be our great lost saviour, as much as I'm a huge fan myself. Fatawu had been in and out of the team this year, and it was only in the Southampton game (unless I'm mistaken) that he truly stepped up. I believe he has a lot of potential that we hadn't yet seen on a consistent basis at this level, but it's a stretch to even call him an established first teamer this season. Ndidi, who has picked up a medium-term injury every year since - what, 2019? - was indeed a first teamer, but I'm not convinced he'd displace Winks, Soumare or the chap (be it Facundo or Bilal) ahead of them in the centre at the moment. So yes, we probably only have seven players, maybe less, who are PL quality. We have been hit badly with our right flank options. We miss and have missed Hermansen and Winks badly, and we've lost another established starter in Ndidi, once again. But we don't have an exceptional number of injuries overall, and I don't think we can categorise those to Ricardo or Fatawu as having deprived us of nailed-on PL quality starters. In truth, we have a normal number of injuries, with a medium-term one to a regular starter (Ndidi), troublesome shorter terms ones to Hermansen and, previously, Winks. And then we have a long-term injury to two players who hadn't really established themselves in the starting line-up, in Ricardo and Fatawu. It's not all that severe, on paper at least.

I agree with pretty much everything you say here. I also made the point that you couldn't expect a manager's personal knowledge to extend, with regard to Ward, to fan reactions the season before last. You'd expect someone in the club to remember and deem it important, but I wouldn't demand that from the manager himself. My only caveat is that I think the squads are more similar than those individual fixtures imply. Yes, in one game there were only four starters from our current squad. But in others there were more, and plenty of squads from that season contained 10 or so members of squads from this season: Ward, Iversen, Justin, Ricardo, Kristiansen, Thomas, Faes, Ndidi, Soumare, Daka and Vardy - 6 or 7 of which were important members of both squads. And we also had Hamza out on loan and Vestergard in the reserves. So it's not exactly been a thorough overhaul!

I might be missing something as regards all the talk of a near-insurmountable injury crisis. As far as I can see we're mid to upper-mid table in the EPL injury table. It's not unusual to have a lot of absences at this time of year. Hermansen is short term, hopefully. Ricardo is always injured and even when fit hasn't often been a starter for us in the past few top flight seasons, under Rodgers, Smith or Cooper. Fatawu is a serious loss, but he'd struggled to adapt and was in and out of the side. As for Wilf, I'm not sure he'd supplant Winks / Soumare / Buonanotte / Bilal at the moment even if he were available. McAteer really hasn't shown that he's first team material at this level. I may well be forgetting someone, but I don't feel that amounts to a third of our established starting XI and a couple of other crucial players being injured, and it's certainly nothing exceptional for the New Year period. This is perhaps a tad selective! We also had Kristiansen and Vardy on the bench, both of whom featured regularly as either starters or subs. Iversen, as in the past couple of games, was our back-up. We had Justin out injured, but he played in that awful run of form early in the season. Wilf must have played 25+ games that season. Thomas was in both squads, as was Soumare, who featured more regularly near the end of the season. So there are the four you mentioned (one of which - Faes - was a regular in both campaigns, and a standout in both in terms of how poor he was), and another 6-7 players who were either regular starters or established squad members, even if we ignore the managers overlooking of Vestergard that season. That's a fair number, as you might expect only 18 months or so later. 10 or 11 players, all regulars in the 18 for both seasons in question, plus Iversen, Choudhury, Vestergard beyond that. The defensive options for both squads were very similar, and severely limited as regards PL-quality. Both sides had failed to find a viable alternative to Vardy. It's hardly been a comprehensive rebuild, and maybe that's part of the problem now.

I suspect you're right there.

The big danger, especially with the possibility of a looming embargo, is that we continue our current trend of extremely short-term planning. We don't have a great track record at it when it comes to desperation transfers under King Power, going back to Sven. Whether you're talking about Bertrand and Vestergard in 2021, Faes and the panicked January signings a year later, or some of our more rushed business this summer, it's very expensive and not very helpful when we go looking for quick fixes. The combination of a manager who feels he'll be judged on short-term goals, a chairman and DoF who want to stave off criticism, and a fanbase demanding quick improvements is explosive. Especially when our past record suggests a blitz of transfer activity is unlikely to keep us clear of relegation, and more likely to leave us lumbered with another raft of misfits who are too expensive for the second tier, too poor for the first, and neither young nor promising enough for a sell-on. If, on top of that, we find ourselves in the second tier, selling off expensive players, facing more severe FFP punishments as a result of what we spend, and unable to bring in replacements - having brought in a stack of experience which limits our ability to blood younger talent - we could easily rue having submitted to those who called for drastic short-term fixes.

Surely that's wrong. At the very least there are multiple refs who haven't got the memo, if you're right. Quite apart from the fact that the rule wouldn't make any sense. Surely refs simply stop a quick free kick if they have to book a player, or do it after advantage has been played.

I must have missed something there. (And yes, I do see that there were multiple lost opportunities for puns in that sentence. But truthfully, I can't see what you're referring to.)

I don't think they got it right with Enzo. Of course, you could say all sorts of good things about bringing him in. They appointed a very good manager, for a start. One who fairly emphatically achieved his goals while also playing a style of football which embodied what the owners had long wished to see on the pitch. However this is also the reason they got it wrong. There was clearly a not-unreasonable feeling in some quarters that expansive passing football was all very well and good in the second tier, where Ricardo and Winks and Faes and Vestergard could shine, but it may well get you relegated once you're up. How do we know they came to this conclusion? Firstly, because the club have pushed for a transition to a more purist-friendly sort of game for years. Even when Pearson first left in 2010 there were rumours that the switch to Sousa was because of prospective owners' preference for a 'continental-style' game. Next up was Sven too - but our meteoric rise came when we went back to what was working before. That got us up, kept us up, and won the title. When Shakespeare's tenure went wrong they tried again with Puel, a dedicated build-from-the-back, possession-based boss. But it was unpopular, and with Rodgers' arrival came the promise of - initially at least - a 'hybrid' style of football which still appealed to our counter-attacking instincts. Then, players got older, the football became less of a 'hybrid', and we went down with a squad which looked good on paper, but really consisted of a bunch of supposedly oven-ready pros who were made to complement our longer-term stylistic aims, but were in truth a collection of very fashionable and easy-on-the-eye players who were unwanted by clubs who had actually perfected that sort of game. Then we turn to Smith to (nearly) bail us out with something slightly more industrial. All in all, it's a picture of a club never managing to firmly establish its preferred style, and often doing a great deal better when they have second thoughts. You could understand them having doubts. Secondly, Maresca's departure was followed by the arrival of a manager known for more practical, less elegant football (to say the least). The club couldn't have been clearer in acknowledging that something very different would be needed this year. Perhaps, after our sub-promotion form in the second half of last season they could see sides wising up to us. Perhaps, all along, Maresca had been a short-term fix to win promotion and keep the purists at the club happy with a 'let's cross that bridge when we come to it' approach to what happened next. They quite possibly knew they'd have a problem come May, and not merely a financial one. All of which rendered much of our second tier team-building useless, and put Cooper in the unenviable position of trying to convince players brought in to play Pep-esque football that they couldn't do that any longer. But if Maresca had stayed, he would have had to do this, or he would have failed and been replaced by someone who did. At least that's what some felt- including, you have to suppose, some of the higher-ups at the club. So if Enzo-ball was never something which the club firmly agreed on as a means of re-establishing ourselves in the PL, you have to wonder why we didn't rebuild in a different way in the second tier. Why did it have to wait until Cooper arrived to change direction? Why did we accumulate expensive new players who would be great for what we did in one league, but less so in the next? It smacks of a lack of conviction and a lack of long-term planning. Nothing more than a quick fix.

Yes, of course. But O'Neill, like Cooper (and Gary Megson) endured a torrid first twelve weeks in which the Forest connection wasn't, at that point, forgotten! To me it's an absurd distraction. But if I were appointing a Leicester manager, and knew he needed to get off to a flying start because he was succeeding a boss who'd done well, I might not have gone for the Forest man.

In all honesty, I think they've been getting managerial calls wrong for longer than we necessarily think. The clock should have been ticking for Rodgers in the closing stages of 2021-22. It was clear that our spend in the summer of '21 hadn't added to the squad, and in the post-Forest defeat period it also became clear that we were going to fall short of a European finish and wind up in a financial mess. Our only 'way out' was to avoid relegation in 2023 and accept a small deduction, and the only way to do that was to get rid of a manager who wasn't toeing the line any more. Rodgers, for all his achievements, effectively guaranteed us relegation by constantly reminding the squad that they were relegation fodder when their paychecks suggested otherwise. And we let him. Smith, clearly, was either the wrong man to keep us up, or the right man two weeks late. His ppg suggests the latter, which is especially damning. Maresca, while as good a manager as we've had for some years, was the wrong appointment for that moment in time too. He's a very good manager who delivered what the bookies expected emphatically. But there were clearly doubts in the club that we could sustain his style of football upon promotion. If there weren't, Cooper would never have been the successor. There was also a feeling among all of us that we were providing a stepping stone for a manager who would be well-hyped and pushed for big things, as opposed to building a long-term project with us. His arrival - like our signings in the summer of 2023 - indicated that we weren't at all for rebuilding in the lower leagues over a year or two, getting our financial house in order, accumulating a promising young squad and then coming back with decks cleared, and well-braced for survival. This was about quick fixes. And now we're seeing that, sooner or later, we needed a longer-term rebuild, even if it meant some short-term pain. If you add to everything that we appeared to mislead two of the above three managers on our financial situation, resulting in one having a relegation-clinching sulk and the other griping at the very moment in time that the big clubs came calling, and it's not a pretty picture. Then you get to Cooper. Fans who felt we were a league above him, that he was a no-hoper, or that he was holding us back were wrong. And had we been hit with a serious financial penalty, perhaps he would have been a passable stopgap who made something of a fist of the campaign. But we weren't hit with the penalty, meaning we actually needed something very different. His past connections shouldn't have been such a huge factor, but they were, and those running the club should have been way more aware of the potential for a level of hostility which undermined our chances. The contrast between his style and the predecessor's, while perhaps a necessary tweak, was also never going to go down well with those in the dressing room who were brought in to implement that style, or those that bought into it. Again, the fault here doesn't purely lie with bringing Cooper in, but also having gone full-in on the Maresca project a year earlier. Still, Cooper's appointment - while seriously flawed - at least suggests some degree of reasoning on their part. Given the circumstances, and the kind of Catch-22 we found ourselves in, it's almost understandable. Which brings us to Ruud. Maybe he'll turn out to be a great manager - we wouldn't know yet if that's the case. But there aren't many reasons to believe in a man appointed for his aura and youth record, contracted on a whim by a chairman who knows little about football and had got bored of the advice of those he'd entrusted with the football side of things. The obvious solution was for the owner to get different advice, as opposed to charging in and taking the reins himself, but he didn't do that either. And when people who aren't very good at appointing managers appoint a manager you naturally respond to the first couple of hammerings by saying, 'here we go again'. King Power, I maintain, don't need to go. We'd be a lot better off if they simply put better people in charge of the operation. If, for instance, there was an acknowledgement of past errors, followed by Rudkin being moved sideways, an uprooting of recruitment and someone respected like Puel, Walsh or Pearson taking up the DoF role, and if this were coupled by Top saying 'look, we've got stuff wrong and this might take a few years to work out' - then I think people would at least see evidence of things going in the right direction. But if they won't learn from their errors, there's only two possible endings: Disaster or departure. If you didn't read all that, or did and thought I'd insulted your intelligence by stating what seems pretty obvious to me, then apologies. It's quite cathartic to have a moan, though.

I suppose there are some among us who have gone into positions of responsibility in their lives and been expected to do their homework to the degree that they're aware of the backstories and baggage of the personnel, in the same way many expect the manager to be with Ward. But to be honest, I've seen so football managers showing a lack of awareness of what's gone on before them that I wouldn't have expected this. If he's well aware of what went on earlier this season, and last, then we're probably not doing too badly in relative terms. I'm not sure I'd expect his research to be sufficient for him to be well-versed on fan reactions to individual, fringe players the season before last! What's worrying isn't so much the manager here, even if we are unsure of his suitability for the task. It's that, as a club, we seem to be less aware of important past events and dynamics than the average fan. The barracking of Ward was witnessed by dozens of people at the club in positions of influence, and nobody has communicated that to the new boss or, even worse, remembered it keenly enough to understand that it could be relevant. That suggests that, as an organisation we're not fit for purpose. In football we're frequently reminded that we fans have no grasp of the nature of goings in this most elite and meticulously run of operations, and then you see decisions being made which show a lack of knowledge that you wouldn't expect from anyone with the merest of experience of seeing us over time. That seriously undermines confidence in the club.

Thatcher was player of the season that year!

I'd agree, except for the spell Hodge had when he came back into the side for Muggleton near the end of 1990-91. He had a great run of games. Made some massive saves (Wednesday away rings a bell) and was crucial to us staying up. I would probably have Ward somewhere in the top ten, along with Logan and Pressman, but I find the whole conversation a tiny bit odd, since he really wasn't one of the main culprits last week.

Danny Ward really was one of the least blameworthy people for that result. He could do nothing for two goals, made a great stop and was very unlucky for the other. He's crap, and maybe players lost heart when he came on, but that's their fault, not his. Making this debacle all about him is not only embarrassingly overly simplistic, it also means we'll fail to address all of the other issues which we can actually affect. Danny Ward being rubbish, which we all knew already, is hardly the conversation to be had after our worst performance of the season, in which he was one of the less critical factors.

If you wanted to be thoroughly glass-half-empty you might say that the performance and result was worse than anything under Cooper, and that those who felt we were a good side being held back by an awful manager should be asking themselves questions. It's a poor squad, and we've had to grasp points that we've barely deserved under both managers. And I do think that Cooper would have been roundly derided, even with our limited options today, if he'd lost 4-0 after preferring McAteer to Facundo, and failing to address clear issues at HT. Some of the set piece defending also smacked of being poorly prepared. But the truth is that we're a bottom-end squad who will only compete when we're disciplined, well-organised and breaking our backs to cover the ground when we're out of possession. They fell well short of those prerequisites today, and were deservedly trounced.

No excuse for our defending on their goal. I was screaming that they had three on one if they went short, as happened from the previous corner on the other flank. Our goal kicks are creating opposition chances every time. We invite the challenge, get pressed, jab it blindly forward to an onrushing attacker. Every time. The wingers are doing a poor job of protecting their FBs, neither of which is coping with the pressure (as per). McAteer has been better than Mavididi but hasn't come close to justifying his selection over Facundo. Hamza is always utterly panicked on the ball, and unable to see the danger when he's off it. A dire performance from him; lacklustre at a time when you'd hope he'd be champing at the bit to show his worth. We deserve to be more than one down. I had low expectations, but so far we haven't come close to meeting them. We've been toothless and haven't competed. The only positives are the narrow margins, and the knowledge that we'll have more winnable games with a fuller squad available.

Totally. It's very hard to compare the nature of their success, and I certainly wouldn't wish to fly the flag for one of them at the expense of the other. Neither would be considered such a legendary Leicester manager but for the other's achievements, so they have a lot to thank each other for! But even if you've looked up some of the old, great Leicester bosses - Hodge, Orr, Gillies etc. - there's nothing which comes close to either taking a side up two leagues, keeping them there and forging a budget side which later wins the title; or alternatively, being the guy who delivers the latter. In fact, across all of football there are very few who have ever done anything that spectacular, especially in the modern era. As everyone else says, get well soon Nige.

It's just one of those things that has come to be seen over time as disrespectful. You might not agree with social norms, but as with all sorts of things you can either respect the norms or be seen as bad-mannered and selfish. Leaving a game early, to me, is a bit like speaking in a theatre or a library, or bringing your packed lunch to a bar. Those around you, and those doing their jobs, don't approve, so you're likely to come across as being disrespectful if you insist on doing it. Perhaps all of us have done all of these things at some point or other, and had our reasons, but it's not worthy of defending. And I wouldn't want to make an enemy of a librarian either, because they can be quite spiteful.

Well, he played a few minutes in an FA Cup game in the winter of 21/22 then a few minutes in a League Cup game in the winter of 22/23, just before his injury. People had been crying out for him pretty much non-stop in the interim period and accusing Rodgers of not putting much stock in our youth. The fact that he was injured in an FA Youth Cup game when many on here expected him to be training with the first team ahead of the next fixture kind of underlines that Brendan didn't expect him to be breaking through as early as we did. Yes, I'll grant you that the caretakers and interims couldn't have picked him, but Rodgers had plenty of Cup games between those two matches in which he could have blooded him. We're still talking about all three permanent managers and one set of caretakers who have overlooked whatever he has to offer. What I said isn't outright false, it just has the small caveat that one set of caretakers never had the chance to select him, for two games, and then an interim for seven or eight. That's a very small proportion of the 100 or so matches in which he's been available since his debut and not given a chance. I also badly want to see the next emerging talent. You're not alone in that. I'm just yet to see the proof that Will Alves is going to be the one that we've all been waiting for. It could well be the case that he would have got his chance under Rodgers were it not for the injury. But then again the same injury probably curtailed his chances under all of the subsequent managers, in that he simply couldn't get back up to speed. It may also mean that, since the injury, his development hasn't been what they'd previously hoped, and therefore all of them have been right not to go for him. If Rodgers, who had a fully fit (albeit younger) Alves at his disposal for longer than anyone else, can be excused for overlooking him, then surely it's also understandable that Enzo and Cooper did the same. Hopefully he'll get his chance and leave you feeling thoroughly vindicated and the rest of us wondering how consecutive managers could have been so daft to ignore him. After all, this is how we felt when Joachim, Heskey, Oakes, King, Gradel, Moore, Chilwell, Barnes and Dewsbury-Hall broke through - though in truth, it may just be the case that we waited for the right moment, and will do - if there's ever a right moment - with Alves. How many youth team prospects who didn't get their chance with Leicester truly proved, in later years, that we'd missed out? You could argue that one or two of the aforementioned could have been useful at an earlier date (Barnes, for instance, under Shakespeare and Puel; or KDH under Rodgers, seeing as both had impressed while out on loan), and there's a smattering of players over the past couple of decades who carved out a career at a respectable level despite not making the grade with us. But generally-speaking the much-hyped but overlooked names confirm, over time, why they were overlooked.

They are different people though. I don't know. I'm inclined to think there's something in it when we've been calling for a young lad that we've never seen to feature more - but three permanent managers, one interim and two sets of caretakers who all know him better seem to disagree. Hopefully I'm wrong, of course. And it wouldn't be the first time.