inckley fox

He's a further symptom of everything wrong with the club. It was an awful job for any manager, admittedly, but it seems like another poor fit. When the sweeping changes that we need come, I expect he'll be among the casualties. And I honestly don't have a clue what he's doing most of the time. On top of us being a poor team, I also suspect that he is fundamentally crap.

We can easily let our emotions get in the way of our judgement with KP, and especially Vichai. He also made his mistakes. There were suggestions in the press that he was partly responsible for Pearson's first exit due to his desire for 'a more continental style of football' (I remember managing to find the link years ago but can't for the life of me track it down now). He appointed Sven and presided over his misspending, as well as that which followed our league win, and therefore blew any chance of us seriously capitalising on 2015-16. And of course - while Vichai's leadership certainly allowed our success to happen in a way that previous owners never could have, and some of his key decisions were undeniably spot on - the cheques he signed were not for the sums of money which typically lead to league titles. The 3.5m he parted with for Morgan, Drinkwater, Vardy, Mahrez, Albrighton, Simpson and Fuchs shouldn't have been enough to bring in the bulk of a PL-winning side. That was down to unthinkably and unprecedentedly good recruitment under Pearson and Walsh. They accumulated 100s of millions worth of talent for about 30m, and that's what made our success so special - that it wasn't down to a chairman's immense wealth, but rather to excellent management (predominantly, to my mind, by the managers and their teams). Either way, in his defence Top was by his father's side for all those great achievements. According to some reports it was he who pulled the plug on the post-Palace Pearson sacking, which allowed the Great Escape to happen. He presided over Rodgers' appointment and the FA Cup and Charity Shield wins. He's contributed a great deal from his own pocket - more, unless I'm mistaken, than was the norm under his father. If we're going to credit Vichai for the success, Top - like Rudkin, while I'm at it - would also deserve a fair share. Personally I thought Vichai was a very good chairman, and while I'm fond of his son and still hope he starts to do the right things, I doubt he will and can't argue with the fact that he's not been up to the task so far. But I also think that a big reason for our crowd holding back as much as they do with their criticism for the board, and also for the sense of absolute mourning/anger for someone that they cherished letting them down so badly, is that they always overstated KP's role in our success. Yes, it was crucial. But Vichai's Dream was always no more than an improbable dream. I'm sure he had lots of other improbable dreams that never worked out for him. In our case, Pearson, Walsh, Shakey, Claudio and a bunch of players who proved themselves to be many times bigger than their apparent worth were - more than even Vichai - the ones who actually pulled it off. If we'd seen that, we'd have been quicker to question Top, and far less shellshocked when it dawned on us that he, along with Rudkin and whoever else, was ruining the club.

One of the reasons why I'm sometimes slower to pinpoint Rudkin as the root of all our woes is that I'd heard something very similar to this from one of those 'I know someone who knows someone' sources. The sort of thing you don't feel the need to repeat until someone else says it. The suggestion back then was that he's extremely personable where not everyone else is, solidly professional where others aren't, willing to basically run everything by himself because others won't, and also one of the only people among the higher-ups who has the first clue about football. It struck me that I'd known people like that in my working life, and that they're often the ones who take the flak for others' negligence and incompetence. Of course, he deserves criticism because he's paid a huge amount of money for running the football side of the business, and it's evidently badly-run. But it did get me wondering whether he's the willing fool who's basically keeping things ticking over, and whether the whole thing could come crashing down if we got rid of him. That said, apparently it's already crashing down regardless. So yeah, fire him.

I honestly think you're wrong here. We were getting undone in the FLC in the second half of last season and sides were picking holes in our shape. It's all very well saying that you just need good coaching to make it work at this level - better than, say, Parker when he went down playing 'the right way', or Kompany, or Martin at Southampton, or countless others - but those coaches who can pull off purists' football with limited options are few and far between. My gut instinct was that we'd have been mauled at this level if we'd played the Enzo way, and the closer we've edged towards it under Ruud, the worse the results have been. Yes, it can be done, but I was unconvinced last season that our options were all that well suited to possession football at a higher level. I do think you need a calibre of technical player that goes sone way beyond some of those individuals you listed (Mavididi, Reid, Ayew, Winks). I think it's quite a basic argument to say that our big problem has been appointing two crap managers. Neither have had the time to truly show that, but we know full well that many of these players got relegated the last time they were in the top flight, that recruitment has been iffy for years, and that the club has been a bit of a shambles behind the scenes. These would all be way higher up on my list of concerns, and reasons for failure, than either manager (though, like you, I was pretty unimpressed by both appointments) or the idea that we're not playing football the Enzo way.

You're suggesting that poor results last season and this have nothing to do with the manager and everything to do with Ndidi. I think there's a risk of falling into the trap of believing that there are one or two straightforward magical solutions to our plight. Wilf's form trailed off for several seasons towards the end of our last PL spell, and he was a regular in the relegated side. We did drop off midway through last season, but form was mixed even after his return (we lost 5 of the 12 games he started). He'd been up and down this season, to my eyes at least. I haven't seen enough to believe that the boss is the weak link either - I just feel the squad is poor, unsettled and that two different managers haven't had the time or circumstances to effect change. But I'd be wary of thinking that a manager was entirely guiltless and helpless, or that we're the only ones to suffer key injuries. Mads was a huge loss, but we couldn't have banked on him continuing to work miracles. And some of Ruud's decision-making, in spite of the difficult circumstances, can be questioned.

When interest came in for Enzo, the club looked at our form in the second half of last season, together with our resources for the close season, and clearly decided that our best bet was to become a hard-to-beat team of scrappers. Cooper seemed like a reasonable appointment to achieve those ends, but the problem was that everything had been built for a very different kind of team. Players had bought into the 'idea', as Enzo called it, and it was a hard-sell to say 'okay, now we have to forget all of that'. But having not followed through with the 'idea', they also failed to see through the Plan B. They reacted to the dressing room discontent from players who were always going to get mauled if they tried to play like a poor man's Man City. They reacted to fans who either felt a personal repulsion to Cooper from Day One or who had unrealistic expectations about what to expect from the team. Perhaps they even needed to, because it looked as if there had been a club-wide rejection of Cooper's ideas, and that therefore it was never going to work. But nothing has got better. We've had more possession against bigger teams which gives the false impression at times that we're more in control of games, but it seems clearer and clearer to me that we were always going to need to buy into the idea of being a dogged, nasty, relentless team of spoilers in order to scrap for survival. We just rejected that notion as any sort of necessity, and as such now we've become an opponent's dream. It's bordering on hopeless. Of course, I don't think Cooper is a particularly good manager, nor have I seen enough to know Ruud is a particularly bad manager. And I think the mess behind the scenes as regards finances and poor recruitment has created a nightmarish working environment for a boss. But what we're seeing on the field now is just the consequence of players, fans and club management failing to understand how a squad comprised of players who aren't really good enough for this level can become competitive. As for the club as a whole, for a long time I've felt that Top simply needs to recognise the state of things. Whether Rudkin is the head of the serpent that needs removing or not, a thorough restructuring - even now - with an admission that things need to be done differently and built properly over time would go a long way. People will accept that it might not be an instant bounce-back, that there'll be short-term pain before things get back on track, and accept that maybe we need to be recruiting players for next year and beyond rather than another raft of desperate signings designed for little more than the next few months. You can still sell that to our fans. That said, I agree with people who believe that our success had more to do with Pearson's team than with wild investment or football-savvy from those at the top, and I obviously agree that Vichai was a more accomplished leader than his far less experienced son. But people want to like Top and they'll back him if he shows willingness to embrace real change. The Rudkin Out thing has grown so loud because people just want to see evidence that people who have been very slow on the uptake are finally learning. His sacking - whether it's the root of our woes or not - would indicate that we were actually acting, and understood the gravity of the situation. But at some point, to get fans back on board, you're going to have to show that you're willing to learn from this catalogue of ****-ups.

What exactly did Vardy do wrong?!

You know, I have to go along with this. I try to be balanced and occasionally even positive, but I really dislike this set of players. In fact, I reckon we've steadily been losing our identity ever since the Pearson years. But I am aware that saying this makes me sound like my grandfather.

Signings like Cannon and Coady! And are Winks or Mavididi good enough at this level? Did Fatawu look good enough when he was available (Southampton game excepted)? We weren't even in promotion form for the second half of last season and plenty of people on here wanted Enzo gone. As misguided as that might have been, there's no reason to believe that this squad is mid-table material. If it were, we should stop getting on at the chairman and concentrate on getting rid of the manager. But that would be totally nuts, because the truth is that we're nowhere near a PL standard squad. Part of our problem now is that upon relegation we went for an instant return, spent big and invested in a style of football that we weren't willing to carry on into the PL. And it's quite expensive to pay for PL-quality players who can play the Guardiola way - too expensive for what we had at our disposal. As such, Maresca isn't that great lost leader at all. Many of our current problems stem from what we did, and what we didn't, when we had to rebuild in the FLC. Of course, well done Enzo for taking us up, and well done for being a good coach, but the nature of our promotion has added to our current problems, and is in keeping with the long-term mismanagement that we've been seeing since Top took charge.

Based on the second half of last season, our limited resources in the summer, the fortunes of sides who went up with us then chose to persist with the would-be Pep football that Enzo favoured, and the fact that we've been rubbish under two different managers since then, I reckon the evidence suggests it wouldn't have been great.

Well I wouldn't argue with you on any of that. People who believed Maresca would have done more with this squad, or that Cooper should have had them upper-mid table were utterly deluded, and responsible for some of the strangest posts I've ever read on here. I have some sympathy for Ruud and the graveness of the mess he's inherited, and there's still some hope that he'll get a handle on things, but even so he's making some awful, awful decisions.

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.