inckley fox

Definitely. For all his flaws, down the years you could pick out 20 or so decent performances from him at the highest level. You could stick Okoli in the Man City line-up week-in-out for a decade and he wouldn't manage that.

Playing like that, no question.

I think fitness was probably the issue there with James and Lascelles. And what we were lacking was physicality and aggression with 50-50s, second balls. Of your other suggestions, there's only really Aribo who offers that, and to be honest he's looked very pedestrian thus far. Monga has also offered very little all season, as understandable as that is. When we get over, and he gets over, him not being a generational talent, he might start to put in the energy and work-rate required to become, nonetheless, a very decent player. But he's 16, and it's not there yet. Still, yes I take your point. It felt like we needed big changes that we didn't get, even if it's hard to say that the options at hand could have helped a great deal.

I mean, other than on the grounds of relative youthfulness, I'm certainly not going to defend Nelson either. If you think he's worse then fine. It's a matter of which pap-splatter is the stinkiest.

No, me neither. Nobody is going to turn back the clock for Ricardo, or turn Okoli and Thomas into league-standard defenders. Or persuade Fatawu that he needs to be a team player who prioritises winning games over having a great highlights reel. Or persuade Mavididi that he needs to battle and scrap, and prioritise winning games over having a s**t highlights reel. Or make a goal threat out of Ayew and Daka. Or lift that general sense of malaise that comes from years of the board's mismanagement.

I don't disagree, but there's some tough competition, isn't there? Faes for starters...

We got a good season and a half out of him at the beginning, and he did well in his first FLC stint. But he's very obviously to the detriment of the first team now. And it's not just the legs. The number of times that everyone was behind the ball and he still left his man free was astounding. Not the only one, of course, but he's clearly useless now - shouldn't be captain - and we need him out of the side. As a regular starter, at least.

Albrighton more than earned his corn, and he's perfectly entitled to disagree. I thought he was very respectful of the right to protest, and it's not as if he was arguing that the club has been well-run in recent times, rather that he feels a change of ownership isn't necessarily imperative. I think he's wrong, but if he's respectful then that's fine. It still doesn't change the fact that those actively defending the board are both badly misguided and absolutely complicit in our decline. By all means go to the game. By all means don't join the protest. And by all means believe, if you're a hopeless optimist, that KP can sort this out if they wake up and smell the coffee. But you can't possibly for a moment defend their negligence in recent years. We saw, on the pitch today, how awfully run we've been. As a very, very simplistic breakdown, we have a lot of players - most of which are over-rated - who think they need the ball at feet, and to play the game the right way. Okay, Fatawu (in spite of his tremendous highlights reel) and co. don't do nearly enough when they get the ball to justify that, but one core problem is that the likes of Thomas, Nelson, Okoli and Skipp aren't anywhere near good enough in their build-up play to give them those opportunities. And they don't win enough of their 50-50s either. It's unbelievably unbalanced, from recruitment to team selection. Too many incompatible players put together over a period of years and years.

Usual display since just over half way through his reign.

I think you're being very generous all-round. Under Maresca we spent around 25m on Coady, Winks and Cannon. Yes, he also signed Mavididi, Hermansen and Fatawu, but all of them got relegated with us. And two of them may well get relegated again, with Mavididi having had a remarkably poor season. It's not exactly impressive. Go back before that and you have Kristiansen, Souttar and Tete. Fast-forward in time and you have Reid, Ayew, Skipp, Okoli. Yes, there was El-Khannous, but he wasn't consistently PL-level either. Regarding the 2025 business, we've seen some promise from Mukasa, and Ramsey - as you rightly point out - has had bad luck with injuries, but the truth is that James is the only player to positively impact on a regular basis. And in the Championship! Vieites, Begovic, Carranza... they may be budget acquisitions, but they're certainly not to the credit of the recruitment department. To my mind, there have been over thirty signings under Glover, of which only Winks, James, Skipp and Fatawu are currently of any use to us. Hardly a stellar cast. And they arrived for a combined sum of around 50m which, for a side currently in the bottom three of the second tier, is astonishing. Typically, I'd say that represents god-awful recruitment - some of the worst in the club's history - and a long way off being able to say 'for every rotter, there's a gem'. It's nowhere near that.

I suppose it depends whether you mean criminally dodgy or just, well, dodgy. You're right to point out that a lot of our recruitment seems to be based on agencies touting their men to Glover, Rudkin and co. And I think it's quite hard to mount any meaningful defence for Glover. His departure is one of those indicators I'm looking out for that core issues are finally being addressed.

I'd never in a million years wish to blame a kid for our current plight, and fully believe that Monga could turn out to be a superb talent, but at times I feel as if we should see a bit more energy and running from him. I feel bad for even saying it. And it's so low down the list of woes, and so entirely understandable given the general malaise about the place. Then again, years ago I bought a stack of 1970s and 80s matchday programmes, and you saw Wallace saying that it was key for the youngsters he blooded to understand that, with that, comes the same responsibility and scrutiny that a 33 year-old is subjected to. So I think it'd be reasonable for Rowett to ask for a little more in terms of his work-rate. He did grow into the game though.

Well, I wouldn't argue with you there.

Winks, Vestergard and Faes benefited from Vardy, Hermansen, Dewsbury-Hall and Ndidi, plus a younger Pereira. They've been largely awful ever since. And I don't doubt that Winks has talent, but a decent half of football after two years of being mostly below par, during which time he was photographed disrespecting one manager, before being cast out by the next two, is hardly redemption. Not yet. Awful recruitment and awful player application, including by Winks, has been a far greater problem than any individual manager. Your surmising, based on pretty much today alone (because statistically our results are a good deal worse when Winks starts), that he isn't indicative of the problems at the club, but Cifuentes and his predecessors have been, is just chopped logic. And it's dismissive of the cultural issues which have been at the heart of our decline. I hope Winks redeems himself. If he does, we'll stay up and Rowett will get a whole load of deserved credit. But we shouldn't kid ourselves - these players have let multiple managers and coaches down, and shown an unacceptable lack of effort for a long, long time. We can't lose sight of that if there's to be any chance of making things better in the future.

It's still early days for Mukasa. And Glover's success ratio is nowhere near as good as 1:1. Far, far, far from it.

I don't think any manager has had much of a handle on recruitment since early Rodgers. That went horribly wrong and round about 2022 the club came to the conclusion that managers should have to work with whatever their men - Glover and Rudkin - deemed worthy. The obvious conclusion, rather than that, should simply have been that Rodgers, and his man Congerton, were poor recruiters. As has been the case throughout both of their careers. And an already-dire situation got a whole lot worse. I understand that managers only have a collaborative role in recruitment nowadays, but when players are repeatedly signed who don't complement what's going on on the field, you'll always end up in trouble. And if you can't settle on a manager who can take you forward, it's hard to justify giving them a major say either. The whole thing becomes a vicious circle.

It wasn't only that though, was it? There was the best part of a decade of haphazard recruitment. Being totally financially hamstrung. An odious culture from top to bottom of the club. Disgraceful decision-making at every level, from transfers to managerial appointments to sackings to Seagrave. By the time it came round to Cifuentes, it was no longer a case of 'any half-decent boss could get us going'. Make no mistake, if Rowett keeps us up he's done a very fine job where many other, perfectly acceptable managers wouldn't. Perhaps he's not a valid longer-term option, but when was the last time we made sensible decisions with the bigger picture in mind?

In all fairness to him/her, my own sense of irony has been dulled by months of certain people claiming that we were too good for this league, followed by months of certain people claiming that things weren't nearly as bad as they seemed, followed by outright panic everywhere, from everyone.

Yes, I moaned about him for a bit, but I think you've got a fair point, on balance. I wouldn't be quite so nice about Mavididi, who was very questionable for the goal and missed a good chance, but you're right again that he at least posed a threat. Reasons for just a little optimism.

Fair point. I think it's just that, for the first time in an age, we've seen the tiniest glimmer of hope. I suppose there's a small chance now, where there wasn't before, that we don't bomb in those three fixtures. If we're a point or two adrift, or better, after those three matches we'll have a good shot at survival, and that doesn't look as utterly unrealistic as it did at half time.

If the club folds then the phoenix/successor club will become Leicester City for me. I just hope the whole thing isn't hijacked by the Ginetta brigade, spinning a narrative that negativity rather than complicity got us where we are, because then things could easily fracture. We'll all have to be willing to be a broad church, and if there were those who'd called for blind faith as the original club folded, I suppose they'd have to be welcome too, whether they understood what they'd done or not. And that could get tricky.

Right, and with a little reading between the lines you can come up with a few additional educated guesses. Some may well be wrong, but there's likely to be a lot of truth among them. 1. The bleakness of the financial outlook is putting off even semi-competent CEOs and Technical Directors. They may see criminal implications down the line, and perhaps recognise that things are only going in a direction which would leave a massive black stain on their CVs. 2. Interested potential managers, those with some standing in the game at least, have been scared off when they've become more fully aware of these issues. Others haven't been contacted due to either the board's whims over playing style or potential compensation. The whole Maresca story was a smokescreen to make it look like all was well, and the search under way, hoping as you said that in the meantime something came good under King. 3. The entire reign of Maresca, while worthy of credit for the man himself, was another massive smokescreen. There was no internal review. It represented another turn towards the footballing ideals which marked their early appointments (e.g. Sven), and we decided that the positive headlines of a bounce back were preferable to actually solving our problems. Given the cost of the squad, which was far greater than any other in the division's history, a calculation was made that we could do pretty much whatever we wanted - vindicating Top's so-called 'vision' of football in the process - and worry later about points deductions, PSR issues, players who had already let us down at a higher level, a manager who was clearly using us as a stepping stone, and a style of play which would need overhauling once we got up. 4. There may also be some reluctance now to work with directors who have such a poor track record, and have got through so many managers in recent years. 5. There are some senior players who still have the ear of the chairman, who in turn confuses their one-time financial cost with their actual value. He still overestimates their ability and underestimates the impact of dire morale. Hence, radical action for which there's no action plan often occurs on the rare occasions that he's on the premises. 6. The complacency around the club which journalists spoke of so much back in 2022/23 was down to Top above anyone else. 7. A vicious circle has developed whereby Top's inadequacy makes it near impossible to acquire competent CEOs, Technical Directors, managers, Heads of Recruitment, and the absence of these voices also makes his decision-making more erratic. And what he actually has is a mechanism around him which protects him from the last vestiges of reality around the club - from fans, journalists and pundits - rather than obliging him to answer their questions. The gentle and at-first-glance pre-agreed nature of the questioning in those interviews points to this (and even if they weren't pre-agreed, interviewers understood that access would only be granted if they spoke quite obsequiously). 8. Flattery and diplomacy, both internally and externally, have far too big a role to play in dealing with Top. He's not making decisions based on evidence, but rather on what he wants to hear. And that's why he's surrounded by the likes of Rudkin. 9. He isn't capable enough to deal with those issues even when they do become clear, which is often too late. 10. This blissful ignorance has also led him to become far too confident in his own ability to make big calls. Too many decisions have been made by a person who has very little knowledge of what's going on and next to no day-to-day involvement coming to the conclusion that he is indeed the right man to make the call. 11. Top still believes that he created our success. He fundamentally fails to understand the role of the management staff, or even what his own father did that actually worked, so he's got a kind of Midas complex, but without any notion of the hard work and intelligence which actually brings about success. He is entirely incompetent. 12. This is an existential issue for the club. Even with survival this season, unless our trajectory alters radically, we will either be rescued at the last minute due to our one-time stature or restart in non-league as a phoenix club which has to buy back its trophies and ground many, many years down the line. There have been chances to stop this from happening, but at every turn Top's ignored them, and now the solutions are running out. If there are any remaining at all. 13. If they cling on, then unless lessons are learned (you'll know if they have, because Rudkin will go and there'll be changes which go way beyond those currently mooted) you'll have more smokescreens and short-term patch-ups. So we need to make sure we're not fooled. The only way forward is the sale of all our major talent, a drastically different budget approach to recruitment, and the patience to see us take time to build again, rather than keep pushing problems further down the line. It's highly unlikely and it'll take years, but still less than coming back from the 9th tier. God, that was longer than I expected. Apologies.

Obviously it tickles you to say slightly silly things to wind people up, which is fine by me if that floats your boat. But I don't think Vichai ever tried to buy Chelsea. I think I read once that he was a Chelsea fan, but it was Reading that he tried to buy, unless I'm mistaken. And what you've said about Birmingham and Cardiff only serves to underline the point you're responding to. Anyway, I could be wrong, but I think this was all reported somewhere at some time or other. Another thing that was widely reported at the time, as regards your points about Pearson, was that King Power as potential buyers in summer 2010 favoured a different kind of manager and Pearson jumped before he was pushed. They were shown around the ground just before the play-off semis without going to speak to him, and he knew Sousa was in attendance for the game. So he saw the writing on the wall and left. There was an interview while he was at Hull in which he spoke quite openly about it. Which doesn't quite fit in with the narrative that they kick-started our success by welcoming him back, of course. And, of course, the point about Cambiasso is especially daft, and not something I've ever heard anyone with a great deal of intelligence or knowledge bringing up as evidence. I'm sure you don't believe it either, but it's getting quite hackneyed now, so I think you're going to have to freshen up your material a bit!

I do feel as if I've heard this 'pretty much anyone could do better than the current manager' narrative before. If Cifuentes had no nous at all, nor King (and the masses said this was the problem with Cooper and Ruud too), then what chance could there possibly be of us finding someone who does have a bit of nous? The truth is that successive bosses, while often ill-fitted for the job, have come in and failed to achieve progress. They're not all utterly incompetent, and I doubt very much that any avid non-Leicester-based followers of the FLC feel that Cifuentes has been a significant player in our downfall. There are other, more obvious, common denominators.

Obviously he's made some mistakes. And yes, he's looked like a rabbit in the headlights - and clearly not ready for the job - from the off. But if Cifuentes wasn't a major reason for our plight, then King is far, far less so. And yet, remarkably, it's starting to look like, all along, the board's Plan B was to give King a lengthy interim stint. If so, why didn't they try this out at the end of last season, when there was nothing to play for? And why didn't they make clear that King would have a considerable stint this time round, so that the players understood that they couldn't cross him and expect someone else to be in charge five minutes later? The supposed move for Maresca was the most transparent and insulting move of all. They weren't remotely interested in a high profile appointment, never had the funds for it, but still wanted it out there. In truth, they were hoping against all hope that there was a bounce under King, despite the fact that he didn't want the job, and they hadn't established him as anything other than a game-by-game custodian. Meaning, they weren't giving him the best possible chance of success. There was never the money for a major swoop, but they thought it would satisfy us that they were doing their job. 'Oh, well we stuck with Andy King, but we tried for x, y and z' (who'd never have entertained it in the first place) or 'oh, well we ended up with Martin/Coleman, but we went for x, y and z'. It's an embarrassingly transparent lie. And yet, that lie doesn't work when it gets to three weeks without a manager, after four more defeats, and when your sole supposed target is someone that the biggest imbecile on earth would know to be utterly unwilling to entertain the post. That's how incompetent and removed from reality they are - they really thought it would wash.