CUJimmy

Agreed, it’s a well written piece as is most of Rob Tanner’s stuff to be fair. There is a balance between people 100% behind the protest, others who agree with the concerns but don’t seem sure about the approach and those who don’t think there is a problem. It’s good to see Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions of a team being used in context. This is a well established piece of management theory with a large body of evidence supporting it so lends more credibility to the argument.

In other words they covered the issues that are easily measurable/observable from outside but not the harder stuff. Did they have any interviews, quotes or comments from fans that they could push for a response from the club about?

Can anyone remember another game when both keepers went off injured?

Mindboggling isn’t it? To be fair to him Vesty did a job in the Championship although we still gave away a lot of chances, we just got away with it because most strikers there are shîte.

It depends on whether we are talking with the benefit of hindsight or without. With hindsight relegation to League 1 was the kick up the àrse the club needed and promoted the root and branch reform that followed. The helicopter crash undoubtedly ripped the heart out of the club but I don’t think it was until later that I realised how much was driven by Vichai. Without hindsight the first time I thought we had a realistic chance of doing something special was the Chelsea game in 15/16. Mahrez first chipped in a delightful cross for Vardy to do what he did best then deposited the Chelsea fullback on his backside before curling in the second. We genuinely had players, and more importantly a team, who were making the PL elite look like chumps. José was sacked that week and the rest is history. With a neat bit of symmetry the time when I thought our days in the sun were over was when Perez missed a sitter at Chelsea after the Cup Final meaning that we would almost certainly just miss out on Champions League for the second year in a row. I felt then that we probably wouldn’t get that chance again.

Thanks for doing this. It shows why the ‘get rid of them all’ strategy is not as easy as it sounds. There will be interest in some but unless we can agree to terminate by mutual consent we are stuck with them because wages will be a stumbling block. It would be interesting to know actual wages and whether they have relegation clauses. I hope most of the newer contracts do so there should not be the desperate financial need to come straight back up that there was last time. With this in mind I would prefer us to target promotion in three years by which time almost all the current contracts will have expired if we don’t manage to sell. The aim being to put the club back on a secure footing on and off the pitch with a sustainable wage structure ready for another tilt at the prem. This would encourage development of the youngsters and discourage buying ‘Premier League experience’. A combination of outstanding training facilities and a clear pathway into the first team should be enough to attract and retain promising youngsters and coaches. It’s only a few years ago that we regularly had 4 or more academy graduates on the pitch at a time with Barnes, KDH, Chillwell, Hamza and Thomas all in our around matchday squads. Even when they made mistakes I found it much easier to get behind them than the journeymen/mercenaries we have now.

Yes. We are only an injury to Vardy or Daka (hardly unlikely tbh) away from making Eduard work for his £90k a week.

1. Agreed ours have increased but they are still low by PL standards so a new owner would see plenty of scope there. 2. Pretty much where I stand I think. I suspect many would just hold their nose and enjoy the ride. 3. It’s only the dream if the owner has, or forms, an emotional attachment with the club otherwise once the novelty wears off or the money dries up you are in trouble. I am thinking Ashley at Newcastle here. The best model is obviously some form of fan ownership as in Germany but there doesn’t seem to be the will for that here.

Genuine question. If King Power were to sell up would you have a problem with the club being owned by: 1. An American franchise that would be simply looking to make money so higher prices, more focus on corporate etc. Looking to sell on for a profit eg Man Utd. 2. A nation state with a dubious human rights record. Eg Newcastle. 3. A fabulously wealthy individual who wants us as a plaything. Abramovic did this with Chelsea and they have only survived his departure by finding another fabulously wealthy individual. I am not saying these are the only options and I am not sure what I think but would be interested in other views.

True but Chelsea, or anyone else, would know that we needed to sell quickly so we would end up accepting a lower price than we could have got by holding out longer.

Not sure what my answer to the question would be but looking at our player contract situation our financial position isn’t improving anytime soon. At the end of this season the only players out of contract will be Ward, Iverson and Vardy. Of the rest a limited number are going to attract any interest, Mads will go to Chelsea, BEK will attract interest from a top half club and a few of the others might get picked up by lower prem teams but for very small fees. Fatawu might get a decent move depending on who will risk it after his injury - it will be at a cut price though. Of those that are left most can do a job in the Championship but even if we got promoted (long shot I know) we will likely be in the same position as we are now in two years. We either had to go ‘balls out’ and spend big on the kind of players that would keep us up or do what we obviously have done, accept relegation and begin to repair the finances. I really don’t think there were enough players around at the kind of money we could pay and stay within PSR. Ignoring PSR, even if we did stay up, only kicks the can down the road until next season because we still have loads of players on big 2/3 year contracts who wouldn’t be going anywhere. One thing for sure is that there isn’t a quick solution. Even a change of owner wouldn’t instantly fix the situation with players contracts or walking the tightrope of PSR so it’s going to take 3 years minimum.

We would need to sell Mads very early in the window otherwise it wouldn’t be in the same accounting period.

As a senior manager for many years before I retired I was part of the team responsible for setting the goals and overall strategy. Does this mean I was responsible for the day to day implementation of this? No, we took great care to appoint experts in each area who knew far more than we did. Did I hold them accountable for decisions they made? Absolutely, and if it was a major one I would expect them to be able to justify it to me in advance. I didn’t need to have their grasp of the detail but I had to understand it enough to question them. If they failed I was accountable to people above me, that’s how senior management works. I don’t see how this is different to Rudkin. He either doesn’t have the expertise to hold people to account or he chooses not to for some unfathomable reason.

I agree with all of this. A 10 point deduction now is going to make no difference to the outcome of the season so we might as well have taken it on the chin. Thinking ahead to next season the squad is probably good enough to push for promotion which says more about the quality of the Championship than anything else. We might be better off taking the 10 point deduction, not getting promoted but using the season to refocus and rebuild.

From a personal perspective I am perfectly happy with NFC. It has failed to work once in 30+ matches and that was user error because I hadn’t checked it had automatically updated before I got to the stadium and I made the mistake of deleting the one from the previous game so had to get it sorted at the ticket office. On other occasions when it hasn’t updated a manual update has worked every time. What I think most people object to is not being given the option to stick with a card without paying £25. This coincided with a time when relations between the club and fans were on a downward path anyway. I would accept that physical cards are probably slightly more expensive to administer but not £25 more so a nominal fee of, say £5 would make sense. If NFC really is more convenient then people will migrate towards it over time in the same way as more people now pay for things using their phone rather than a card.

According to my consultant recurrence is pretty much the same whether it heals naturally or after an operation. The main difference is that 3 weeks in a cast is replaced by a couple of hours on the operating table so you can start rehab earlier.

That’s what they told me, they said that if it hadn’t knitted after 3 weeks then they would have operated. I just find it mind-boggling that an aged body like mine can heal itself from a serious injury so quickly.

It reminds me of a few years ago when there was a mass exodus to the Chinese Super League because of the wages they were paying. What happened to that?

I ruptured my Achilles a couple of years ago. They didn’t operate just put me in a cast for 3 weeks while it joined up again then 12 weeks rehab in an orthopaedic boot and 4 months of physio to rebuild strength. If they had operated it would have taken away the need for the 3 weeks in a cast but outcomes this way are just as good apparently. It amazes me that the tendon could reconnect itself in such a short period of time, especially as I am turned 60.

Great result. It was good to see the game going on round the dead body at 2:00 as well. Referee obviously decided it was nothing so waved play on.

The biggest issue for me with the US one is that most of them seem to know each other already so there are established friendships and vendettas floating around. This makes them totally incapable of making objective decisions. If anyone ever wonders how Trump got elected then watch a couple of episodes of this and remember that they all got a vote.

I am not sure what you mean by sole ownership? Top already owns 55% and his family owns the rest. I have no doubt that if he wanted to sell the club he could do so easily but who would we get instead? Spending on the squad is unlikely to increase because this is limited by PSR not Top’s willingness to put his hand in his pocket. We might complain about ticket prices now but what we pay is still pretty low compared with other clubs. My biggest concern is not who owns the club, but who he turns to for football related advice and that person is Rudkin. I have said it before and I don’t care if it sounds like a witch hunt but as Director of Football, whether we are recruiting managers, signing players or negotiating contracts it all comes back to him. Replace him and we can turn the corner, it won’t be immediate because there is a lot to unwind but we could start heading in the right direction again.

Vardy did an impression of a magnificent bird of prey, Ndiaye was a poxy chip-stealing sea bird. Apples and oranges I am afraid.

That’s because we live rent free in his head and have done since 15-16 when everybody stopped talking about when Blackburn won the league. That and him being from Nottingham.

Agreed but as a CDM not a 10.