StriderHiryu

Truly the end of an error

Leicester City start the 25/26 season in disarray on and off the pitch with financial troubles, a raft of star players leaving and starting with a hefty minus 15 points deduction. Nonetheless goals from Ben Nelson and forgotten man Michael Golding, stepping off the bench give caretaker manager Andy King his first win. 
 

Leicester follow up with a 2-1 win away to Preston North End thanks to a brace from Patson Daka before Jeremy Monga grabs his first senior goal in a hard fought away win at Charlton leading to King being given the job for the season. 

The mood around the King Power is flattened somewhat after a home defeat to big spending Birmingham City and an away draw to Oxford, but Leicester recover to win 5 in a row and going unbeaten for the next 6 as King’s blue and white army click into gear, with deadline day signing Daniel Bameyi impressing as a marauding right back combining with the deadly Abdul Fatawu down the wing. 

The foxes fall victim to a surprise defeat against Stoke but turn it on big time against early pace setters Southampton and thrashing Sheffield United 5-1, finally seeing them climb out of the relegation places. 

The blues continue their fine form through the rest of the season with King’s inspired decision to use local lad Kasey McAteer as a false 9 bamboozling defences during Patson Daka’s two months on the sidelines and find themselves in the top half at the start of 2026. 

Things appear to be going swimmingly, including a revenge victory over Brum, but things appear to be going off the rails with back to back defeats against Southampton and Stoke again, followed by a tame away goalless draw at Boro. 

But at this point the Foxes see the emergence of young Jake Evans who bags 6 goals in as many games to give the Foxes faithful hope for a playoff push, which they secure on the last day with a win, despite only needing a draw. 

Jordan Ayew puts in a fine individual performance in the second leg to dash Frank Lampard’s hopes of seeing Coventry in the top flight as the 2026 playoff final is confirmed as being between Birmingham City and Leicester. 

The final start’s disastrously with Jakub Stolarczyk’s poor pass from goal being turned in by Championship top scorer Jay Stansfield, but Leicester stay in it and equalise just before half time through the much maligned Oliver Skipp. 

The teams can’t be separated in the second 45, taking us to extra time. But just when it appears that the game is headed for penalties, Wembley is treated to one of the all time great goals as wonder kid Jeremy Monga beats 5 men and smashes it into the top corner before running over and hugging manager Andy King. 

Leicester secure promotion to the Premier League and after the match it’s confirmed that a consortium headed by Hollywood icon Sydney Sweeney have brought the club and will be replacing the long time DOF John Rudkin with King’s mentor Nigel Pearson!

6 minutes ago, LFox99 said:

Right, so our board is looking at Rohl and Dyche at the same time?

Just confirms to me they're utterly clueless, two coaches who couldn't be more different from each other. Our board genuinely doesn't know what they want themselves. 

100% this.

On paper I can totally understand appointing Dyche, even if I don't like the pick. But to go from Rodgers and Maresca to Cooper then to RVN and now to Dyche... they don't have a clue. 

A bit of shameless self promotion here, this is important to me, so I wanted to create a thread for it, which I hope is OK.

Our great club has truly fallen away in recent years, and many of us have never felt so disconnected. There are many, many issues for why this is, so I wanted to outline what some of those things are, and offer some suggestions on how we could fix them:

In this part we discuss the Culture and Organisation of the club, both of which leave a lot to be desired.

For those of you that can't watch, the TL;DR is:
 

• The culture of ignoring fans, hiding information and avoiding accountability needs to change. Clubs on the rise, e.g. Wrexham understand this and it's producing results.
• Changes should be made at the Sporting Director level of the club to bring in someone with experience in building a winning culture where everyone from fans to players feel like they are pulling in the same direction. Nigel Pearson is my suggestion for the person to come in for that role, but there are others that could be suggested.

If you've got time to watch the video, or just listen to it in the background, I'd love to know what you think. It is difficult to think sweeping changes would be made at the club, but when clubs who put such practices into place start surpassing you, at some point even changes at the Top (pun intended) can take place.

I want to see a balanced approach.

If you watched the recent Europa League final, you would have seen 3 different approaches from two terrible teams, that led to one of the worst finals in history. Man United tried to play possession football at first, but with players that lacked technicality or the finesse needed to achieve such a system. After seeing it didn't work out, they eventually stuck Slabhead up front and tried cross after cross, making it piss easy for Spurs to see the game out.

Spurs played a deep block and hit on the counter and had only a few chances, but did score with one of those chances. There approach was also incredibly dull to watch, but it was effective.

In the 25/26 season we will be one of the big dogs of the league and teams will sit back and park the bus against us. For note, the three teams that were the most direct in the Championship last year were the three that went down, showing that even in that league, you have to a be a lot cuter than what we were when promoted under Nigel Pearson.

I think Enzo had the right starting point, IE create a man advantage in midfield, push up high with a high press and look to isloate the wingers 1v1 through clever patterns of play. However, I didn't like that it often felt like passing for the sake of passing. Enzo was scared of getting caught out on transition, which IMO was because Vestergaard is slower than a Lada full of elephants going uphill. This led to being overly cautious in terms of losing the ball, making deep blocks extremely effective against us. When you are playing against Milwall, Oxford, Derby, etc then once we get 65-70% possession for a long stint, we should then be more willing to go direct and rely on being better man for man than the opposition. Pearson's sides knew how to battle and use physicality to grind out results.

^ I think it's worth noting that in both the Premier League AND the Championship, the teams near the top whilst having possession, did not have as much possession as in previous years. The game has moved on because teams have clocked on that being really physical and hitting teams on transition is a must in modern football. PSG are probably the best team in Europe at it and are in the UCL final. Sheffield United didn't get promoted, but look at the goal they scored in the playoff final, a good modern team needs to be able to go from one end of the pitch to the other inside 10 seconds.

So overall I want to see a team that is happy to be on the ball, pushing up and taking the game to the opposition. I want them to generally control the game, but be willing to inject pace and directness to create a real attacking threat. But that team also has to be able to hit teams lightning quick on transition too.

That sounds like I want everything, but I think Enzo's team was on the right path. We just needed faster CBs at the back so we could be a bit more direct in the final third.

If Martin is appointed, I think he can get a tune out of our squad, but he won't be very direct, and in fact it will probably be even slower than under Enzo at times, unless he's willing to change. If we don't play Vestergaard or Coady and start with Nelson and Okoli, we could be more aggressive, but I think that given the wages the former two are on, they will be used.

1 hour ago, AjcW said:

@StriderHiryu can you do your thing when you get a chance? Man plays about 45 different formations depending on which way the wind blows  

We'll have a show on BTG if he's appointed for sure. In the meantime this is worth looking at, from our game against them whilst Cooper was still in charge:
 

If we wanted to find a manager that played in a similar way to Enzo Maresca, Russel Martin is actually one of the best possible choices for it. He has a very clear identity, his teams are well coached and he trusts and can mould younger talents. If you compare him to people like Cooper and Dyche, Martin does objectively make way more sense.

His failings as we all know are stuborness with that style, especially given he had the weakest squad in the Premier League. That said it's not like Southampton's results have improved much since he left. However, I fear that watching another season of slow, possession based football won't go down the same way it did under Enzo, and he was under pressure early on at Southampton for similar reasons.

If he is appointed the key question is if he's learnt anything. This season for the first time in a long time, the teams at the top end of the table are NOT the ones with the most possession. It's taken a while, but all the PL teams have figured out how to deal with it and the game is now more about transitions - can you score within 10 seconds of winning the ball back? Martin doesn't come across as stupid, but is he humble? If he's humble enough to accept that he needs to modify some things then I don't think he's a bad appointment at all, even if not the most exciting one. And for all these Pep Guardiola wannabes; Pep himself changed his style quite a few times, so the lesson is not to be hung up on ONE specific way of playing. That said, the parachute teams are always very strong in the Championship no matter who is in charge. Even if we get deducted 10-15 points, we might still make the playoffs.

1 hour ago, Aleksz said:

Theoretically - could he stay, become an integral player in the championship next year, and leave for peanuts on a tribunal next summer as he can leave the club hanging on a pro deal until he’s 17? Thought of that’s pretty sickening. Presumably the club will say to him he’ll have to commit to a pro deal this summer to be a part of next season. 

This is always the big problem with the youth setup in this country. If the above happened, at least the tribunal hearing would go in our favour if he played and had a big impact in the season. So whilst we might not get Bellingham money, it should be a lot better than if he leaves at the end of this season, which IMO is the bigger worry.

Regardless we've got to be playing players like this and showing them there is a clear pathway to the first team as the long term benefit is huge and the academy could end up paying for itself many times over the course of the next decade or two.

I will give some credit to the academy coaches; Monga, Adams and McAteer all have excellent off the ball work, which is essential in the modern game. For the El Khannouss chance, Monga was also in the perfect position to support the attack and recieve the ball if needed. Usually youth starlets have the technical talent, but that side of the game takes longer to grasp.

By the end of the game, seeing Stolarczyk, Thomas, Monga, Evans and Golding on all at the same time was pretty encouraging.

Anil from Blue Tinted Glasses here. Watching this thread with a lot of interest!

I would love to know what you like and dislike about all the channels and why. If you try to make a channel for everyone, you'll end up making a channel for no one, but of course that doesn't mean you can't aim to improve and get better!

For anyone that comes onto our channel - thanks! This season has been so tough to be a fan for, but in many games the interactions with chat have genuinely had me laughing out loud. Whether that be "top 3 pubs in Leicester", winding Duck up about his haircut and / or Kristiansen, or triggering Luke so he goes off on one, it's made the season a lot more enjoyable than what we see out on the pitch! I had been doing the analysis shows before we got relegated, and they were so grim. As one channel regular said "I don't know how you've managed to make 6 videos of content for a team that hasn't scored at home in the calendar year!"

Pretty impressive against Southampton. Good off the ball and getting stuck in, willing to drive at his man, and there was a great moment where he showed some flair to beat a man and drive forwards. I hope he starts against Ipswich, give him at least a half against Forest.

25 minutes ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Completely missed the game and just trying to work out what exactly changed today?

 

Line up?

Formation?

New players coming in actually trying? 
 

We had a threat on transition, something that has been missing throughout the season. Two fast wingers meant we could pose the opposition a problem. That's what the modern day Premier League is all about, exploiting the spaces the opposition has when they are out of position on a turnover. Both Mavididi and McAteer ran directly at their fullbacks today, and Bilal was finding them.

Brighton could have been well out of sight, but it's a huge frustration we didn't play this way since game one of the season. Cooper was an utter coward not to start Mavididi and Fatawu at the same time, and Ruud clueless about getting the ball forwards quickly when winning the ball back.

Had we played this way throughout the campaign I think we would still have gone down, but I doubt we'd be 14 points off 17th position!