Claudio Fannieri

Couldn’t agree more, for me it’s not about spending huge money on players or wages that gets me excited, it’s clever recruitment and the signing of players for a relatively modest fee and the potential for them to generate a decent sell on or the development of a healthy conveyor belt of academy prospects. To be honest any investment of £15m plus and I am nervous as I know we are out of our comfort zone as a club and also that a deal of this magnitude if it doesn’t go well will severely impact us. I would argue our summer transfer business in the main was better than anything we completed in the previous 4 or so windows as a premier league club.

It does beg the question as to whether there will be mass redundancies and cost cutting across the non football side of the club, following the recent financial results. If I recall correctly despite relegation there were no job cuts, whilst this will likely be a drop in the ocean, I can see it being done to try and control non football costs. if this does happen then surely Whelan and Rudkin cannot survive in those circumstances.

Just my opinion, but the higher up the leagues you go the less influence the trust will have, I think when looking at Premier league clubs and the bigger championship clubs they tend to see engagement with fan groups/trusts and the role of Fan Engagement as a tick box exercise for PR purposes, only when the shit hits the fan, or clubs are in the lower echelons of the league does it feel like these fan groups and supporter trusts have any real voice and valued contribution to their club. Somehow we need to use this current plight as an opportunity to support the Foxes Trust to become a vehicle for positive engagement with the club and transformational change in the traditional supporter experience of the club.

Read my post again, I never said about the 2 top 5 finishes or the FA Cup win, I was talking about the mistakes made during that summer when the club gambled by not selling a star or two and then went out and spent a kings ransom on wages for Daka, Soumare, Bertrand and Vestergaard to please Brendan. my issues and concerns relate to how we operated following the FA Cup win, certain individuals seemed to have been pissed on power and success and our well structured model went out the window.

The truth is we will never ever know if things would have turned out differently under Vichai, maybe just maybe a club of our size was always going to come a cropper trying to consistently compete and disrupt the big 6, or accept that from a long term sustainability perspective, we reigned it in somewhat and traded mid table obscurity in exchange for a long stay in the premier league. It has been a unique journey where we have tasted the sweetest success but also the bitterest fall from grace, instead of being Vanilla we wanted to be an exotic flavour, became the flavour of the month only for it to reach a glass ceiling and we faded away whilst Vanilla (Palace) continue to be a mid range but sustainable club. The FA Cup win was the perfect opportunity to cash in and refresh, start a new cycle whilst also enabling the club to bring finances under control, we didn’t and as a consequence it folded like a deck of cards and we collapsed in quite spectacular fashion. We were just not in a position, have the infrastructure or the right people operating at a senior level in our club to sustainably compete at the levels our ambitions targeted. The negotiations and signings in the summer following that FA Cup win is exhibit A in demonstrating how inept Jon Rudkin is to operate as DoF at a club of our size with our ambition and resources. To oversee such a criminal overspend on wages to 4 new signings, even if the 4 were all 1st choice targets and the manager is pushing to sign them all, the wage demands should have been a red flag and we either played hard ball and negotiated more sustainable contractual terms or moved onto plan B. We seemed to have struck gold in hiring Maresca, a manager with a freshness and passion, attention to detail and to build sports science, data analytics and recruitment teams very much in the way Pearson did, however it now feels the rug has been well and truly pulled from underneath him, the messages from the summer about rebuilding the club and long term projects are absolute pipe dreams now due to the dire financial situation we find ourselves in and the repercussions this will have to our ability to compete in whichever league we end up in and also our ability operate in the transfer market. How he transformed the atmosphere within the club was very Pearsonesque and I genuinely do feel for the bloke as I am convinced he had no inkling of the financial carnage that lay ahead and it only became apparent approaching it during the January transfer window. I don’t feel sorry for Enzo in terms of the budget and players he has to work with, but I do feel some sympathy towards him in relation to how the club appear to have only told him part of the story and have effectively thrown him under a bus from half way through the season and the goal posts have moved to significantly that of he does stay he will effectively be managing with both arms and legs tied behind his back and blindfolded. I really cannot see how his relationship with the higher ups at the club can be anything other than freyed and how much trust exists now? I think come the summer unless there is significant change in the structure and operators at senior levels in the club, we will see Enzo walk away and I am really not sure where that will leave us.

This for me is where the lack of transparency and communication from the higher echelons of the club, absolute frustrate me, had they been open and honest with the fanbase regards the financial gambles they were taking I am fairly sure most of the fanbase would have appreciate the situation and accepted 2/3 seasons of mid table mediocrity whilst we cashed in on a couple of stars and reinvested in young hungry players and started another cycle. Instead the club at the behest of Brendan and maybe others involved at board level, continued to gamble and chase the dream, was it the fans dream to see us in financial meltdown. Of course we all wanted Champions League football and further success, but had we known the full picture I doubt any of us would support the risks being taken and the price we are now paying for the irresponsible spending. Just like the car crash summer of 2016 following the league title success when our recruitment was all over the shop, we managed to make the same mistakes yet again following the FA Cup success. We claim to want to be a top club, but our issue is as soon as we get a sniff of success, we lose our heads and make poor decisions that take years to rectify. That is why we need a change at board level, with experienced and skilled operators at DoF and Commercial levels who can capitalise on our successes and build sustainable strategic growth both on and off the pitch.

I take it from this you are saying it is all football related issues that have got us in of this financial meltdown rather than the performance of the commercial side of the club. interesting as I seem to recall reading somewhere on here that SW and JR had fallen out and were barely speaking, has Top backed the wrong horse (excuse the pun) and our esteemed DoF got all giddy with our successes and his subsequent decision making has sent us into these murky waters, maybe SW was warning against decisions that were being made. I really do hope, that one way or another these results force positive change within the club.

Couldn’t agree more, and why we stopped selling a star player each summer and refresh with young hungry players who we can then rinse and repeat with. truth is finishing 5th and being so close to champions league meant everyone got giddy and took a view to go for it with our golden generation, trouble is we had reached our peak and instead of capitalising, refreshing and going again we went stale and had nowhere to go and it all came tumbling down like a pack of cards. the Forest humbling in the FA Cup should have been the catalyst to remove Brendan and in the summer sell 3 or 4 higher earners for sensible fees, reinvest and freshen the squad, we may have struggled or even still got relegated however our financial position would be nowhere near as precarious and we would have a few more saleable assets.

Maybe some of the wage increases could be linked to yearly % increases as part of multi year contract agreements. I think it’s common practice on say a 4/5 year contract for a player to start on £x but then have a yearly wage increase written into the contract of y%. Also there will be the pay off to Brendan and his mob and whilst only for a short duration, there will have been the costs for Dean Smith, John Terry and Shakey, whilst i also think the likes of Stowell and Wier also left the club and there severance packages will no doubt have been wrapped up in the figures up to June. I think Enzo joined in that month too so could any compo payments to Man City be wrapped up in this too?

Yes the rules are frustrating and to a degree are anti competitive however it’s not PSR that made us change our business model, scout and recruit poorly and pay massively overly inflated wages to bang average players. The rules are crap but that does not gloss over how badly we have been managed on and off the pitch these last 2/3 seasons. It is shambolic and the only sustainable course of action is for Top to pull the trigger on Rudkin and Whelan with immediate effect and recruit people who can come In and help rebuild the club. I really can’t see outside investment or being sold as viable solutions at this current stage and given the challenges we face over the coming years, anyone interested at this stage I would have serious reservations as to their intentions and whether they would see us as asset stripping opportunity.

I have joined, as a foxile living 150 ish miles away we get to go to maybe 10+ games a season. This is an opportunity to be more actively involved and voice my opinion. I have always felt that because we are a provincial club and a one club city we have always had that family togetherness spirit however since Vichai’s passing I feel the club has become more of a corporate entity and there is a growing disconnect with the fanbase, however do I feel it is irreversible, no I don’t and here is my reasoning and it comes from my own personal experience. As you may recall in October I undertook a challenge to raise money for Prostate cancer UK where I ran 5km each day for Prostate FC. I got in contact with the club to ask if it was at all possible to complete a run at the KP or at the training ground initially I was very disappointed by the response from the club. However Top stepped in and ensured I got to run at the training ground. For that morning my family and I were treated like royalty it was a fantastic experience, but at no time did the club follow it up and offer to promote what I was doing or help raise awareness. I believe Top still sees the club and its supporters as a family but he is now tol far removed from the day to day running to maybe appreciate the disconnection. I believe the people employed to run the club. In a day to day basis no longer see the fans as the lifeblood of the club but as mere customers. I really hope the fan engagement manager fully appreciates what our fanbase is about and that they are given a mandate and genuine accountability to be able to drive though transformation and change in the current fan experience of our club and not just on matchdays.

The reality is given that promotion is far from a foregone conclusion and regardless next season we are very likely to have a hefty points deduction so at best we could be yo-yoing between the top two divisions, at worst it could be an extended stay in the EFL, hardly enticing for any potential new ownership. Given the uncertainty I think KP is probably our safest bet to ride through these choppy waters whilst the club resets, however that is only really the case if Top grows a pair and removes Rudkin and Whelan and replaces them with experienced and capable operators within the football industry. Selling at this point in time and I would genuinely fear we end up with someone like Chansiri or Yongge at Reading and that could make this current situation look like a walk in the park.

As others have stated, our expenditure on actual transfer fees hasn’t been that excessive, however our approach to wage expenditure has been nothing short of irresponsible and inept. I have absolutely no issue in players of the ilk of Vardy, Schmichael, Maddison, Barnes Ndidi, Riccy P and Tielemans being paid market rate when you consider their performances and given what the first 2 had achieved at the club. However where I have a massive issue and where I feel we have lost the plot, is in relation to the wages we have paid to squad players such as Ward, Choudhury, Bertrand, Vestergard, Praet, Perez, Soumare and Daka, whilst people say we wouldn’t have attracted them or retained them, I would argue we have massively overpaid as the only way to entice them to sign for us and therefore already running the risk of a player already losing their desire and hunger before a ball has been kicked, then on top of that when they are inevitably surplus to requirements it is impossible to shift them due to the high wages, so they run their contracts down and leave for free. I also believe last season we were paying Alex Smithies in the region of £30-35k per week to be nothing more than 3rd choice keeper for training and drills, I mean make it make sense. Make no mistake, the spin is we gambled and threw the dice trying to be successful, yes that is true if you focus on the Vardy’s, Barnes, Madders, Youri’s of this world but that argument loses all manner of credibility when you take into account the wages handed out to rank average players like Bertrand, Vesty, Ward, Choudhury, Praet, Perez, Smithies et al. We lost all control of expenditure, it is absolutely disgusting 🤢

I defended the initial club statement at the time, too be honest I wish to retract that now after seeing the financial performance and the magnitude of the potential breach, the fact is we never had any serious intentions of getting anywhere close to compliance. The stance of the club would be fully justified had it been a very small breach but for us to have been as damning of Everton and being reported we could potentially sue, to then posting these figures is just downright absurd and embarrassing. When you consider that Fofana was sold, only after kicking off and refusing to play once the Chelsea interest crystallised, and then Madders was sold for a cut price fee approaching the end of June deadline, to top it all off we then had our busiest January window for years and but for Leeds pulling the plug we would have shelled out another £20m, albeit this would have been amortised, and handed out another £100,000 a week contract, to Jack Harrison. Whilst I hate the PSR rules, make no mistake this breach demonstrates how poorly we have been managed in recent years, whatever punishment we get, we absolutely deserve, the arrogance, incompetence and ineptitude of the ownership and senior management who have enabled this to happen is beyond approach. Heads have to roll for this, our finances are out of control and in pursuit of ambition we have actually created a mentality where everyone is already handsomely remunerated for mediocrity. There is no jeopardy for the players anymore and this led to a malaise and relegation. The culture of the club changed and with it came relegation and financial meltdown. For that reason Top has to show a ruthlessness not demonstrated before, remove Rudkin and Whelan, push the reset button financially and most importantly change the culture of accepting poor performance on and off the field. We need to go to a model where players and staff are paid a competitive basic salary but heavily performance incentivised and a move back to attracting young hungry players.

Wow I am absolutely stunned at the levels of utter incompetence, if Rodgers lost his job for what was gross negligence for what went on on the pitch then surely Rudkin and Whelan cannot survive this. Utterly utterly appalling and whatever happens this season, we will not competitive for a number of years to come. people are saying fans would be kicking off we didn’t make signings or had a fire sale last summer or January but the truth is none of us truly understood the position we were in, whilst I love to see us competing, it would never be to the detriment of the football club’s existence. This is worse than the Peter Taylor days. Very worrying times, I sincerely hope this is a wake up call to the owners and at the very least they go out and employ experienced football operators to sort out the sorry mess of our off field football and commercial operations.

I think it will be really interesting if Enzo does stay beyond the summer, to see how the difference in our play next season after a summer of adding in more players with the profile to play this style, regardless of budget there will be players who fit the type of profile we are looking for, I still feel there a number of players in our squad, who don’t necessarily fit how we play and our recruitment in the summer even if restricted, will be intriguing.

Great minds 😂

Not sure if you meant to post the word pisitivity but I think it somewhat sums up the next week or 2, a blend of positive and pissed off 😂 I have a feeling that the manager and players have possibly already had their mini blip and I would imagine internally the situation regards the PSR breach would have come out a few weeks ago, so not sure this weeks announcement will necessarily affect the players, however as a fanbase we have to use this to galvanise us, get behind the manager and players as motivation. The financial mismanagement sits the senior executives and owners, so any frustration, anger and disappointment as to be directed at the right time to the right people, the players, manager and coaching staff are not to blame for the mess we find ourselves in off the pitch, so let’s keep positive and roar the boys home. The reaction to Vardy’s goal yesterday was more than enough to show me there was unity, togetherness and a desire to succeed.

Couldn’t agree more, I think he could sense the players were a bit anxious and whilst our build up play was good we lacked a little bit of quality with our final ball and decision making. He was being supportive to the players rather than critical and trying to take the pressure off them.

I think we signed him with a view to the future, come the summer it’s highly likely Kel’s will move on, Vards could retire and if we get an acceptable offer for Daka I think we would accept. It was now or never to sign Cannon when we did, next season I believe he will flourish and he will prove to be an absolute bargain and a real piece of astute business. I actually think in the games he has played he looks the most natural striker for this style.

Back to his best today

Too be honest looked just like we played for a big part of the 1st half of the season.

Much much better and a performance in keeping with the 1st half of the season, showed some bollocks to regroup and come back from going a goal down and to be honest that 2nd half showing is as good as we have played, we absolutely bossed it. the reaction to the Vardy goal was interesting, players seem fully behind Enzo and seemed to playing for him, I think the drop off has been as a result of the off the field distractions plus a couple of key injuries have definitely knocked the wind out of our sails, would be great to build on this with another decent run of results. Now come on Saints and Hull

This is my fear too

I actually feel and fear they may no longer be playing for the club anymore, the drop off considering our league position, suggests it’s more to do with the catastrophic financial position we find ourselves in and the associated sanctions we will find ourselves under next season regardless of the league we end up in. I can imagine a lot of players genuinely felt the club would use relegation to regroup and come back having another go at becoming a club capable of competing for top half finishes and maybe the odd European challenge. To find out that we are more likely to be hit with a record points deduction and a decimated squad is hardly going to create a positive mentality. I imagine most are drained and quite frankly utterly pissed off.