The Fosse Way

The key question here, as always and forever, is whether former Blackburn and Man United chief scout Mick Brown remains very well-connected within the game.

https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-non-league-reconnection

Shape the future? Seven changes please Stolarcyzk, Coulibaly, Coady, Okoli, Thomas, Braybrooke, Skipp, El Khannouss, Evans, McAteer, Vardy (or some slight variation) https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-shape-future-southampton

Last night was evidence you won’t get an angry reaction if most of the angry people have stayed at home.

“These fixtures have a surreal air to them. It’s like tasking ChatGPT to put together a Premier League football team. In a literal sense it has achieved that goal. This is a Premier League team playing Premier League games. On Wikipedia in 20 years time, it will describe Leicester City as having participated in the Premier League in the 2024/25 season. Every match is designed to pass a cursory test. Pop this one into your AI checker and it’ll soar through with flying colours. Manchester City 2 Leicester City 0, a perfectly normal scoreline. Chris Sutton isn’t going to shout about it on TalkSport, no one is going to call anyone a disgrace. It’s just going to drift quietly away, never to be spoken about again, just like Leicester City 0 Manchester United 3, or Chelsea 1 Leicester City 0, or Leicester City 0 Arsenal 2. In fact, to complain about them would actually be a sign of unreasonable expectations at this stage, a sign of your own failings, not ours. Why would you be angry at this set of entirely reasonable results. We stole a record of every result in Premier League history and rubbish teams always lose to good teams, what did you expect? Possibly this is Van Nistelrooy’s masterplan, a genius tactic to perform such feats of dull mediocrity that the most basic acts of competence look like historic success. To flood the market with mindlessly boring results so no one notices that he’s pouring out defeats on an overwhelming scale.” https://www.thefosseway.net/matchday/leicester-city-match-report-manchester-city-away-25

We’ve set up a WhatsApp channel purely to post article links (so usually max 3-4 messages per week) to try to solve this. No chat, replies, waffle. Just the links straight to your phone. Follow the The Fosse Way channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAQS8HCBtxBn82ln12s

You can understand why 99% of non-Leicester think we should be eternally grateful for 2016/2021 and not kick up a fuss about the long decline since. It heightens the fairytale even more if we slip into total EFL anonymity for the next two decades. But for so many of our own fans to care what anyone else thinks is ridiculous.

Cheers. Since Musk took over, the traffic from there dropped like a stone anyway to be honest. Most people either go to the site direct, go via NewsNow or if a link gets posted on here. We’re lucky we don’t have to chase ad revenues so if we’re uncomfortable with something we can just bin it. Always welcome anyone sharing stuff wherever they like though. Especially at the moment when it feels like a lot of us are trying to make the case for change to other fans.

Billionaires don’t like being laughed at https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-the-winds-of-change-are-howling

Her name is Kate

The owner interacting with the players is meaningless if you keep buying crap ones on long contracts. When it was Vichai tweaking Riyad’s ears because he’d told him he was staying for another year then fair enough. When it’s Top walking round the pitch at Preston celebrating winning a league we should never have been in, it’s not the same thing.

Of all the hills to die spectacularly on.

You can’t expect any supporters’ group with minimal backing from the fanbase to start getting regular wins out of a club that doesn’t listen, that isn’t interested in being a trailblazer in anything, that treats fan engagement like a tickbox exercise. It’s not the Trust’s decision to make meeting content confidential. We know that dealing with the club is a nightmare and often seems pointless. I do often wonder what the point of the Trust is, not because of the Trust but because of the club. How do you have any kind of influence over an organisation that treats you with disdain? But you can’t just give up either. For that reason, the Trust clearly needs a win as much as the team does, to justify itself and to show it’s worth reforming in the first place. And it’s still going to sound weak sometimes because it’s one of these organisations where you need sign-off to do anything, so I assume people get nervous and stuff gets watered down before it goes out. You can applaud Union FS statements for strongly condemning the club. But the club is taking the piss out of them on a regular basis, posting photos of their section on social media to try and make the ground look like the Bombonera while simultaneously banning their members without evidence of any offence being committed. Surely hundreds if not thousands of people are furious about stuff like that. Not everyone, or even the majority of fans maybe, but still a lot of people. And that fury should be channelled into strengthening the collective voice of the Trust, Union FS and anything else that comes along like Project Reset if that sticks around, rather than constantly laying into the Trust at the exact time we’ve started to try to drag it into the 21st century. That’s going to take a bit of time, just as Project Reset didn’t look like the Spurs protests today. The Trust badly needs a rebrand in my opinion, as I still associate even that logo with an antiquated way of doing things - which hopefully will change with the new co-chairs, board members and doubled membership numbers. But let’s keep plugging away.

I’ve noticed your arguments seem to be based entirely on things that haven’t happened (getting terrible new owners, Brighton getting relegated).

Spectacular goal

Probably someone more like Tony Bloom, Matthew Benham, American owners at Villa and Bournemouth who seem to make sound business decisions. This is the same logic that sees failing managers backed for too long - “because who else would you get?” All the while, there are other clubs managing to thrive because they either have intelligent people in positions or they have excellent succession planning. But again, it feels like you have no aspiration for the club to be as successful as possible and instead value sticking with people out of some kind of sentiment. Out of interest, did you want Vichai to sack Claudio?

Genuine questions. Putting aside pushing for honours and the top six and so on, what do you put the decline from established Premier League club to yo-yo club down to? Don’t you aspire for the club to make better decisions? Is it just that you don’t like conflict? It’s interesting to know the mindset. Surely you can see how the phrase “the club is in a relatively healthy state” can seem mindblowing to people watching clubs like Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford become stable at Premier League level while we’re losing every week and set for relegation again?

Who remembers ALF? https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-f623s-a7l6l

New from @ProjectReset 👇 On Saturday 15th February 2025, Leicester City fans will take to the streets to voice their frustrations with the club. To many outside of the club, Leicester City are exactly where they are expected to be this season – fighting for survival. The notion that Leicester fans are entitled for expecting better on-field performances entirely misses the point. Let’s explore five reasons why… https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-project-reset-february-2025

Enzo acted more like a director of football than Rudkin does. Enzo set the strategy, even used his network to identify players. It was a quick fix but unsustainable, especially when you don't replace him with someone with similar values. It wasn't "luck" that we appointed Enzo - it was a good appointment - but it still reflected badly on the club's leadership that we constantly need managers who are strong personalities to make up for the weak leadership and non-existent communication from those above them.

Could use some of those hundreds of millions of pounds sloshing around to appoint some people who know what they're doing to run the football operations.

From watching the games, most fans wouldn't think we're worse in general play now than we were under Cooper. The biggest factors that are leading some people to think Cooper was better than van Nistelrooy would probably be: Injuries to Hermansen, Ricardo, Fatawu and Ndidi Red cards for Ipswich and Southampton Change in Vardy's goalscoring form May as well look at some stats to back up that feeling though. The xG under Cooper and van Nistelrooy has remained pretty steadily at a 2-1 defeat on average across their games. The big difference is that under van Nistelrooy we're conceding 0.34 goals per game more than our xG would suggest we should be. If you look at the underlying numbers for xG and goal over and underperformance, there are 8 outlier games (our numbers first for consistency) Under Cooper Crystal Palace (A) - xG 0.4 - 2.5 (actual score 2-2) Arsenal (A) - xG 0.3 - 4.4 (actual score 2-4) Bournemouth (H) - xG 0.8 - 2.1 (actual score 1-0) Manchester United (A) - xG 0.6 - 0.8 (actual score 0-3) Expected points: 1 Actual points: 4 Under van Nistelrooy West Ham (H) - xG 1.7 - 3 (actual score 3-1) Wolves (H) - xG 0.8 - 1.1 (actual score 0-3) Manchester City (H) - xG 1.3 - 1.3 (actual score 0-2) Crystal Palace (H) - xG 1.7 - 1.8 (actual score 0-2) Expected points: 3 Actual points: 3 If you equate the Bournemouth and West Ham home games as one under each of them we won when we should have lost, it's the Wolves, Man City and Palace home games which make the difference - all of those should have been draws based on the xG. If RvN had Hermansen, Fatawu and Ndidi available for those games as Cooper did for the most part and/or the opposition get a red card and/or Vardy converts as he was earlier in the season, we probably win at least one of them, if not all three.

We don't usually post full articles elsewhere but making an exception for this due to the feedback we're getting about it and the current circumstances around the club. We're also speaking to people organising protests to try to help bring their ideas and activities into one place for people who don't use messageboards or particular social media platforms. And it saves you a click... Link here for anyone who wants to share the article: https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-matchday-experience-january-2025 -- Why are Leicester City fans starting to protest? Take a look at our “matchday experience” If you want to get a feel for fan sentiment on a matchday, you don’t need a repetitive ‘Tell Us About Your Matchday Experience’ email or endless surveys. Walk amongst them. Down Raw Dykes Road. Or Saffron Lane. Or up Tigers Way on the traipse back to the train station. You’ll get a palpable sense of the mood and overhear snippets of debates and discussions that you’d never be able to fit on a PowerPoint slide in a boardroom. Walking away from the King Power Stadium on Saturday, as we passed the away end, I heard a Fulham fan ask with enthusiasm to what I assume was his young son: “Did you enjoy that, then?” The excitable answer came back. “Yeah!” It’s becoming a stadium at which away fans make memories. Where young fans of teams without a fox on their shirt deepen their enthusiasm for the game and their club. While young fans of our team often can’t get through the door. Did I enjoy that, then? It got me thinking… You get to the stadium and you’re greeted by queues. Queues to be frisked within an inch of your life by a Showsec steward. Queues because this overzealous security was brought in on a whim, or because people can’t get through the couple of turnstiles with the digital tickets the club has forced upon them. If you’re one of the many who objected, you swipe the piece of plastic that the club charged you £25 for, which is actually no different to the piece of plastic the club gave you for free the year before, and you’re into a soulless concourse. You might need the toilet. If so, you squeeze your way into toilets that haven’t changed for 20 years and which would not look out of place in a prison. You pass up the concourse catering because it’s of no creativity and little quality, or because you’ve taken a vow not to spend this season after the £25 ‘Loyalty Tax’ in the summer. By being in the ‘stadium bowl’ as the club like to call it, you’re actually one of the privileged ones. Either you have a season ticket, or you’ve paid for an expensive membership and extortionate one-off matchday prices. Or you might be a ‘friend’ of an existing season ticket holder and they’ve bought one for you. Hardly a great ticketing policy for bringing in the next generation or ensuring the underprivileged community of Leicester can get through the turnstile. At least they can get a sense of what it means to be a fan and see their heroes they only ever get to see on television, or on their Playstation, at those meet and greet sessions the club puts on during school holidays though, right? Wrong, there’s a £10 wealth filter applied to those as well. Anyway, now you’re in, you’ve got that light show. Or some black boxes that shoot out flames. A spectacle to which no one reacts and which no one ever asked for. Those boxes of fire don’t come for free, in the same way the army of Showsec stewards don’t either. It’s also a spectacle that plays out to largely empty stands as everyone is still trying to get through the frisking outside. The teams are out and the new stadium announcer - the one who really wants you to appreciate the wonder of ‘Number 16, Victor Kristiansen’ and emphasises every syllable - As. If. He’s. Announcing. The. Heavyweight. Bout. Of. The. Century! – is doing his thing. The one who replaced the old guy who’d been there years because he got a little over-enthusiastic in his questioning of Jamie Vardy about his contract at the trophy parade at the end of last season. The one announced with minimal notice and three buses of Thai influencers and hangers-on. The ones who’d been on the pitch with those Showsec stewards guard en masse after the Blackburn match. The team getting ready to start on the pitch aren’t wearing the same shirts as those few kids in the crowd who have been able to get into a stadium where the clientele have gone stale because of the club’s ticketing policy. Why not? Well, that would be because the club opted for a cryptocurrency gambling partner on the front of the shirts. When the billboards aren’t encouraging us to retire in Thailand or drink the horrid Chang beer we’re subjected to in the concourses, they tell us BC Game’s message is ‘Stay Untamed’. Reading about their financial struggles and claims of not paying winning customers online will tell you that BC Game very much live by their mantra of being ‘untamed’. A quick wave of your ‘Honesty Flag’ – you know, the ones you see people walking away from the ground with down the numerous roads away from the stadium – and we’re ready to start the match. Again, those ‘Honesty Flags’ don’t grow on trees – no one asked for them and they’ve contributed nothing to the atmosphere. The same can be said of the clappers the club still produces in volume every home game. The ones you see strewn over the roads and pavements as you walk away from the ground which somehow comply with the club’s sustainability policy which doesn’t allow the handing out of leaflets that signpost supporters to Mental Health support charities during World Mental Health Awareness Week. You know this because the atmosphere once the game gets going is patchy. And it emanates from two sections where there are no honesty flags but heaps of authenticity. The two sections that stand and sing, which at many other clubs would have been encouraged into one combined safe standing block, do so in what one could now assume to be ‘unsafe standing’. No safe standing at Leicester City though, because the club has been reluctant to take any meaningful position on safe standing for years. The treatment given to those in Union FS who operate with a mantra of ‘Leicester helping Leicester’ and run charity fundraisers and foodbank collections for the local community as well as putting on tifos that inspire civic pride? Spurious bans, handed out for minor indiscretions. Contemptuous and suspicious communication from club suits - if they engage at all, that is. Down on the pitch, it’s a squad of players that just isn’t quite good enough. A team managed by a man trying his best to undo the terrible work of the man who preceded him. Who prioritised Premier League experience over ability and resale value or the ability to grow with the club. We’re treated to the declining days of Jordan Ayew and Bobby Decordova-Reid. Halfway through the game, as the team emerges for the second half and prepares to commence a second half where another away section is likely to rejoice until the 90th minute, we’re treated to a mini video on the screen of past glories. Again, a video no one asked for, which has no positive impact on anything and is seemingly just the result of a few overpaid and out of touch people sitting round a table scratching their head about how to drive second half atmospheres. “They seem to like that pre-match video, why don’t we just do like a short version of that?” Up in the director’s box is where the finger of blame should be, and finally is, pointing. A director of football who cannot sell a player for money but can buy one like Oliver Skipp at £20million. A director of football in such deference to an owner, whose attendance at games is sporadic at best, that he daren’t sit on the front row of the director’s box without him there. A director of football who has handed long and bloated contracts to the likes of Jannik Vestergaard, Danny Ward, Hamza Choudhury and Decordova-Reid that will choke us financially for years. A chief executive who we can’t be entirely sure is still there. Last heard of in 2016 and whose approach to communicating with the club’s fans (sorry, customers) seems to be: “Don’t ask questions. Just trust me, bro”. An equal partner in the supposed ‘internal review’ that happened after the most avoidable and disgraceful Premier League relegation, but which delivered no discernible change. She will, at least, attend the Fan Advisory Board meetings, however, to stay tapped into fans’ concerns. The problem with that? The control the club exerted over the FAB selection process to temper any difficult voices getting onto it. And ultimately, an owner who has overseen the failings of both of these people. An owner who, if judged on his record from the day he took control, rather than based on the goodwill afforded to ‘the family’ or ‘the owners’ because of his dad, would be shown to be woefully short of the standard expected. An owner who, even in the aftermath of that disgraceful relegation, could only muster a letter (and I know it was likely written by the communications director, but he still must have signed it off) that essentially said: “Stop being mean to me”. The tide is turning. The fans are stirring. The Foxes Trust has doubled in membership. There are protests being mooted for prior to the Arsenal game. The chants are getting louder and changing from just being about Jon Rudkin, to ‘the Board’ (for Board, see Aiyawatt, Whelan and Rudkin). This is not entitlement as casual observers might try to characterise it. This is a culmination of years of bad decisions, of being treated like rubbish and with contempt by our club. On Sunday, the organiser of the pre-Arsenal protest explained that they had done so under the anonymity of a username and using a VPN. They were fearful that the club may ban them but still wanted to mobilise something to show the discontent amongst the fanbase. At first it sounds absurd to need to do that, but then you hear about the taps on the shoulder fans get from the communications director about criticism of the club online. I’m writing this piece under the cover of anonymity as well, for the same reasons. But then again, why should the club care? I’m just a number. Unfortunately for them, the numbers are slowly, but surely, finding their voice, getting together and getting organised. -- The Fosse Way Fosse Friday - free weekly email newsletter every Friday at 11am UK time

Roll up, roll up. Play the great Leicester City blame game: https://www.thefosseway.net/viewpoint/leicester-city-blame-game-january-2025