Donwebbio

What I cannot wrap my head around is the lack of interest in the last 5 years to bring in someone with technical experience to assist. Employing a Technical Director working alongside but reporting to Rudkin would have not raised eyebrows and would have brought us closer to industry norms. Such an easy play with big upside. KPFC just don't have any interest in outside influence though do they? They are as insular as a mob family, closed off from new ideas. A massive shame for them and for us.

I think it helps not see Rudkin as Director of Football because he isn't and never has been. He is an Executive Assistant to the Chairman and a general administrator. He is a Smithers character who has followed a slipstream to a generous salary and a comfortable position of power and influence. So we have a CEO with no experience of football and a glorified administrator. Villa on the other hand have the following working for the owner: Sporting Director Technical Director MD of Professional Football

Russian dolls! He hasn't even made himself captain of his own polo team - could the guy have any less leadership ability?

Good Manager's don't leave clubs in worse states than when they took over. Rodgers took a sports car and turned it into a Vauxhall Polo. We had some brilliant moments under him including the FA Cup win and the Arsenal win in November 2019 which was a personal favourite of mine, but any player or manager who stops trying, or even worse sabotages, immediately loses all my respect. Ultimately though, any failures land with his employers who allowed him full control and acted far, far too late in getting rid.

For the reasons stated above. Maybe 5 years 5-10 years of decline is worth the trade off of the FA Cup. Who is to say another manager would have not have got even more out of that talented squad and continued on with the healthy cycle of recruitment. We were a very attractive club for managers in 2019.

He will be there until the dying days of King Power - a useless barnacle on the side of a sinking ship.

I think you are onto something here. It has often crossed my mind that there is some self-sabotage going on with Top. Maybe being around the place and being involved with the club is still so painful fof him and not something he wanted to do without his dad. Is he making poor decisions on purpose or at times not making decisions and letting things worsen as a protest for being forced into his dad's shoes without any of his dad's skill for doing it?

I think the first half would have been passable if we had received fees for them. Spending £70 million on Perez & Tielemans and watching them both leave for free is awful contract management and has set us up to fail.

I would go further and say Rodgers was NOT a good appointment either. It was at that point that the club placed all of their faith and power in the manager who talked them into, or agreed to have a pop at breaking into the top 4. The sustainable recruitment model was abandoned and we began overpaying for average players and stopped moving players on for profit. The recruitment record under Rodgers is the reason we are in so much financial and footballing trouble at the moment in my opinion: James Justin - 6.7M - Ayoze Perez - 33.4M George Hirst Tielemans (already there on loan) Callum Hulme - free Dennis Praet - 19.2M Ryan Bennett (loan) Castagne - 20.9M Under (loan) Fofana - 35m - 80M Daka - 30M Soumare - 20M Bertrand - free Vestergaard - 17.6M Lookman (loan) - Smithies - free Wout Faes - 17M Victor Kristianson - 14M Tete (loan) - Harry Souttar - 17M Spend €230m 1 sold for a profit (Fofana) Yes he won the FA Cup but that was with a team built by others and he used that talent already at the club to enhance his own reputation without strengthening or even maintaining the clubs standing in the game.

Because we don't have an effective DoF and a seemingly absence of any other boardroom competence, any new manager needs to have talent and knowledge in sustainable recruitment (manager/DoF hybrid). It is the no.1 priority for clubs of our size to remain competitive and remain the right side of PSR. Buying talent with good athletic profiles, good character profiles at good ages (u25), for the best prices and financial packages with high ceilings should be the basis of 90% of our business (allow 10% margin for "experience") before getting 2 seasons of performance out of them before selling for a profit and reinvesting. Under Pearson & Puel we had that system working seamlessly (in spite of Rudkin) and formed the basis of successful, trophy-winning teams. You can pinpoint the start of the decline, if not with the death of Vichai, then the appointment of Rodgers who veered off the sustainable recruitment model and somehow talked the club into thinking it no longer needed to sell their assets to compete (€230M purchases, 1 player sold for profit Fofana) Discounting his tIme at MK Don's, Martin's recruitment at Swansea was good from the 5 transfers involving fees (bought and sold values) - Flynn Downes - €1.7 - € 10.65 Michael Obefemi- 2m - 4m Andy Fisher- 0.475 - still there - Nathan Wood - 465k - 3.5m - Harry Darling - 2.5m - still there - His recruitment at Southampton is obviously dubious as the team performed terribly, but his signings there look thought out with 90% under 25 and players like Harwood-Bellis, Ronnie Edwards, Cameron Archer, Mateus Fernandes and Sugawara should all hold or increase in value and have good careers in the game. What is harder to justify with Martin is the ponderous playing style, or poundshop Pepball, which has definitely had its day. If it is Martin, we can only hope he has enough self-awareness to adapt his style a bit to get us fans on side. So even if the football and results are not in line with expectations, maybe our terrible recruitment policy will at least start to turn a corner....until the next sacking obviously!