ClaphamFox

https://www.footballinsider247.com/ruud-van-nistelrooy-to-be-sacked-gamble-fails-as-leicester-linked-with-sean-dyche/

That article doesn’t even pretend to have any inside info. It speculates that RVN’s time may nearly be up because our results have been horrendous and then further speculates that if RVN were sacked, Dyche might be a candidate because he’s out of work. It reads like it was written by an intern who was told to write a story about Leicester to generate some traffic but couldn’t be arsed to make any phone calls.

Intriguing.

Very few managers fit that description who are: a) of the right quality; and b) available. More likely we'll end up taking a punt on an up-and-coming name instead.

One of the reasons we went for Cooper was because he was available without compensation - and look where that got us. Hopefully the club has realised that trying to get a new manager on the cheap can backfire spectacularly - even if we have to wait until July to fork out compo for PSR reasons...

You may as well create a pre-match thread for all of our remaining games now and just paste these words in the first post.

I agree it would be pointless trying to recruit a new manager now. Would Ruud agree to take us until the end of the season and leave then? Possibly, but I think it's more likely that the current plan is for him to be in charge next season. Although you'd imagine that plan might come under review if we continue get pumped 4-0 every week until the end of the season...

There are hardly any decent managers out of work and nobody currently in a job is going to walk out of his club at this stage of the season. If Ruud goes, we will replace him in the summer - and possibly not until early July if it’s somebody we have to pay compensation for.

And Fatawu.

A win and a few draws won’t come close to keeping us up. Nobody is coming in now and saving our season - we’re done. IF RVN goes, it will probably be in the summer when we’ll have more choice over his replacement. I’m not convinced he will go, though - part of me suspects the club wants him to take charge of the refresh and take us into next season…

We actually didn't lose a single game by more than 2 goals in 14/15. It's happened on six occasions so far this season.

I'm not generally inclined to hating anybody, but Faes pushes me very close. I can accept it if a player has limited ability (Lord knows as a Leicester fan of several decades standing I've seen a few), but limited ability combined with arrogance is hard to take. Viktor Kristiansen is limited but I don't dislike him as he genuinely seems to care and he gives his all. The way Faes just stood impassively on the goal line for the 4th one on Friday summed him up - crap player who thinks he's a genius and we're lucky to have him. I hope we don't fanny around trying to negotiate an unrealistic fee for him this summer - just get him gone on the day the transfer window opens.

I know. I was joking but then deleted it as it was a crap joke…

He had one managerial job and fell out with his coaching team, so there was nobody else he could call.

If the club has decided it wants a new manager, Ruud would have gone too.

The BBC report on the story says: “The decision was taken to help Ruud van Nistelrooy as he battles to save the Foxes from relegation, with the side second bottom of the Premier League.” That suggests to me that the decision was taken after Friday, and that Dawson and Alcock were told yesterday. And the ‘working their notice’ period is completely implausible anyway. Has anyone ever heard of a PL football coach being told they’re surplus to requirements but made to work their their notice? How motivated would they be to do their best in training every day if they knew they were no longer part of the project? It would be terrible for the atmosphere. It’s a daft theory

Cooper’s Forest connection has nothing whatsoever to do with how unpopular he became with the fans. It was the poor results, terrible tactics, total absence of identity, etc, that did that. And if Big Sam had come in and delivered the same results and performances, we’d have felt exactly the same way about him.

Yes, his total lack of interest in even pretending to try to defend that 4th goal should guarantee he never plays for us again. It was like watching somebody who doesn’t like football but has been roped into making up the numbers in a five-a-side and has only agreed to come along because he fancies the pub afterwards. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it - so bad it was almost hilarious.

If Ruud has secretly believed that playing Ayew and BDCR was the wrong thing to do but has allowed his coaches to overrule him, that actually speaks less well of him than if he’d picked those two players himself.

IF this is true, it suggests it wasn't just a case of them working their notice period.

Highly unlikely. There are very few decent candidates out of work at the moment & no manager in work is going to quit at this stage of the season, so rushing to appoint somebody now will likely result in a substandard appointment. IF Ruud leaves, we'll have far more candidates to choose from in the summer.

How can you possibly come to this conclusion?

The fact that they've sacked the two Cooper coaching appointments but no others tells us everything we need to know. They're creating the space for Ruud to bring in his own people.

Both were top (or very close to the top) of the possession stats the previous season when they got promoted. This suggests that they had less possession because they were playing better sides in the PL, not that they abandoned their preferred style and started hoofing it...