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FoxInTheBirstallBox

Rudkin

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When you are "Director of Football", it implies you are responsible for Directing the Football activities of the club. Either he runs stuff directly, or he is supervising people who are. We've had 3 consecutive failures of transfer windows leaving serious deficiencies in key positions, 2 of them for the same position (CM), indicating that no lessons were learned. We've had to sack two managers in a short period of time. Scouting and recruitment have gone to pot, and Chillwell aside, the youth academy has produced nothing of note in years. Rudkin is either heavily involved in all of this, and if he isn't, then he has been sitting idly by and doing nothing while Rome burns. Either the guy is directly responsible for overseeing all of this, in which case he should carry the can for the failure, or he actually has no power at all, in which case, why does he even work for us? There is no case in which it can be claimed that he can be absolved of any blame.

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From The Telegraph

 

Leicester's problems go far beyond Craig Shakespeare - he must wonder why only he paid the price for their failings

 

 

 

It was only 14 seconds the wrong side of 11pm on the last day of August, the kind of mistake that happens once in a lifetime, but then if you look at Leicester City in the 17 months that have followed their historic Premier League title success of 2016, it is not hard to see why it was them who made it.

Their failure to log documents in time that led to Fifa refusing to ratify the £22 million transfer of Adrien Silva on that last day of the transfer window did not alone lose Craig Shakespeare his job on Tuesday but if a club make enough mistakes like this, bigger consequences follow. The margins are fine indeed in football, but it all adds up, just as surely as there was a time when Leicester seemed to get everything right.

Since they clinched their title in May 2016, and for some of the months before then, the club have embarked along a path of player recruitment and sales which has taken them to a point where they find themselves looking for their third manager in eight months.

It is, of course, always the manager who shoulders the greatest burden and the manager who is the easiest to change. Perhaps the club’s Thai owners, the Srivaddhanaprabha family, had simply, as they said on Tuesday, failed to see the development in Shakespeare since he was given the role permanently in June. But if his place in this deserves examination than what can be said of the others charged with taking the club on?

The director of football Jon Rudkin is responsible for all football matters at the club and closest of all to the patriarch Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. That puts him a level up from the head of senior player recruitment Eduardo Macia, an appointment from the Claudio Ranieri era and still key to player signings. If Ranieri’s input into the signings of last summer was significant, so too was former head of recruitment Steve Walsh, who left for Everton in 2016 because his path to director of football was blocked by Rudkin.

The Leicester hierarchy at a match last April, including Jon Rudkin (third from right) CREDIT: PA

Last time it was Ranieri, now at Nantes, who paid the price, and now his successor is gone while Rudkin and Macia have survived again. Shakespeare is on the outside, no doubt wondering why it is him and no-one else who should pay the price for the overlapping recruitment strategies of the last 17 months that have left Leicester in the relegation zone with six points.

The caretaker manager Michael Appleton will presumably inherit a familiar problem at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday – the fundamental lack of strength in central midfield which epitomises the recent dysfunction in Leicester’s recruitment. In that position, Leicester currently have available just Vicente Iborra, who started his first league game on Monday; Wilfred Ndidi, who has struggled this season, and Andy King, the club stalwart who is carrying an injury.

Matty James, who started the season so well, has an Achilles injury and while all this can be waved away as the misfortunes that beset any club, it brings us back to the fine margins of the Silva situation. With Danny Drinkwater leaving on that final day of August, and mistakes already made in recruitment in that position, the Silva deal was one signing that the club could not afford to get wrong.

 

Ineligible for Leicester until he is registered on Jan 1, Silva is still training with the first team but, with no game at the weekend to focus his thoughts, his mood is naturally up and down. He is one of a small group of players who never got to play for the manager who signed them. You wonder what he makes of it all, as a former captain of Sporting Lisbon and a European championship winner with Portugal.

Leicester’s signings since that title season have been the work of so many different individuals it is hard to know who takes responsibility for whom. Between them, Walsh, Ranieri, Rudkin and Macia have brought in Islam Slimani (£28 million), Ahmed Musa (£16 million), Papy Mendy (£13 million), Bartosz Kapustka (£7.5 million), Daniel Amartey (£6 million) and Yohan Benalouane (£8 million) although there are few who can see a future for them at the club.

As it stands, the biggest recruitment triumph since the arrival of N’Golo Kante in the summer of 2015 has been Harry Maguire, who was a personal project of Shakespeare. The former Leicester manager persuaded the new England international and his parents of the merits of the club.

 

Following Ranieri, and managing the club’s post-title years was always going to be a challenge for Shakespeare whose popularity at Leicester went some way to compensating for his low-profile relative to the cast of managerial characters currently stalking the Premier League’s touchlines. Neither is his fate a reason to challenge the rise of competent, long-term independent recruitment planning at the Premier League’s best clubs.

Yet anyone with the most fundamental understanding of Leicester could see that there have been problems beyond just the man who picked the team and yet, even on the day that he was sacked, there was no acknowledgement of this reality. The big decisions at Leicester are made by Vichai, with Rudkin delivering the bad news – even so Shakespeare deserved some acknowledgment from the club that he was not the only one who had fallen short of expectations.

Would it have been different if Silva had been available from the end of August, since when Leicester have taken three points from a possible 18? If just two of the three draws with Huddersfield Town, Bournemouth or West Bromwich Albion had been converted into wins then Leicester would have ten points and would, most likely, be in the top half of the table. Fine margins indeed, as was that small matter of 14 seconds but, put together, what a difference they make.

AVB's interesting journey continues

The Chinese Super League is coming to a close with three games left in the league season and Shanghai SIPG manager Andre Villas-Boas has found himself under fire. His team drew against Liaoning to leave them six points behind leaders Guangzhou Evergrande. Hulk returned for the Asian Champions League semi-final second leg against Japanese opposition Urawa Reds which Shanghai lost 1-0 and were eliminated. 

The Portuguese coach has not always had an easy time in China and with suggestions that he might leave at the end of the season it will be intriguing to see where he goes next. With a stint in Russia too, his career has taken a strange route – lucrative, but not exactly where you would expect a coach of his ambition.

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It's just hindsight but cannot stop thinking if the management stuck the transfer policy as pre-Ranieri way, we wouldn't have been in the trouble we are in ATM..

After winning the title, the players confidence were highest ever and the management and even I as a fan thought we could attract "better" players to improve the squad.

That is probably when all the failures since winning the title started..

Everyone did not get the feet on the ground.

Having said that we may have been in better position if we had real manager..

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All we can hope for is that the new manager refuses to work under a director of football. We need a strong manager to sort this out. Saying that though Rudkin is probably unlikely to appoint someone who doesn't want him as the DOF.  What a mess 

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40 minutes ago, adam said:

All we can hope for is that the new manager refuses to work under a director of football. We need a strong manager to sort this out. Saying that though Rudkin is probably unlikely to appoint someone who doesn't want him as the DOF.  What a mess 

I think the DOF role is standard in football these days and rightly so. Problem is, Rudkin clearly hasn't got the minerals. Should be urgently looked at.

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42 minutes ago, adam said:

All we can hope for is that the new manager refuses to work under a director of football. We need a strong manager to sort this out. Saying that though Rudkin is probably unlikely to appoint someone who doesn't want him as the DOF.  What a mess 

I was thinking along the same lines of a new manager refusing to work with him, then I thought well maybe when we get a new manager Rudkin might get the boot but then I heard/think Rudkin is responsible in the selection process of getting a new manager in.

 

So there is no chance of that happening. :cry::cry::cry: 

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1 minute ago, Mr Mister said:

Get rid of the Director of Football. They are useless and serve no purpose but to undermine the manager.

 

Let the new manager have full control over everything.

DoF/Sporting Directors are the way forward. They take a lot of the pressure off the manager/coach, whilst offering more long term thinking and stability compared to the manager.

 

The problem is that our one is sh*t.

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17 hours ago, MarkDeVirus said:

As a budding journo, I've posted my views on the situation. Would appreciate anyone who gives it a little read.

 

https://dispatchesfromdante.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/craig-shakespeare-had-to-depart-but-the-cracks-lie-deeper-were-incompetent-off-the-pitch-as-well-as-on-it/

2 major mistakes, N'Golo Kante is not "inhumane", possibly inhuman is the word, and to give your opinion as to who will be the successor....not good journalism, and I don't want that cnut anywhere near our team

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12 minutes ago, norwichfox said:

2 major mistakes, N'Golo Kante is not "inhumane", possibly inhuman is the word, and to give your opinion as to who will be the successor....not good journalism, and I don't want that cnut anywhere near our team

If you care to give it a read, you'll see that I'm not writing for The Times, it's a blog and I'm just offering my opinion on the situation.

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6 minutes ago, MarkDeVirus said:

If you care to give it a read, you'll see that I'm not writing for The Times, it's a blog and I'm just offering my opinion on the situation.

pmsl  you declared yourself a budding journo you ask for comments and got 'em. take 'em or leave 'em...I really don't want to read it again thanks, I've got to go and iron my scrotum.

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If we are so unanimously in agreement that Rudkin needs to go than why aren't we taking more of a stance other than a b***h on some forum that he's presumably never heard of?

We're able to construct and send these thank you booklets that go direct to the owner than why not a collective petition demanding that Rudkin departs from his position with immediate effect. Get our voice actually heard for a change!!

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28 minutes ago, Rusko187 said:

If we are so unanimously in agreement that Rudkin needs to go than why aren't we taking more of a stance other than a b***h on some forum that he's presumably never heard of?

We're able to construct and send these thank you booklets that go direct to the owner than why not a collective petition demanding that Rudkin departs from his position with immediate effect. Get our voice actually heard for a change!!

This is Leicester we're talking about, probably one of the most lethargic fanbases in the history of sport, including crown green bowls.

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