Shakey Sacked

[Dan]

11 hours ago, Koke said:

Name me 1 Leicester fan who said we are a top 6 club? Why do these cvnts keep strawmanning us. We have become the new Newcastle.

 

Stoke midfielder Charlie Adam

 

"I could not believe it.

These owners just think they can do what they want. I think it's ridiculous.

They are not a top-10 club. I know they won the league and have invested, but Leicester are in there with Stoke and West Ham, fighting in mid-table. They are not going to challenge for sixth place, they are a mid-table team."

 

Ex-England defender Danny Mills

 

"You have to be realistic, the league title was a complete anomaly, something that is never going to happen again.

If they finish in the top 10 that should be a brilliant season by their standards. The owners, fans, everyone has got to understand that they can't compete with the top clubs, they are not at their level.

For me, the players have to take some responsibility - it is the same squad that won the league not so long ago.

Of those, the only player who has improved is N'Golo Kante, and he has moved on to Chelsea.'

I'd piss myself laughing if we injured Charlie Adam in a few weeks. He gobs off about us all the time.

[DelBoy73]

10 hours ago, Nickfosse said:

Ok statto. Fair enough. The figures may be wrong and it was 5 rather than 6, but without the points gained from the time Shakespeare took over, there us every chance we would have been relegated at a cost far greater than the 3 million you asked us to ponder.

Ranieri lost the dressing room, in the end the players got what they wanted. Even John Cleese would have seen us through safety zone as soon as the players acknowledged to put in a shift.

Anyway, only in China would an assistant manager get paid £3m.

[ARTY_FOX]

After ranieri had lost the dressing room how much did shakey already have to do with match day set ups and tactics? Because wmit doesn't look like anything has changed from the other night... 

[Voll Blau]

14 hours ago, stevelcfc said:

Anyone with a telegraph account, able to get the Sam Wallace article they've just put up?

Signed up for the one free article trial just so I could read it. Can't disagree with a word.

 

Quote

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.

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.

 

[HankMarvin]

SAVE ME Craig Shakespeare’s half-time plea to Leicester stars to win the game or he would be sacked
Foxes boss knew writing was on the wall as his side trailed West Brom and Leicester stars are 'devastated' they could not save him from the axe

 

SACKED Leicester boss Craig Shakespeare made a desperate half-time dressing room plea to his players during their 1-1 draw with West Brom on Monday, begging: "Win this or I'm getting fired."

Shakespeare was dumped by the Foxes on Tuesday, just four months into a three-year deal in charge at the King Power Stadium.

 

And SunSport can reveal the dramatic half-time call the boss made for his players to beat West Brom on Monday night to keep him in his job.

The 53-year-old knew he was under pressure going into the clash with the Baggies on Monday with his side rooted in the relegation zone of the Premier League.

So when the game reached half-time with the score at 0-0, Claudio Ranieri's replacement felt there was no choice but to launch his final plea to his team.

As the Leicester squad sat in the dressing room waiting for their instructions, Shakespeare is understood to have told them they "needed to win or he was sacked"

With Shakespeare such a well-liked figure among the players, the team went out for the second half determined to deliver for their boss.

But they were helpless to stop Nacer Chadli's brilliant free-kick from firing West Brom ahead - and though Riyad Mahrez equalised they failed to get the win so desperately needed.

 

The following morning Shakespeare was summoned in for a meeting with owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and told he was out of a job.

A source told SunSport his sacking is understood to have gone down badly with the Leicester players, who are said to be devastated they did not save him from the axe.

 

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/4719993/craig-shakespeare-plea-leicester-players-win-or-sacked/

[Wymsey]

Feel that that article is just click-bait.

How would they know Shakespeare actually said that?

Would have imagined no external party knew what was said in the dressing over the fear of tactics leaks, etc.

[foxinsocks]

Kasper not saving anything last monday then

[HankMarvin]

4 minutes ago, Wymeswold fox said:

Feel that that article is just click-bait.

How would they know Shakespeare actually said that?

Would have imagined no external party knew what was said in the dressing over the fear of tactics leaks, etc.

They actually use quotes, which is a step up from most of their reporting

[foxinsocks]

If that was our squad fighting for all they were worth then we're in big trouble

[MrSpaM]

TBH it would explain Riyad's celebration, running over to the bench

 

I know the articles probably bollocks but I did think at the time why is he running over to Shakespeare rather than celebrating with the fans

[daddylonglegs]

One week on. Anyone got any idea what's going on?

Why oh why oh why do we sack people without a replacement! Cannot help the squad at all.

 

[mozartfox]

1 hour ago, daddylonglegs said:

One week on. Anyone got any idea what's going on?

Why oh why oh why do we sack people without a replacement! Cannot help the squad at all.

 

Have patience. We are two months on from 'Silva-gate" and still awaiting to hear if we are taking this to the CAS, given we are told we have done 'nothing' wrong

[norwichfox]

On 10/18/2017 at 17:01, HankMarvin said:

Have you got the painters in at the moment, you seem very touchy 

Is there a bit of string hanging out the corner of his mouth?....