Long Term Strategy

[urban.spaceman]

So the summer of 2016 was a ****ing disaster.

 

But that’s OK.

 

It was to be expected - Kante left, as did Steve Walsh, whose scouting for Championship promotion and Premier League survival had far surpassed all expectations. We’d just won the Premier ****ing League, and flush with new money, we blew £70m on Slimani, Musa, Mendy, Kapustka, Hernandez and Zieler - mostly previous targets for staving off relegation, not defending a title.

 

The following two windows were an improvement - Ndidi came in as a Kante-esque player in the winter of 2017, though sadly Claudio couldn’t make it work with what was still an imbalanced and disenfranchised squad. The club then appointed Shakespeare as the permanent successor, and we had decent summer 2017 window: Maguire (£17m), Iborra (£12m), Jakupovic (£2m), Iheanacho (£25m, lol), Dravovic (loan), Silva (£22m, not available till New Years).

 

Our problem was thus: we’d had no long term strategy since Pearson was in charge. At least, not one that matched our ambitions and standing in the league. Sadly, Shakespeare was an unrealistic choice for long term manager in this respect. Great as a No.2, but as a No.1, he lacked the diversity, authority and vision to be a realistic long term manager for us.

 

Now, I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a Puel In or Out thread - though I admit it’s easier to write this after the last two wins. And of course there has been some utterly dreadful football at times.

 

I truly believe what we need right now is stability - a manager with an eye on our long term future, to develop us on and off the pitch into a bigger club that can compete on a bigger level. That is what Vichai saw in Pearson - he gave him time and trust to develop his own style, with his own staff and players. He also allowed him to develop the training facility and backroom structure into what it is now.

 

Last season was a horror show at times - but we did have a totally imbalanced squad, with our fair share of injuries and about 9 players with an eye on the World Cup in the summer. Puel hardly covered himself in glory either.

 

However, our summer 2018 window was absolutely excellent in my opinion.

 

A new RB, which we’d been crying out for about 2 seasons?

- In comes Ricardo Pereira at £17m.

A new creative midfielder, to replace Mahrez and diversify our creativity?

- James Maddison, for £22m. Very young and English to boot.

A new back up goalkeeper?

- Liverpool’s 25 yr old Danny Ward, 4th in line to Allison. We balked at £12m, but he’s since proved more than capable.

A stronger defence?

- Experience Jonny Evans at £3m was daylight robbery.

- Filipe Benkovic for £13m, sent up to Celtic to develop for us.

- Caglar Soyuncu for £19m - an experienced youngster with bags of potential.

 

The weirdest buy was Diedre at £12m. He’ll never get in our XI, but when you think of Harvey Barnes tearing up the Championship and returning to us in the summer, Deidre starts to make a bit of sense as a squad addition. Starts to.

 

I make that about £100m spent last summer. Minus the £60m+ for Mahrez and the hilarious fee we received for Musa.

 

Perhaps the most promising business however was just after the window closed. We secured our more important players on long term contracts:

Vardy till 2022

Chilwell till 2024

Maguire till 2023

Ndidi till 2024

Kasper till 2023

Hamza till 2022

Amartey till 2022

 

Hamza, Chilwell, Ndidi all under 22, tied down on long contracts and no release clauses, which should keep interested parties off our backs. Maguire proving his commitment to the club, guaranteeing his value rises even higher. Vardy and Kasper secured for perhaps the remaineder of their careers. That is seriously excellent business and proof of our ambitions.

 

Again, some of the performances and results have been poor. But it was never plain sailing under Pearson was it? And despite that, in the long term, he pushed us forward as a club. 

 

As of Christmas 2018, we have a much stronger, balanced and younger squad than ever before. We’ve got a £100m world class training facility being built as we speak. We have a stadium expansion soon to be announced. We have a manager, I personally believe, who will help us grow as a club in the long term. 

 

We also have a young owner who I trust to make the right decisions for us. If he decides that Puel is not the right man, then I’d understand. 

 

But for now, we finally have a long term strategy in place, with a chairman, manager and squad all capable of sticking to it. I firmly believe we have a very bright future.

 

As Claudio once said, szlowly szlowly.

Edited 28 December 2018 by urban.spaceman
Section on contracts added

[urban.spaceman]

TL;DR version:

 

”Puel out”

[winteriscoming]

I would ask the question do any premiership sides have a long term strategy? You are a bad run away from getting rid of your manager. Also once the players are against the manager that's it. Look at Ranieri here and mourinho at utd. I am in the puel in camp atm and can see what he's trying to do. Will he be given the time to implement what he wants - I doubt it. You can have good transfer business as with the last 2 summers - in general more good than bad. However the envitable will happen and your best players will leave. Look at january or the summer will Maguire, chilwell still be if they continue as they are. Overall the majority of the time long term strategy is what clubs want however it becomes a short term one if you struggling at the bottom of the League. 

[Ted Maul]

The football has been awfully dull at times, but this sums up why I (just about) kept faith in Puel.

 

A few years of midtable mediocrity (although I think this team will end up pushing for 7th/8th consistently) wouldn't do us any harm as we invest hundreds of millions into the club's infrastructure- it's a critical time in the development of the size of this club and the last thing we want is for everything to go tits up and end up in a relegation battle.

[UniFox21]

When you look how he has developed players; Chilwell, Maguire, Ricardo to an extent, you can see the kinda of thing he wants to develop. 

And we get points where things click together and it looks brilliant.

But we've half had some shit to sit through at times.

[lottie94]

who's diedre

[urban.spaceman]

2 minutes ago, lottie94 said:

who's diedre

[Danno]

14 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

I really don’t get it

[Trav Le Bleu]

1 hour ago, Ted Maul said:

The football has been awfully dull at times, but this sums up why I (just about) kept faith in Puel.

 

A few years of midtable mediocrity (although I think this team will end up pushing for 7th/8th consistently) wouldn't do us any harm as we invest hundreds of millions into the club's infrastructure- it's a critical time in the development of the size of this club and the last thing we want is for everything to go tits up and end up in a relegation battle.

This for me too. With a long term strategy you need a long-term manager. For all Puel has done bad, there's been good stuff too. Real ying and yang, but that's okay, that's balance. It's safe and having safety for a season or three will give us the chance to develop. I even have a slight inkling that Puel could pull something extra out of the bag.

 

Unless some real top talent comes along and says, "I'd love to manage Leicester!" don't rock the boat. Same goes for our best players, hold on so long as they're happy.

 

Who knows, one day players might want to come here as much as Liverpool, Manchester or London clubs?

Edited 28 December 2018 by Trav Le Bleu

[Trav Le Bleu]

6 minutes ago, DanNDH88 said:

I really don’t get it

Top picture is Deirdre Rachid. Previously Barlow, but she was married to a Moroccan guy named Samir.

 

Need I explain further? 

[urban.spaceman]

40 minutes ago, winteriscoming said:

I would ask the question do any premiership sides have a long term strategy? You are a bad run away from getting rid of your manager. Also once the players are against the manager that's it. Look at Ranieri here and mourinho at utd. I am in the puel in camp atm and can see what he's trying to do. Will he be given the time to implement what he wants - I doubt it. You can have good transfer business as with the last 2 summers - in general more good than bad. However the envitable will happen and your best players will leave. Look at january or the summer will Maguire, chilwell still be if they continue as they are. Overall the majority of the time long term strategy is what clubs want however it becomes a short term one if you struggling at the bottom of the League. 

Good question. Man City certainly have one, which is to ignore all the financial fair play rules and buy their way to titles.

 

Bournemouth and Burnley both have long term managers who they have stuck with through thick and thin - when Burnley got relegated they double down on their support for Dyche which paid off last season. Personally I quite admire that kind of long term commitment. 

 

Spurs are are doing well however annoying that is - though I do hope Pochettino leaves for Man Utd and the new stadium bankrupts them. 

 

The likes of Palace, Southampton, Everton, West Ham all seem to be going through managers at a rate of knots - mostly the same bloody people. The latter two seem to have quite volatile management behind the scenes. 

 

Chelsea seem to be happy going through the Italian Managers phone book, while Arsenal seem sadly revived under Emery. Liverpool have trusted Klopp to get rid of the crap leftover from Rodgers, buy a couple of superstars, develop youngsters and raid Southampton again and again. 

 

Everyone below 10th is just happy to survive. 

 

Perhaps the best (and then worst) example of a long term strategy is Fergie at Man Utd. It was a different era of course, but he had 8 years to develop his squad before they won their first league. He developed the Class of 92, and they thoroughly deserved to dominate English football for 20 years. It was a perfect long term strategy. But then Man Utd failed to act adequately to his retirement (despite basically having 5 years notice) and are deservedly suffering. 

 

I’m not saying Puel is going to win us more titles. But he could be the guy who develops us to the point where the next manager can. 

[Dirkster the Fox]

54 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

So the summer of 2016 was a ****ing disaster.

 

But that’s OK.

 

It was to be expected - Kante left, as did Steve Walsh, whose scouting for Championship promotion and Premier League survival had far surpassed all expectations. We’d just won the Premier ****ing League, and flush with new money, we blew £70m on Slimani, Musa, Mendy, Kapustka, Hernandez and Zieler - mostly previous targets for staving off relegation, not defending a title.

 

The following two windows were an improvement - Ndidi came in as a Kante-esque player in the winter of 2017, though sadly Claudio couldn’t make it work with what was still an imbalanced and disenfranchised squad. The club then appointed Shakespeare as the permanent successor, and we had decent summer 2017 window: Maguire (£17m), Iborra (£12m), Jakupovic (£2m), Iheanacho (£25m, lol), Dravovic (loan), Silva (£22m, not available till New Years).

 

Our problem was thus: we’d had no long term strategy since Pearson was in charge. At least, not one that matched our ambitions and standing in the league. Sadly, Shakespeare was an unrealistic choice for long term manager in this respect. Great as a No.2, but as a No.1, he lacked the diversity, authority and vision to be a realistic long term manager for us.

 

Now, I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a Puel In or Out thread - though I admit it’s easier to write this after the last two wins. And of course there has been some utterly dreadful football at times.

 

I truly believe what we need right now is stability - a manager with an eye on our long term future, to develop us on and off the pitch into a bigger club that can compete on a bigger level. That is what Vichai saw in Pearson - he gave him time and trust to develop his own style, with his own staff and players. He also allowed him to develop the training facility and backroom structure into what it is now.

 

Last season was a horror show at times - but we did have a totally imbalanced squad, with our fair share of injuries and about 9 players with an eye on the World Cup in the summer. Puel hardly covered himself in glory either.

 

However, our summer 2018 window was absolutely excellent in my opinion.

 

A new RB, which we’d been crying out for about 2 seasons?

- In comes Ricardo Pereira at £17m.

A new creative midfielder, to replace Mahrez and diversify our creativity?

- James Maddison, for £22m. Very young and English to boot.

A new back up goalkeeper?

- Liverpool’s 25 yr old Danny Ward, 4th in line to Allison. We balked at £12m, but he’s since proved more than capable.

A stronger defence?

- Experience Jonny Evans at £3m was daylight robbery.

- Filipe Benkovic for £13m, sent up to Celtic to develop for us.

- Caglar Soyuncu for £19m - an experienced youngster with bags of potential.

 

The weirdest buy was Diedre at £12m. He’ll never get in our XI, but when you think of Harvey Barnes tearing up the Championship and returning to us in the summer, Deidre starts to make a bit of sense as a squad addition. Starts to.

 

I make that about £100m spent last summer. Minus the £60m+ for Mahrez and the hilarious fee we received for Musa.

 

Perhaps the most promising business however was just after the window closed. We secured our more important players on long term contracts:

Vardy till 2022

Chilwell till 2024

Maguire till 2023

Ndidi till 2024

Kasper till 2023

Hamza till 2022

Amartey till 2022

 

Hamza, Chilwell, Ndidi all under 22, tied down on long contracts and no release clauses, which should keep interested parties off our backs. Maguire proving his commitment to the club, guaranteeing his value rises even higher. Vardy and Kasper secured for perhaps the remaineder of their careers. That is seriously excellent business and proof of our ambitions.

 

Again, some of the performances and results have been poor. But it was never plain sailing under Pearson was it? And despite that, in the long term, he pushed us forward as a club. 

 

As of Christmas 2018, we have a much stronger, balanced and younger squad than ever before. We’ve got a £100m world class training facility being built as we speak. We have a stadium expansion soon to be announced. We have a manager, I personally believe, who will help us grow as a club in the long term. 

 

We also have a young owner who I trust to make the right decisions for us. If he decides that Puel is not the right man, then I’d understand. 

 

But for now, we finally have a long term strategy in place, with a chairman, manager and squad all capable of sticking to it. I firmly believe we have a very bright future.

 

As Claudio once said, szlowly szlowly.

Nice, well thought out comment.

 

I remember going to Faliraki in my yellow away shirt and on holiday a good while back. We were known amongst those on holiday for sure, but still in the kind of Stoke City way (decent enough sort of, but not much more interest than that). Peter Taylor was manager that season and the rest is history.  Anyway, my point to make is this, its seasons like this a little reminder is needed, we've seemingly ditched the historic mid-size "yo-yo Leicester" for an almost unprecedented established top flight Leicester.  I was listening to Talk Sport earlier today and the commentators were talking about Spurs and the new Stadium.  They were unable to categories us as the best (smaller) team for Spurs to play first or the next (bigger) team like Arsenal.  Just in that snap-shot of pundits talking, in a way we've moved into the little section in-between (much like our position now in the table).  Eventually they actually chose Newcastle as the best first game and it wasn't about position in the table either.

 

Per your comments urban-spaceman, our club is now really well run, much richer for it and never so popular in the wider community, UK and pinch yourselves...................world. 

 

Enjoy this journey guys/girls as this is probably the best its ever been in many, many ways.

[OhYesNdidi]

1 minute ago, urban.spaceman said:

Good question. Man City certainly have one, which is to ignore all the financial fair play rules and buy their way to titles.

 

Bournemouth and Burnley both have long term managers who they have stuck with through thick and thin - when Burnley got relegated they double down on their support for Dyche which paid off last season. Personally I quite admire that kind of long term commitment. 

 

Spurs are are doing well however annoying that is - though I do hope Pochettino leaves for Man Utd and the new stadium bankrupts them. 

 

The likes of Palace, Southampton, Everton, West Ham all seem to be going through managers at a rate of knots - mostly the same bloody people. The latter two seem to have quite volatile management behind the scenes. 

 

Chelsea seem to be happy going through the Italian Managers phone book, while Arsenal seem sadly revived under Emery. Liverpool have trusted Klopp to get rid of the crap leftover from Rodgers, buy a couple of superstars, develop youngsters and raid Southampton again and again. 

 

Everyone below 10th is just happy to survive. 

 

Perhaps the best (and then worst) example of a long term strategy is Fergie at Man Utd. It was a different era of course, but he had 8 years to develop his squad before they won their first league. He developed the Class of 92, and they thoroughly deserved to dominate English football for 20 years. It was a perfect long term strategy. But then Man Utd failed to act adequately to his retirement (despite basically having 5 years notice) and are deservedly suffering. 

 

I’m not saying Puel is going to win us more titles. But he could be the guy who develops us to the point where the next manager can. 

Everton have marcel brands now (a highly rated DOF from PSV who they paid a lot of money for) & Marco Silva who they want to be the man to take into their new 52,000 seater stadium. I’d say they have ‘long term vision’. Not sure about West Ham though. 

[KingsX]

10 minutes ago, Dirkster the Fox said:

 I was listening to Talk Sport earlier today and the commentators were talking about Spurs and the new Stadium.  They were unable to categories us as the best (smaller) team for Spurs to play first or the next (bigger) team like Arsenal.  Just in that snap-shot of pundits talking, in a way we've moved into the little section in-between

In larger terms than just playing style, we've gone from 100% countering to building up and finding the space in between the lines.

 

Hopefully will always have that vicious little-dog bite

[UPinCarolina]

1 hour ago, urban.spaceman said:

So the summer of 2016 was a ****ing disaster.

 

But that’s OK.

 

It was to be expected - Kante left, as did Steve Walsh, whose scouting for Championship promotion and Premier League survival had far surpassed all expectations. We’d just won the Premier ****ing League, and flush with new money, we blew £70m on Slimani, Musa, Mendy, Kapustka, Hernandez and Zieler - mostly previous targets for staving off relegation, not defending a title.

 

The following two windows were an improvement - Ndidi came in as a Kante-esque player in the winter of 2017, though sadly Claudio couldn’t make it work with what was still an imbalanced and disenfranchised squad. The club then appointed Shakespeare as the permanent successor, and we had decent summer 2017 window: Maguire (£17m), Iborra (£12m), Jakupovic (£2m), Iheanacho (£25m, lol), Dravovic (loan), Silva (£22m, not available till New Years).

 

Our problem was thus: we’d had no long term strategy since Pearson was in charge. At least, not one that matched our ambitions and standing in the league. Sadly, Shakespeare was an unrealistic choice for long term manager in this respect. Great as a No.2, but as a No.1, he lacked the diversity, authority and vision to be a realistic long term manager for us.

 

Now, I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a Puel In or Out thread - though I admit it’s easier to write this after the last two wins. And of course there has been some utterly dreadful football at times.

 

I truly believe what we need right now is stability - a manager with an eye on our long term future, to develop us on and off the pitch into a bigger club that can compete on a bigger level. That is what Vichai saw in Pearson - he gave him time and trust to develop his own style, with his own staff and players. He also allowed him to develop the training facility and backroom structure into what it is now.

 

Last season was a horror show at times - but we did have a totally imbalanced squad, with our fair share of injuries and about 9 players with an eye on the World Cup in the summer. Puel hardly covered himself in glory either.

 

However, our summer 2018 window was absolutely excellent in my opinion.

 

A new RB, which we’d been crying out for about 2 seasons?

- In comes Ricardo Pereira at £17m.

A new creative midfielder, to replace Mahrez and diversify our creativity?

- James Maddison, for £22m. Very young and English to boot.

A new back up goalkeeper?

- Liverpool’s 25 yr old Danny Ward, 4th in line to Allison. We balked at £12m, but he’s since proved more than capable.

A stronger defence?

- Experience Jonny Evans at £3m was daylight robbery.

- Filipe Benkovic for £13m, sent up to Celtic to develop for us.

- Caglar Soyuncu for £19m - an experienced youngster with bags of potential.

 

The weirdest buy was Diedre at £12m. He’ll never get in our XI, but when you think of Harvey Barnes tearing up the Championship and returning to us in the summer, Deidre starts to make a bit of sense as a squad addition. Starts to.

 

I make that about £100m spent last summer. Minus the £60m+ for Mahrez and the hilarious fee we received for Musa.

 

Perhaps the most promising business however was just after the window closed. We secured our more important players on long term contracts:

Vardy till 2022

Chilwell till 2024

Maguire till 2023

Ndidi till 2024

Kasper till 2023

Hamza till 2022

Amartey till 2022

 

Hamza, Chilwell, Ndidi all under 22, tied down on long contracts and no release clauses, which should keep interested parties off our backs. Maguire proving his commitment to the club, guaranteeing his value rises even higher. Vardy and Kasper secured for perhaps the remaineder of their careers. That is seriously excellent business and proof of our ambitions.

 

Again, some of the performances and results have been poor. But it was never plain sailing under Pearson was it? And despite that, in the long term, he pushed us forward as a club. 

 

As of Christmas 2018, we have a much stronger, balanced and younger squad than ever before. We’ve got a £100m world class training facility being built as we speak. We have a stadium expansion soon to be announced. We have a manager, I personally believe, who will help us grow as a club in the long term. 

 

We also have a young owner who I trust to make the right decisions for us. If he decides that Puel is not the right man, then I’d understand. 

 

But for now, we finally have a long term strategy in place, with a chairman, manager and squad all capable of sticking to it. I firmly believe we have a very bright future.

 

As Claudio once said, szlowly szlowly.

Okay, maybe I’m completely blanking...but who is Deidre

[Cadno'r Cymoedd]

16 minutes ago, OhYesNdidi said:

Everton have marcel brands now (a highly rated DOF from PSV who they paid a lot of money for) & Marco Silva who they want to be the man to take into their new 52,000 seater stadium. I’d say they have ‘long term vision’. Not sure about West Ham though. 

Marco Silva is average. 

[jayfox26]

12 minutes ago, UPinCarolina said:

Okay, maybe I’m completely blanking...but who is Deidre

Rachid Ghezzal. There was a character in Coronation street called Deirdrie Rachid. 

[urban.spaceman]

4 hours ago, OhYesNdidi said:

Everton have marcel brands now (a highly rated DOF from PSV who they paid a lot of money for) & Marco Silva who they want to be the man to take into their new 52,000 seater stadium. I’d say they have ‘long term vision’. Not sure about West Ham though. 

Perhaps, but they’ve only just hired Brands & Silva (sounds like a cigar make) this season, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the long term. They’ve been quite volatile in the past and seem to be comfortable in the 6th-11th area. We should be aiming much higher than that, and to stay there permanently. 

 

West Ham are stuck with Brady and the Dildo Brothers who seem to be never far away from a daft decision. I’m hoping the stadium move punishes them as a £700m stadium for free is the definition of unfair financial play. 

[weller54]

4 hours ago, UPinCarolina said:

Okay, maybe I’m completely blanking...but who is Deidre

Get a grip.. 

Keep up man!!

Have you been living under a rock?? 

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

Bloody hell - common sense and a refreshingly logical post. I agree with every word. I would love to see where Puel could take us in 3-5 years. Rome wasn’t built in a day bla bla bla. 

 

My my one concern is that there seems a sect of the fan base who will never warm to or accept Puel - for a large part because of his perceived dour media persona which seems ludicrous to me (and some iffy performances with a young side who are learning all the time). That basically means there will always be an undercurrent of ‘Puel out’, probably  even if we had 3-4 seasons of 7th and 2-3 Europa League campaigns. And a divided fan base is never good.

 

I hope we smash Cardiff because it’s just the sort of game we have struggled with this season. If we draw or lose no doubt it will reignite some of the Puel our embers. 

[Anglodanglo]

6 hours ago, UniFox21 said:

When you look how he has developed players; Chilwell, Maguire, Ricardo to an extent, you can see the kinda of thing he wants to develop. 

And we get points where things click together and it looks brilliant.

But we've half had some shit to sit through at times.

The task of transitioning a title winning squad, placating naturally higher expectations born from it while still showing ambition. That's a hell of a management brief to undertake.

Claude may be duller than the contents of my Xmas stocking, but he's doing a Puel of a job so far

[Anglodanglo]

5 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Top picture is Deirdre Rachid. Previously Barlow, but she was married to a Moroccan guy named Samir.

 

Need I explain further? 

Glad you did. 

 

Until that point I just thought you didn't know how to spell Diabate

[UniFox21]

1 minute ago, Anglodanglo said:

The task of transitioning a title winning squad, placating naturally higher expectations born from it while still showing ambition. That's a hell of a management brief to undertake.

Claude may be duller than the contents of my Xmas stocking, but he's doing a Puel of a job so far

Exactly, this has to be one of the most challenging Jobs in football. It's a total rebuild of style, playing staff, coaching staff and facilities. That with balancing the expectations of the crowd following those crazy crazy years

[elvisfmcfly]

5 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Top picture is Deirdre Rachid. Previously Barlow, but she was married to a Moroccan guy named Samir.

 

Need I explain further? 

Yeah! What happened to Ken?

[urban.spaceman]

24 minutes ago, bmouth_fox said:

Bloody hell - common sense and a refreshingly logical post. I agree with every word. I would love to see where Puel could take us in 3-5 years. Rome wasn’t built in a day bla bla bla. 

 

My my one concern is that there seems a sect of the fan base who will never warm to or accept Puel - for a large part because of his perceived dour media persona which seems ludicrous to me (and some iffy performances with a young side who are learning all the time). That basically means there will always be an undercurrent of ‘Puel out’, probably  even if we had 3-4 seasons of 7th and 2-3 Europa League campaigns. And a divided fan base is never good.

 

I hope we smash Cardiff because it’s just the sort of game we have struggled with this season. If we draw or lose no doubt it will reignite some of the Puel our embers. 

There was a large section of the fanbase that never warmed to Pearson, and still don’t like him. Fair enough. I don’t like Puel’s media presence either, but people have to realise we had an absolutely ****ing treat with Ranieri. 

 

As long as we’re progressing the odd defeat or poor performance shouldn’t matter.