Year after year after year after year

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

8 hours ago, nffcfan said:

I was going to make a new thread but I’ll ask here. I’m a Forest fan. I started following football in the mid 90s I remember the Martin o Neil era and when he left Leicester went down hill and I remember thinking that they will never be as good as that side again. 
 

Well clearly I was proven wrong, how did Leicester go from league 1 to at least a mid table premiership side in a short space of time?On paper the current squad looks average (with respect) It’s not as if they had a mega rich owner come along like at Chelsea or Man City.

 

Thanks for your time.

Read the book Soccernomics. I read it and the first half explains a lot re the model that LCFC have adopted. Think RB Leipzig, Lyon and others who punch above their weight year on year. From memory a key part of it is excellent recruitment and building the club by selling your assets when good offers come in - for example, we sold Maguire for peak value and then used the money to build one of the best training grounds in world football. 
 

I don’t think our squad is average. It’s probably around 6th / 7th on paper in terms of quality and depth. But they are very well coached and the club are exceedingly well run from top and bottom.

[filthyfox]

It's all about Vichai's dream now.... Top 4 forever

[Les-TA-Jon]

14 hours ago, Jack1993 said:

3) Is there any other team that you know that have done anything similar to this? 

Interestingly, I did this analysis myself recently, and in the time we've been back in the PL no team has got more points year on year, other than Leicester 

 

But there's a few caveats: 

• We didn't either (if you count the title win) 
• Most of the title contenders can't really have a hope of doing it, since they either win the league consecutively (but are unlikely to improve on previous points total, or be required to) or they don't hold defend the title (something very hard to do in the PL) 

 

 

Edited 12 May 2021 by Les-TA-Jon

[Jack1993]

14 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Interestingly, I did this analysis myself recently, and in the time we've been back in the PL no team has got more points year on year, other than Leicester 

 

But there's a few caveats: 

• We didn't either (if you count the title win) 
• Most of the title contenders can't really have a hope of doing it, since they either win the league consecutively (but are unlikely to improve on previous points total, or be required to) or they don't hold defend the title (something very hard to do in the PL) 

 

 

Yeah I take your points, we have improved for 4 seasons in a row since the title win though - I just wonder if any team has ever done it before... admittedly it's difficult to do in its own right and then also because of your second point you really have to start low and improve little by little. Maybe Liverpool have done similar, Tottenham a few years ago? Southampton? 

 

I just think that somebody must have haha

[AKCJ]

All about whether we sit still in the summer or not because Liverpool won't.

[Happy Fox]

1 minute ago, AKCJ said:

All about whether we sit still in the summer or not because Liverpool won't.

It seems we want to get out transfer business done early as soon as champions league football is wrapped up I can see us signing all our targets by the first week of the transfer window

[David Hankey]

Set aside all the bollocks our aim season after season should be winning the title again. What's not to like about that?

 

Having as good if not a better manager than when we won it and an improving squad it isn't impossible.

[sm1]

14 hours ago, nffcfan said:

I was going to make a new thread but I’ll ask here. I’m a Forest fan. I started following football in the mid 90s I remember the Martin o Neil era and when he left Leicester went down hill and I remember thinking that they will never be as good as that side again. 
 

Well clearly I was proven wrong, how did Leicester go from league 1 to at least a mid table premiership side in a short space of time?On paper the current squad looks average (with respect) It’s not as if they had a mega rich owner come along like at Chelsea or Man City.

 

Thanks for your time.

In one word, Vichai. Every organisation needs a determined, visionary person at the top who drives everyone else, and we got that with Vichai. Look at the quote earlier in the thread when he talks about being a top 5 club in 3 years. Everyone laughed at him and the club, yet look where we are, Champions and hopefully top 5, 2 seasons running whilst selling our best players to our competitors. Along the way he made some hard decisions, rehiring Pearson, then sacking him right after he had kept us in the PL. Hiring Ranieri, when most thought it was the wrong decision and then sacking him not long after winning the PL. The same media who said he was wrong for hiring Ranieri were now saying he was wrong for sacking him. But he took the heat because everything he did was for the clubs benefit. Vichai may not be here, but the club you see, is his legacy.

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 hour ago, Jack1993 said:

Yeah I take your points, we have improved for 4 seasons in a row since the title win though - I just wonder if any team has ever done it before... admittedly it's difficult to do in its own right and then also because of your second point you really have to start low and improve little by little. Maybe Liverpool have done similar, Tottenham a few years ago? Southampton? 

 

I just think that somebody must have haha

Think it does go to show that we're the 'best of the rest' though. Think of all the teams that have been in the division for a long time or have been in the PL more than us over the last 20 years and we've improved each and every season, where they haven't 

[enmac]

16 hours ago, Jack1993 said:

I thought this was worthy of its own post after posting something on the Crazy Stats thread a while ago; 

 

Apart from one very obvious outlier we have improved our points tally every single season since we were promoted to the Premier League...

 

2014/2015: 41

2015/2016: 81*

2016/2017: 44

2017/2018: 47

2018/2019: 52 

2019/2020: 62

2020/2021: 66 (so far) 

 

so, 3 questions for the masses:

 

1) Was this a target? Did we do it on purpose? 
 

2) Should this be talked about more or is it all just bollocks unless you finish in a European place? 
 

3) Is there any other team that you know that have done anything similar to this? 

At this rate we should be title condensers in 2026!

[Raw Dykes]

15 hours ago, nffcfan said:

I was going to make a new thread but I’ll ask here. I’m a Forest fan. I started following football in the mid 90s I remember the Martin o Neil era and when he left Leicester went down hill and I remember thinking that they will never be as good as that side again. 
 

Well clearly I was proven wrong, how did Leicester go from league 1 to at least a mid table premiership side in a short space of time?On paper the current squad looks average (with respect) It’s not as if they had a mega rich owner come along like at Chelsea or Man City.

 

Thanks for your time.

It started with hiring Nigel Pearson. I believe he, along with assistants Craig Shakespeare and Steve Walsh twice did a root and branch rebuild of the way the club operates. The squad was streamlined, there was a drastic improvement in recruitment and also a focus on sports science. It seems they had great attention to detail.

 

Then we won the owner lottery and were bought by the greatest football club owners could possibly wish for. They were completely new to the sport, though, and did make a mistake upon arrival - getting rid of NP and hiring Paulo Sousa. He didn't last long. They hired Sven and threw money at the squad to try to get out of the division. Didn't work. Re-hired NP and we finally got back to the PL and stayed there.

 

Essentially, it's mostly down to being ahead of the game in scouting and recruitment. We don't have a budget to match the biggest clubs, so we have to box clever. We spot players before they go above and beyond our price range.

 

 

Re: Average squad. I'd say the squad is lacking some depth, but I think the first XI is good enough for top 4 or 6.

 

I don't think players such as Tielemans, Ndidi, Fofana, Soyuncu, Evans, Ricardo, Justin, Vardy, Schmeichel or Barnes would look out of place in any team in England, really. I suspect your judgement might be being swayed by who they play for. Just ask yourself whether your perception of players like Kante, Mahrez, Maguire or Chilwell changed after they left us for a bigger club. Do you think people might rate them at least slightly higher now just because of the shirt they wear?

[StriderHiryu]

18 hours ago, Matt said:

Newly-promoted Leicester City's owner wants a top-five finish in the Premier League within three years.

 

"I am asking for three years, and we'll be there.

 

We won't take the huge leap to challenge the league's top five clubs immediately.

 

Do we have a chance to beat them? Yes, we have, but I think we need to establish our foothold in the league first and then we think about our next step.

 

The important thing is we're going with a belief that we can achieve,

 

It's important we continue to improve everything about ourselves. So, we can challenge for the top five. But, of course, one step at the time."

 

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, 2014.

 

What an absolute legend. We all laughed when he said it, especially seeing how long it took for us to get out of the Championship, but the madman actually pulled it off!

 

If you take the title win out of the equation, what we are see now is even better proof of how smart Vichai was than the title win. There's not really a secret to the success of the King Power group and it's many businesses; they make a long term strategy, invest in the right people and work together toward a common goal. But the reason why we don't see this more often is because it's very hard to commit to a long-term strategy in a results based industry or business. But for the most part we have. Sure their have been sackings and missteps along the way, but things like the Training Centre and Stadium Improvements have been planned for a very long time.

 

I often wonder just how far the plan extends to? Is Top 5 enough or do they want to / think they can do even better? I could easily believe there is a 20 or even 50 year plan in place for Leicester City. To really challenge for the top we would need to have much better commercial revenues, but the funny thing about clubs that are successful on the pitch is that they tend to be able to improve their commercial deals over time. So who knows!