Rodgers opens up on Leicester City transfer struggles but 'won't go to war' with club

[sacreblueits442]

1 minute ago, Fox92 said:

That wasn't his point though.

 

The original point he quoted was "Donald Duck" could have achieved what Rodgers did. And that's wrong. If it was that easy then Puel would have done it, which is the point.

.. perhaps the answer is that, Dinald Duck is not as toxic as Puel

[foxinsocks]

1 hour ago, sacreblueits442 said:

.. perhaps the answer is that, Dinald Duck is not as toxic as Puel

Donald likes free flowing marauding football from the turnover. His teams play a high pressing game and are solid when defending set pieces.   If players are out of form he has a special team of fitness,  video guys and psychologists to help them back to form.  He is straight forward ...and fronts up to the media where the team has work to do.

[PhillippaT]

1 hour ago, sacreblueits442 said:

.. perhaps the answer is that, Dinald Duck is not as toxic as Puel

Why anyone would want a US Navy vet suffering from PTSD to be a football manager, I dunno 😛

[foxinsocks]

Has anyone posted the piece in today's telegraph?

[turlo]

3 hours ago, foxinsocks said:

Has anyone posted the piece in today's telegraph?

not but saw it mentioned twitter that Percy said Leicester were looking at an 90 mill loss this year. Would be interesting to hear that's what he actually wrote in the article. 

[lcfc sheff]

The more I think about it I wouldn’t be shocked if madders is sold… the money we’d get plus it’s almost a bit silly to play him right midfield and a waste of his skill set. 

[davieG]

5 hours ago, foxinsocks said:

Has anyone posted the piece in today's telegraph?

 

[funkyrobot]

On 20/07/2022 at 11:00, sacreblueits442 said:

.. perhaps the answer is that, Dinald Duck is not as toxic as Puel

Dinald Duck™️

[Nicolo Barella]

Whilst I am occasionally guilty of it myself, I wonder that people don't get tired of having the same arguments with the same users week in week out.

[coolhandfox]

Interest quotes form Soyuncu interview in the Times. 

 

“Our aim is to be in the top four but worst-case scenario finish in the top six,” he adds. “We target the Champions League season after season.

 

He has huge respect for Rodgers. “He’s very hands-on,” the centre back explains. “If, at training, he spots that you are missing some things, he intervenes. He says, ‘This is what I’m looking for. That needs some work.’ And shows you.”

Rodgers encourages his adventurous side. “He gives me freedom but I only take the risk at the right time in the right place,” he says. “I’m lucky I have the backing of the manager to try things in games. There’s mutual trust

[norwichfox]

34 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Interest quotes form Soyuncu interview in the Times. 

 

“Our aim is to be in the top four but worst-case scenario finish in the top six,” he adds. “We target the Champions League season after season.

 

He has huge respect for Rodgers. “He’s very hands-on,” the centre back explains. “If, at training, he spots that you are missing some things, he intervenes. He says, ‘This is what I’m looking for. That needs some work.’ And shows you.”

Rodgers encourages his adventurous side. “He gives me freedom but I only take the risk at the right time in the right place,” he says. “I’m lucky I have the backing of the manager to try things in games. There’s mutual trust

really?... needs a bit of work on his judgement of right time and right place.

Edited 23 July 2022 by norwichfox

[HankMarvin]

Leicester drifting towards mid-table mediocrity with cash-strapped Foxes unable to back Brendan Rodgers

 

TICK TOCK, tick tock. Can you hear that Brendan Rodgers?

It’s the sound of the clock counting down the days to Leicester’s first game of the new season.

 

Brendan Rodgers has been unable to make a single signing this summer 

 

Five months since Rodgers declared the need for six new players to overhaul his ageing squad, he has yet to make a single signing.

With their opening fixture at home to Brentford now just 16 days away, Leicester have been neither shaken nor stirred this summer.

Worse still, word has got out around the rest of football that the Foxes need to sell before they can buy.

Which might explain why they haven’t received a single bid for Youri Tielemans even though he is currently available for a bargain £30million.

Because Premier League rivals are happy to keep Leicester sweating until the final few days of the transfer window, confident that they will be forced to further slash their asking price rather than allow Belgian midfielder Tielemans to enter the final year of his contract.

For it seems that Leicester have been living beyond their means for the last few years, paying their players more than their annual turnover.

So now they are in danger of breaking Financial Fair Play rules and need to cut their costs before they can recruit the players Rodgers wants to make his team a force again.

Yet as the highly ambitious Northern Irishman spelled out in no uncertain terms last February: “I didn’t come to Leicester just to go through the motions.

 

 

“I came to challenge the clubs towards the top end of the league.”

For his first two full seasons at the King Power, that’s exactly what he did — winning the FA Cup, the Community Shield and twice finishing fifth in the league.

But after coming eighth last term it seems he will be relying on the creaking joints of Jamie Vardy, Jonny Evans and Kasper Schmeichel to keep Leicester competitive.

Even a £10m-a-year contract — which pays him more than Thomas Tuchel, Mikel Arteta and Erik ten Hag — may not be enough to keep him hanging around if he’s just going to be making up the numbers.

The frustration for Rodgers is that he knows he has the basis of a more-than-decent team when everyone is fit and available.

Wesley Fofana, James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, Timothy Castagne, James Justin and Tielemans are all excellent players.

But without further investment, they are in danger of drifting towards mid-table mediocrity just six years after winning the Premier League title.

There’s certainly no danger of them going down next season because there are plenty of teams poorer than Leicester who will be fighting to avoid relegation.

But as rallying cries go, “We’re hoping for a top-ten finish,” doesn’t exactly stir the blood

[SouthStandUpperTier]

7 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

Leicester drifting towards mid-table mediocrity with cash-strapped Foxes unable to back Brendan Rodgers

 

TICK TOCK, tick tock. Can you hear that Brendan Rodgers?

It’s the sound of the clock counting down the days to Leicester’s first game of the new season.

 

Brendan Rodgers has been unable to make a single signing this summer 

 

Five months since Rodgers declared the need for six new players to overhaul his ageing squad, he has yet to make a single signing.

With their opening fixture at home to Brentford now just 16 days away, Leicester have been neither shaken nor stirred this summer.

Worse still, word has got out around the rest of football that the Foxes need to sell before they can buy.

Which might explain why they haven’t received a single bid for Youri Tielemans even though he is currently available for a bargain £30million.

Because Premier League rivals are happy to keep Leicester sweating until the final few days of the transfer window, confident that they will be forced to further slash their asking price rather than allow Belgian midfielder Tielemans to enter the final year of his contract.

For it seems that Leicester have been living beyond their means for the last few years, paying their players more than their annual turnover.

So now they are in danger of breaking Financial Fair Play rules and need to cut their costs before they can recruit the players Rodgers wants to make his team a force again.

Yet as the highly ambitious Northern Irishman spelled out in no uncertain terms last February: “I didn’t come to Leicester just to go through the motions.

 

 

“I came to challenge the clubs towards the top end of the league.”

For his first two full seasons at the King Power, that’s exactly what he did — winning the FA Cup, the Community Shield and twice finishing fifth in the league.

But after coming eighth last term it seems he will be relying on the creaking joints of Jamie Vardy, Jonny Evans and Kasper Schmeichel to keep Leicester competitive.

Even a £10m-a-year contract — which pays him more than Thomas Tuchel, Mikel Arteta and Erik ten Hag — may not be enough to keep him hanging around if he’s just going to be making up the numbers.

The frustration for Rodgers is that he knows he has the basis of a more-than-decent team when everyone is fit and available.

Wesley Fofana, James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, Timothy Castagne, James Justin and Tielemans are all excellent players.

But without further investment, they are in danger of drifting towards mid-table mediocrity just six years after winning the Premier League title.

There’s certainly no danger of them going down next season because there are plenty of teams poorer than Leicester who will be fighting to avoid relegation.

But as rallying cries go, “We’re hoping for a top-ten finish,” doesn’t exactly stir the blood

The 'big six' didn't get their longed-for Super League, but they got second prize with these new FFP rules. Pretty much ensures that they will remain untouched at the top, while everyone else is condemned to hoping for mid-table at best. Don't you just love modern football?

Edited 23 July 2022 by SouthStandUpperTier

[Bourbon Fox]

On 20/07/2022 at 12:47, foxinsocks said:

Donald likes free flowing marauding football from the turnover. His teams play a high pressing game and are solid when defending set pieces.   If players are out of form he has a special team of fitness,  video guys and psychologists to help them back to form.  He is straight forward ...and fronts up to the media where the team has work to do.

Sounds like we got Donald Dick!

[jim5000]

If we get lucky, we will play this season with the first team that we intended to play last season, and in theory, we should be competing at the top end of the table. On paper we have a top 4-6 first team, with mid-table backups.

 

The way this falls down, is that last seasons first team included Vardy and Evans, who are at the tailend of their careers and can't be expected to play every match this season (the same was true last season but they both got crocked).

 

 

[Jobyfox]

18 minutes ago, jim5000 said:

If we get lucky, we will play this season with the first team that we intended to play last season, and in theory, we should be competing at the top end of the table. On paper we have a top 4-6 first team, with mid-table backups.

 

The way this falls down, is that last seasons first team included Vardy and Evans, who are at the tailend of their careers and can't be expected to play every match this season (the same was true last season but they both got crocked).

 

 

That assumes that all the other clubs have stood still - they haven’t.

 

We won’t really know how much potential we’ve got until we see how right the teams around us and above us, have got their recruitment. 

[jim5000]

19 minutes ago, Jobyfox said:

That assumes that all the other clubs have stood still - they haven’t.

 

We won’t really know how much potential we’ve got until we see how right the teams around us and above us, have got their recruitment. 

Some teams will have gone backwards. We 'strengthened' with Vestergaard, Bertrand, and Soumare last season.

 

I think we've got the same squad that we had high hopes for last season, the big caveat is how much can we expect out of Evans and Vardy seeing as they are in their twilight years.

[Jobyfox]

22 minutes ago, jim5000 said:

Some teams will have gone backwards. We 'strengthened' with Vestergaard, Bertrand, and Soumare last season.

 

I think we've got the same squad that we had high hopes for last season, the big caveat is how much can we expect out of Evans and Vardy seeing as they are in their twilight years.

Which of our competitors for top 4-6 have gone backwards? I take it your reference to our signings last season was tongue in cheek. All we've really achieved there is blown our wage budget 

Edited 25 July 2022 by Jobyfox

[AyewJoking]

The club is a joke right now.

We'd all be taking the piss if this was happening to someone else.

 

I just really really hope we develop some sort of seige mentality and Rodgers doesn't set us up to get picked off every week.

 

Why would we have the motivation to qualify for Europe next season when it looks likely we will finally offload players for nothing when their contracts expire at the end of the season and we have to build a squad deep and good enough to cope with the extra games?

 

Feels like this will be another season of treading water at best before starting from square one, albeit with a decent core of players in summer 23.

[jim5000]

1 hour ago, Jobyfox said:

Which of our competitors for top 4-6 have gone backwards? I take it your reference to our signings last season was tongue in cheek. All we've really achieved there is blown our wage budget 

 

Man Utd, Arsenal who knows, they could implode or finish 3rd. Spurs, probably 3rd, Liverpool and Man City to fight it out. If we don't get injuries, and Vardy and Evans, by some miracle, can play the full season, and we don't get anything like the injuries we had last season (and no European mantchs) we could be challenging for 3rd.

 

The first 11 last season could give anyone a game. This season the club seems to be banking on no injuries, including to two key players that were already considered to struggle with a full season last season.

Edited 25 July 2022 by jim5000

[foxinsocks]

1 minute ago, jim5000 said:

 

Man Utd.

They signed a great manager... the most important player of all

[jim5000]

1 minute ago, foxinsocks said:

They signed a great manager... the most important player of all

They have a history of really good managerial appointments recently.

[Bptiger]

I think that all this is on the clubs head , AND THIS is just my thoughts , because none of us know what is really going on in the club . I think that we won’t take even a medium size lose on some of these players we are trying to off load , because I see Newcastle have off loaded heaps of players , and we can’t one even one , something wrong 

[coolhandfox]

3 hours ago, Bptiger said:

I think that all this is on the clubs head , AND THIS is just my thoughts , because none of us know what is really going on in the club . I think that we won’t take even a medium size lose on some of these players we are trying to off load , because I see Newcastle have off loaded heaps of players , and we can’t one even one , something wrong 

Having an owner worth 320 billion helps.

 

[Ric Flair]

7 hours ago, Royston. said:

The club is a joke right now.

We'd all be taking the piss if this was happening to someone else.

 

I just really really hope we develop some sort of seige mentality and Rodgers doesn't set us up to get picked off every week.

 

Why would we have the motivation to qualify for Europe next season when it looks likely we will finally offload players for nothing when their contracts expire at the end of the season and we have to build a squad deep and good enough to cope with the extra games?

 

Feels like this will be another season of treading water at best before starting from square one, albeit with a decent core of players in summer 23.

We would be taking the piss but then we wouldn't spend the time to scratch the surface to see why a club is in this predicament.

 

From the outside looking in, it would seem very odd that we appear to have no money. But as has been repeated time and time again its not the issue of transfer fees given how transfers are amotisised over the length of the players contract but that we have pushed it to the max with our wages.

 

Now it can be argued we've overpaid players, certainly squad players and I think we need a tiered wages model where the new signings start on less than we currently pay but if they are successful then they get incremental big increases to reflect what they bring to the club rather than being on 80k a week from the off when they've come from clubs paying them less than half that.

 

However I can't criticise us too much. Our fans have lapped up and demanded we push the top 6 which we've done and you don't get to keep doing that if you can't keep hold of a nucleus of your best players by rewarding them with 6 figure weekly salaries and then as we are seeing this summer the demand to bring players in each season which we've tried to do and as a result our wage structure gets stretched to the maximum.

 

I'm curious to know how we navigate out of this problem to give us the financial flexibility in the future to meet the regulations of only 70% wage to turnover whilst trying to compete in the top 6/7. It sounds almost impossible and especially as there'll be teams like Villa, Everton and others that won't follow the rules but we no doubt will. The only way I see it working is our academy HAS to be operating at maximum efficiency. We need a culture where academy players are given opportunities as much as possible, even if its short term pain for long term gain.

 

It seems a waste to have this exceptional training facility and not try and build the best academy in the world to match it. We have one of the best in the country in Paul McGuinness now pulling the strings and I hope our focus on investment and development is on the academy as much as the 1st team as it will help solve this conundrum. We need to have talented players constantly coming through who's wages are at a level that allows us to move other players on whom we need to in order to continue to challenge and amend the squad year on year. I see it being we have a core 18-20 first team players, whom if successful can still earn big money here but rather having 5-6 other squad fillers taking up an additional £20m+ in wages we instead have academy players on vastly less whom are there to make a name for themselves and will be rewarded in due course if they do. Or get back to a model of signing a number of very talented but raw young players whom again are on much less wages but the gains could me massive. Its a risk though as money can still be wasted. These players are still much easier to move on if it doesn't work out though compared to what we are facing with squad players whom we are paying nearly £5m a season to.

 

We need to see our manager showing the intent that the academy model is the way forward, I see him skirting round the edges but the club need to be aligned on this because I'm sure he's very frustrated with the state of things. Powers above him negotiate the wages for players and set the budgets for transfers and yet he's being told that we've got no flexibility until players are sold and that again is not in his remit. But the long term vision to prevent this happening has to be rock solid. We've 10 players out of contract next summer and the perfect opportunity to put this in to action. Especially when we also need to either extend or sell a number of very important 1st team players whom we risk being in the situation we are in with Tielemans and Soyuncu and we cannot let that happen.