Did the club gamble and overreach?

[An Away Move]

I can’t help but think of how close we were to qualifying for the Champions League in those two recent seasons. 
My gut tells me that we might’ve gambled and perhaps overreached financially in the first season we dropped out of the top four on the final day. We should have probably sold a top asset that season and kept to our model but we backed Brendan by not selling in an attempt to push on and go one better. In retrospect was this a gamble with disastrous financial implications for our current financial predicament? Not qualifying for Europe has left us with a very large and expensive squad who are, not only difficult to sell - but clearly on the wane. If we go down this season the consequences will be enormous with all the infrastructure investment. That could all turn into a crushingly expensive liability very quickly. 

[Stevosevic]

We did sell. We sold Chilwell. 
 

 

[An Away Move]

Perhaps the Qatari money sniffing around Spurs will invest in us instead?! Lol  

 

- I’m obviously getting very desperate and it would give me conflicting feelings if that were to happen. 

[Cincinnati Fox]

No! We were successful and have failed to capitalise 

[An Away Move]

1 minute ago, Stevosevic said:

We did sell. We sold Chilwell. 
 

 

Ah yes! We did. I wonder if my point might still stand for the second season. We didn’t sell then and added Daka and Soumare. 

[Freeman's Wharfer]

No. We didn’t gamble enough.

 

Either January that season an extra £30m would have made a world of difference.

[An Away Move]

Just now, Freeman's Wharfer said:

No. We didn’t gamble enough.

 

Either January that season an extra £30m would have made a world of difference.

Good point. 
 

Still gutted that Perez wasted a golden opportunity in that Chelsea match away. It would have been enough! 

[SecretPro]

The time to gamble was after the title winning season and we didn't do it. Should have gone big. 

 

The long term ethos of being self-sustaining and restricted budgets just isn't going to cut it at the top level. Heavy, heavy investment in playing staff is required to sustain achievement at this level and now we can all clearly see what happens when we don't have it.

[An Away Move]

1 minute ago, SecretPro said:

The time to gamble was after the title winning season and we didn't do it. Should have gone big. 

 

The long term ethos of being self-sustaining and restricted budgets just isn't going to cut it at the top level. Heavy, heavy investment in playing staff is required to sustain achievement at this level and now we can all clearly see what happens when we don't have it.

Still gutted we didn’t get Troy Deeney to partner Vardy that season. They’d have been great together. I’m convinced Slimani was a Plan B Deeney. 

[Heathrow fox]

14 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

The time to gamble was after the title winning season and we didn't do it. Should have gone big. 

 

The long term ethos of being self-sustaining and restricted budgets just isn't going to cut it at the top level. Heavy, heavy investment in playing staff is required to sustain achievement at this level and now we can all clearly see what happens when we don't have it.

Gone big with who? Mane was the sort of player to go for.Yet he joins mid table Liverpool every single time.Even if we offered more wages.

The trouble with top four finishes is that it’s not just a one off investment.It’s year on year.A club of Leicester’s size misses out one season and it’s disastrous.

[HybridFox]

We should have got there the second time round too if not for another mental collapse

[SecretPro]

4 minutes ago, Heathrow fox said:

Gone big with who? Mane was the sort of player to go for.Yet he joins mid table Liverpool every single time.Even if we offered more wages.

The trouble with top four finishes is that it’s not just a one off investment.It’s year on year.A club of Leicester’s size misses out one season and it’s disastrous.

Thats my point. 

 

Should have invested heavily after winning the title, we got a big payday and Champions League money to go on and secure a top 4 finish at all costs the following season and then collect the TV, Premier League and Champions League money and invest again, ad infinitum.

 

Instead we won the title and spent the next two years being mediocre. The top 5 finishes following that we missed out on a lot of Champions League money which I suspect the club were relying on to become their investment fund. We fooked it and now paying the price. Covid didn't help. 

 

It boils down to this now: If the owners don't put their hands in their pockets, then out current run will continue or get worse. We will disappear again. 

[Heathrow fox]

17 minutes ago, An Away Move said:

Still gutted we didn’t get Troy Deeney to partner Vardy that season. They’d have been great together. I’m convinced Slimani was a Plan B Deeney. 

He probably was an option.Yet we had to go abroad to get a similar type striker. Martin Samuel one of the few sports journalists worth his wages,always used to criticise Blackburn’s lack of ambition when they didn’t follow up on winning the league.They won it twenty years before us and so much had changed.It’s even harder now.

[Rigga]

Still frustrates the hell out of me us bottling CL x 2.

I said things wernt right back then and got shot down by plenty of fans..

 

we are just one massive mess and I just can’t wait for the season to end and don’t even care what league we are in next season.

[Lambert09]

i’d say no, because even though we were in touching distance, on two separate occasions we simply didn’t improve our squad in january to get into the champions league. We were too cautious imo

[Heathrow fox]

1 minute ago, SecretPro said:

Thats my point. 

 

Should have invested heavily after winning the title, we got a big payday and Champions League money to go on and secure a top 4 finish at all costs the following season and then collect the TV, Premier League and Champions League money and invest again, ad infinitum.

 

Instead we won the title and spent the next two years being mediocre. The top 5 finishes following that we missed out on a lot of Champions League money which I suspect the club were relying on to become their investment fund. We fooked it and now paying the price. Covid didn't help. 

 

It boils down to this now: If the owners don't put their hands in their pockets, then out current run will continue or get worse. We will disappear again. 

You only have to miss out on the top four once or at most twice for that strategy to go pear shaped incredibly quickly.Ask Leeds and the stakes are ten fold now.

Anyway I’m intrigued as to who you would’ve gone big on?

[SecretPro]

2 minutes ago, Heathrow fox said:

You only have to miss out on the top four once or at most twice for that strategy to go pear shaped incredibly quickly.Ask Leeds and the stakes are ten fold now.

Anyway I’m intrigued as to who you would’ve gone big on?

I'm no scout I'm afraid, better ask @Ric Flairon that one. 

 

And sure, that's always the calculation but clubs do it all the time, it just other clubs have owners that will put hands in their pockets to rectify the short downturns. We have Billionaire Owners, at one point we were high in the rankings of wealthiest owners. Investment gets you everywhere, remember when Man City were disappearing into the football league? Sure, they had real wealth but they also managed to attract the players when they were on their way out of the hole, not just when they got there. I'm just saying a few seasons of all out investment after winning the title could have cemented the club in the upper echelons (would have required investing winnings plus owners own money). Of course, we might have chucked money at it and still failed, but thats the game.

 

Some clubs like Villa, West Ham, Spurs et Al chuck money at it regardless of league position and still come up short, but at the time we had some of the best recruitment going, the best medical staff going...so many ifs, buts and maybes.

 

Right now this club needs MASSIVE investment. We aren't getting it, so really it shouldn't come as any surprise that we are where we are. 

[turlo]

On both occasions we missed out on top 4 we really needed to bolster the squad in January when injuries were building up but did nothing or even worst in the case of Ryan Bennet! On the other hand we've overstretched our finances on the wage bill front although that could be more of a case of poor financial management rather than being over ambitious

[An Away Move]

28 minutes ago, TK95 said:

We should have got there the second time round too if not for another mental collapse

And one badly timed party that upset us before the Newcastle game. 

[Vestan Pance]

2 minutes ago, turlo said:

On the other hand we've overstretched our finances on the wage bill front although that could be more of a case of poor financial management rather than being over ambitious

I think poor management is the answer. Overpaying players is a recipe for disaster. As seen on several occasions, you literally cannot give away the players you no longer want.

[Chelmofox]

The gamble was that Rodger’s was capable of delivering a long term project. Top bought the fraud, and the fraud lost. 

[Dan]

I think the club fell into a huge trap in November 2019 with the contract they gave to Rodgers. They bought into him far greater than they should've done when they had put something good in place in the first place, that was able to pull Rodgers out of a genuinely decent job in Celtic. It's like they lost their nerve and allowed him to shape things far greater than any manager should've been able to given we were going through a period of good recruitment. They buckled under the Arsenal rumours and made him virtually unsackable. That contract has eventually tied him to us despite the fact the fans want him out, despite the fact he also blatantly wants out, and it still has another two and a half bloody years to run. They paid him thinking they had genuinely attracted a world class manager of the Pep / Klopp mould. They were wrong. That gamble was either a delusion of his ability, or the club having no faith in themselves to be able to replenish if he did go.

 

None of this would have happened under a wise owner or competent director of football. We rotted the roots of this tree a while ago - you're now finally seeing the reality and it's grim to watch. We aren't irrecoverable, but it's becoming clearer and clearer each passing day of this month particularly while our less threatened rivals do business more effectively than us, that we have neither the urgency, or the knowhow to turn things around.

 

It was a fun ride but we're down within three years. I'll be genuinely surprised if not. We are banking on Martyn Glover and Jon Rudkin performing better than they ever have done. I'm not sure we're going to quite luck it out again.

[kingfox]

A club of our calibre simply has to stay consistent amongst the elite; however it’s incredibly hard to do so as seen last season when we finished 8th.

 

Failing to get European football has serious repercussions, as seen in the summer when Fofana wanted to leave, while unsurprisingly it looks like Youri won’t be signing a new contract.

 

But I also think we made major errors in the transfer markets of the 21/22 season. Firstly we should have kept in line with selling at least one valuable asset that summer. Meanwhile the money we actually spent that summer was disastrous.

 

Our consistency of making the top six, and our consistency of producing well in the transfer market crumbled last season.

 

It’s unsurprisingly had a knock-on effect, hence why we’re currently seeing various struggles.

[dylanlegend]

We massively overachieved based on the wages we were playing our players. We’ve never paid ridiculous wages like West Ham / Everton and rightly so. What we are experiencing now is our downturn it was inevitable. Until we start paying serious wages (200k week etc) we were never going to compete with top 4 long term and unless we get bought by some super rich billionaires I don’t want us to either 

[Mr Weller 2]

There are way too many emotional posts on here right now. Everyone is hugely disappointed so it’s understandable but now is definitely not the best time for drawing long term conclusions.

 

You could make a case for it all going wrong since 2016 or it being our best ever era, depending on your mood and the latest result. Just accept we’re on a bad run.