“Hubris and Muddled Thinking Have Seen Leicester Spiral Towards Relegation”

[sacreblueits442]

57 minutes ago, Tuna said:

The point is and the article does make it that the big calls which were always the right ones in sacking Pearson, Claudio and Shakey were no longer being made, and any sporting director worth their salt would have taken these decisions and had the foresight to do it at the right time.

...why would anyone believe that Rudkin would have the final say in removing Rodgers!!!

  In every thread regarding this, it has always been stated, that Vichai made calls to sack managers  and they were done at the first sign of trouble. Why are we now to believe that Rudkin was the sole Arbiter of Rodgers tenure.

  There was only one person with the power to effect change, and as the chairman he did not lead when leadership was what was required. 

[Tuna]

6 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

...why would anyone believe that Rudkin would have the final say in removing Rodgers!!!

  In every thread regarding this, it has always been stated, that Vichai made calls to sack managers  and they were done at the first sign of trouble. Why are we now to believe that Rudkin was the sole Arbiter of Rodgers tenure.

  There was only one person with the power to effect change, and as the chairman he did not lead when leadership was what was required. 

Of course Top makes the big decisions but Rudkin's job is to advise, the big decisions were not being made because Rudkin was not advising Top on what needed to happen!

 

If Rudkin had the foresight to see that Rodgers was essentially taking us down, Top would have acted immediately to dismiss him.

Edited 14 May 2023 by Tuna

[moseeds]

Gosh these articles really are grim reading. Managed 1 then gave up, not good for the soul to spiral deeper into anger.

[Spudulike]

Didn't read through all of that but I didn't notice any suggestion that we shouldn't have removed Rodgers when during most of the season they told us how lucky we are to have him (some even saying the fans were disrespectful). 

 

Just listening to the post mortem of the demise of Southampton. Many similarities regarding frustration, sadness and anger especially as they spent a record (for them) amount in the summer (£150m). 

[Beachyboy]

1 hour ago, Patrick said:

Unsurprisingly the horse racing operation is crap too, they spend big money on it and they've only got a few horses capable of running in big group races and then loads of crap handicappers. They even had one that cost £2.5 mil that never won a race.

There's no way one man can be an expert in football and horse racing. He can't have a knowledge of both in depth. He will either be pretty average at both, or brilliant in one aspect and poor in another, or just poor in both.

[Beachyboy]

35 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

...why would anyone believe that Rudkin would have the final say in removing Rodgers!!!

  In every thread regarding this, it has always been stated, that Vichai made calls to sack managers  and they were done at the first sign of trouble. Why are we now to believe that Rudkin was the sole Arbiter of Rodgers tenure.

  There was only one person with the power to effect change, and as the chairman he did not lead when leadership was what was required. 

If Rudkin is this sort of slimey character that is made out though, wouldn't he of tried to put pressure on Top to get rid of Rogers to save his own skin?

[SemperEadem]

We won’t get the clear out the club needs.

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

The bloke will **** us over but Top can't see he's well out of his depth. You can't run two other operations and then a premier league football team.

 

Rodgers did try and tell us there were issues above his head (not that this season isn't on him). You've never seen top without rudkin have you....

[sacreblueits442]

37 minutes ago, Tuna said:

Of course Top makes the big decisions but Rudkin's job is to advise, the big decisions were not being made because Rudkin was not advising Top on what needed to happen!

 

If Rudkin had the foresight to see that Rodgers was essentially taking us down, Top would have acted immediately to dismiss him.

...I  cannot agree in anyway with this!!!

  How do you know he has not beseeched Khun Top let Rodgers go.

  Several post on FT,  that there was only one person who was holding back from sacking Rodgers, and if you are saying that was Rudkin then you are mistaken. 

 No one else had the power to remove Rodgers and that was the chairman, and he refused to do so in a timely manner. 

[sdb]

He's made good and bad decisions. BR conned him and many others. The loyalty lasted too long and that's cost us. But can't just blame one man. He's not even the main culprit.

[Corky]

39 minutes ago, SemperEadem said:

We won’t get the clear out the club needs.

This is why I don't believe staying up will change anything. They'll put it down to circumstance rather than inherent problems.

[sacreblueits442]

44 minutes ago, Beachyboy said:

If Rudkin is this sort of slimey character that is made out though, wouldn't he of tried to put pressure on Top to get rid of Rogers to save his own skin?

...yes he would, you would believe that he was not advocating for Rodgers!!!

  But it comes back to Khun Top not taking action, he would not have needed Rudkin to tell him that we were falling apart under Rodgers stewardship.

[Craig]

It certainly feels that Rudkin is in too deep for him to ever be removed by this ownership.

 

Relegation is probably the only hope in that respect, but even then I'm not confident. 

 

Quite sad really.

[SemperEadem]

10 minutes ago, Corky said:

This is why I don't believe staying up will change anything. They'll put it down to circumstance rather than inherent problems.

Correct, I also stand by my point even if we drop though.

[Vacamion]

 

So that's The Telegraph, the Mail and The Independent quoted in this thread and there is also a similar article today in the Sunday Times, all writing our "how far they have fallen" obituary.

 

[Tielemans63]

2 hours ago, davieG said:

...and there's more

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12081773/Leicester-ARENT-showing-heart-battle-Premier-Leagues-relegation-scrap.html

 

Leicester AREN'T showing any heart for the battle in the Premier League's relegation scrap while the teams around them are... the Foxes have previously won against the odds but they're now a club in total DISARRAY
Leicester's Premier League status hangs in the balance as relegation looms
The Foxes have previously endured amazing success against all expectations
But are now a club in disarray with plenty of reasons to blame for their downfall 
By JAMES SHARPE and TOM COLLOMOSSE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 08:52, 14 May 2023 | UPDATED: 09:13, 14 May 2023

A video was doing the rounds on Leicester City fan Twitter this week. It was a compilation of special goals and moments enjoyed by the club in the 10 years since their promotion back to the Premier League.

Jamie Vardy’s screamer against Liverpool in the season they won the Premier League. Wes Morgan lifting the trophy. Youri Tielemans’ winner in the FA Cup final. Lifting that trophy too. 

Vardy and Morgan scoring against Sevilla for a place in the Champions League quarter-finals. Recent hits from Harvey Barnes and James Maddison.

‘I hope we don’t get relegated,’ read the caption, ‘but, if not, it’s been a good run.’

Hasn’t it just. They survived against the odds and won the title against even more. They won the Community Shield. They finished fifth twice. They beat Southampton 9-0. They got to the Europa Conference League semis. And now they’re probably going to be relegated.

 

The supporters know it now too. Acceptance has set in. Shipping five goals in the defeat by Fulham on Bank Holiday Monday followed by wins for Everton and Nottingham Forest made that clear. Then on Saturday Leeds and Forest both took a point against Newcastle and Chelsea, respectively.

By the time Leicester host Liverpool on Monday, if Everton somehow get something against Manchester City today, the Foxes could be three points adrift of safety. Victory, of course, could still lift Leicester out of the relegation zone. 

But the teams around Leicester are showing the heart for the battle. Leicester aren’t.

When Maddison grumbled after the Fulham defeat that the players lacked hunger, regardless of how stringently he attempted to clarify his comments, is it any wonder many who follow them are resigned to their fate?

Leicester manager Dean Smith insists he sees the hunger every day in training. The players just need to make the right choices.

‘When they go into the game their decision-making has to be good,’ said Smith. ‘They have made good decisions because otherwise they wouldn’t have won the FA Cup a couple of years ago and there’s players here who have won the Premier League as well.’

Smith’s words could be directed at those above his head. If Leicester go down, it will be because those who run the club, from owner Khun Top, chief executive Susan Whelan and director of football Jon Rudkin, have been just as negligent.

The reasons for Leicester’s potential fall from champions to Championship are varied and increasingly well documented: missing out on Champions League money two seasons in a row at a time the pandemic stripped them and their owners in the duty-free trade of vital revenue; handing out bloated contracts to average players they now can’t shift and letting the deals of their best players like Tielemans run down so they’ll leave for nothing.

68.4k viewing now
Leicester have eight first-team players out of contract this summer and another nine heading into the final year of their deals like Maddison and Vardy. Letting a leader like Kasper Schmeichel go in a squad lacking in leadership. 

Breaking your policy of selling a key player every summer and then spending more than £50million on duds; leaving it too long to sack Brendan Rodgers and then having no succession plan when you do and hoping you’ll be able to muddle through with caretaker bosses who text friends when they got the job that they felt out of their depth.

Harvey Barnes is one of the club's stars that haven't hit form this season
 

When you’re a club the size of Leicester, you don’t have to get too much wrong in the Premier League to fall behind. For the past couple of years they’ve got it all wrong.

The real question, though, is what happens if — or when — Leicester do go down. They would do so with the highest squad cost and wage bill in Premier League history. 

When Leicester won the league in 2016, they spent £80m on wages. Now, they spend £182m — behind only the Big Six clubs. It’s also 85 per cent of their £215m turnover, a figure that will plummet by more than £130m if they are relegated.

The Foxes posted record losses of £92.5m for the 2021-22 season. They’ve lost nearly £200m in the last three years. They are on UEFA’s Financial Fair Play watch list.

‘It’s going to be very severe,’ football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Radio Leicester. ‘They are looking at a potential two-thirds reduction in income compared to their most recent accounts. There’s got to be a lot of belt-tightening.’

Tielemans will leave on a free. So will Caglar Soyuncu, a former inclusion in the PFA team of the year. Jonny Evans is also out of contract alongside Daniel Amartey — one of three remaining title winners — Papy Mendy, Ryan Bertrand, Tete and Ayoze Perez, who is already out on loan. 

 

Maddison will have his suitors but Leicester are unlikely to get anywhere near his true value. The same for Kelechi Iheanacho and Wilfred Ndidi.

Another concern is the loans Leicester have taken out with Australian bank Macquarie over the past few years that were secured against future Premier League TV rights money. They have at least £70m of that to pay back.

If Leicester go down, it’s likely money from parachute payments will have to go towards that instead of rebuilding the team from scratch. 

That’s hard enough but who will oversee it? Smith’s deal is until the end of the season. Fans may have accepted their fate, but their real worry is what happens next.

That's pretty harrowing stuff. Surely the sensible course of action is for Top to sell the club? Based on the devastation of King Power's finances post-Covid, maintaining investment in LCFC isn't really sustainable?

 

I should add, I think he'd salvage the King Power legacy if he did that sooner rather than later.

Edited 14 May 2023 by Tielemans63

[RoboFox]

There’s zero accountability.

[Chelmofox]

I'm confused? So now we are pretty much screwed its fine to critisise the management of the club? Up until this point its almost been impossible for this to happen at any level of the club. Doing it now solves nothing. So many were pointing out the warning signs a while ago yet voices were not heard. This is an organisation that hasn't allowed any critical thinking for so long. Where were these articles a year ago?

Edited 14 May 2023 by Chelmofox

[SemperEadem]

Just now, RoboFox said:

There’s zero accountability.

Perhaps this culture comes from

the top. If you own a monopoly which was gifted from suspect relationships would you be too used to much of it?

[RoboFox]

9 minutes ago, SemperEadem said:

Perhaps this culture comes from

the top. If you own a monopoly which was gifted from suspect relationships would you be too used to much of it?

It does. Blind loyalty at management level has gotten the club relegated.

 

Edited 14 May 2023 by RoboFox

[Hamilton Fox]

1 hour ago, Beachyboy said:

There's no way one man can be an expert in football and horse racing. He can't have a knowledge of both in depth. He will either be pretty average at both, or brilliant in one aspect and poor in another, or just poor in both.

Michael Owen disagrees with this post

[Beachyboy]

1 minute ago, Hamilton Fox said:

Michael Owen disagrees with this post

Have you heard him talk about football?? He may of been a good player, an he may think of himself as a good pundit, but he doesn't convey an in depth knowledge to me.

[coolhandfox]

3 hours ago, Foxxed said:

The decline started to happen more than 18 months ago: the boardroom structure changed about that time too. And Top has become distant and reluctant to act, from what we’re told.

Who moved where in the board room restructure?

[Tuna]

1 hour ago, Chocolate Teapot said:

The bloke will **** us over but Top can't see he's well out of his depth. You can't run two other operations and then a premier league football team.

 

Rodgers did try and tell us there were issues above his head (not that this season isn't on him). You've never seen top without rudkin have you....

You'd think a sporting director who has delivered the FA Cup and Premier League would be head hunted, like Ashworth or Brands, he's never linked with other jobs is he - says it all!

Edited 14 May 2023 by Tuna

[99 Problems]

56 minutes ago, Craig said:

It certainly feels that Rudkin is in too deep for him to ever be removed by this ownership.

 

Relegation is probably the only hope in that respect, but even then I'm not confident. 

 

Quite sad really.

The only thing that might change that is if fans protest directly against Rudkin. But they won’t: