KP Era Managers Ranked

[SkidsFox]

1 hour ago, Koke said:

 

Disagree. Puel signed some phenomenal players that Rodgers used successfully. Maddison, Ricardo, Tielemans, Soyuncu. His eye for talent is the best of everyone on list. I know we signed Kasper, Nugent etc under Sven but Puel was better for us, despite the bad football .

It's strange what a bit of time does. When he was boss everyone hated Puel and his style of play, but he did bring in top players. Can we just sign him until the end of January?

[Fox92]

Puel's work is underrated. At the end of his reign the football was awful, we lost to Newport in the FA Cup and eventually he had to go but he took the club over in the relegation zone and stabled us. He never had us in a relegation battle. Signed a lot of good players here, and brought Barnes back from his loan at WBA, who were all going to be key assets for the next manager.

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, Koke said:

 

It is absolutely silly imo. Two consecutive 5th placs finishes + FA Cup whilst playing the best football I've seen us play in my lifetime. Yes he choked by not finishing 4th at least once but Rodgets is absolutely third on that list behind Pearson and Ranieri without a doubt. Just because it ended terribly doesn't take away how  brilliant we were under him for a long time.

But you have to look at in 2 halves. First season, I don't think we bottled it as we had injuries at the wrong time and that was still a fantastic season.

 

Second season would have been a complete failure if we hadn't won't the FA Cup because we also underperformed in Europe and we gambled financially on CL football, but ended up bottling it completely. 

 

Third season was pretty abject let's be honest. Think we were down in 17th or something for expected points. We went out of the group stage of the Europa League as joint favourites and then failed to win the conference league. Bar a little flourish at the end of the season, we were playing dreadfully and would have been in a relegation scrap were it not for the individual quality of certain players. And this was after Rodgers was given more power and completely overspent and destroyed the great infrastructure we had. We also got spanked as cup holders by Forest.

 

The final season was the biggest embarrassment and underperformance I've seen in 25/30 years of supporting Leicester. You only have to look at how some of the players we let go are doing now to realise how implausible it was that you could get relegated with that team. The damage he did to the club and it's future goes beyond what he did on the pitch. Publicly outing the owners, fans, players etc. basically anyone but himself. We're still feeling the effects of how we destroyed the club now.

 

So if you were just ranking as a head coach, then I would agree that 3rd is probably fair, but the question was about his role as manager. No manager has undermined this club and it's future like Rodgers.

 

I'd probably say for each season:

 

1st - 8.5-9/10 (a 10 if we'd got CL)

 

2nd - 7/10 (FA cup made it great but bottling the CL was abysmal. Been shown up that teams like Villa and Newcastle have done it with worse players)

 

3rd - 3-4/10

 

4th - 1/10

 

I'd agree that some of the football for a time, was probably the best we've played. But equally, most of the football in the final 12-18 months was probably the worst we've played (worse than even the shite we've seen recently, when you factor in the calibre of player at his disposal)

[daddylonglegs]

It's harsh on Smith to even include him, he wasn't very good but he had a pretty much impossible job on his hands. 

 

I spend £600 a year or whatever it is on a ST and no one has made me want to go to the football less than Steve Cooper. That puts him firmly bottom of the pile for me. 

[Wolfox]

Brendan was objectively our 2nd most successful manager of all time, let alone the KP…. He just was highly dislikable! And had a crap ending 

[don_danbury]

2 hours ago, Koke said:

 

Disagree. Puel signed some phenomenal players that Rodgers used successfully. Maddison, Ricardo, Tielemans, Soyuncu. His eye for talent is the best of everyone on list. I know we signed Kasper, Nugent etc under Sven but Puel was better for us, despite the bad football .

Think that was more eduardo macia than puel

[fox in the sox]

13 hours ago, shailen said:

1. Ranieri 

2. Pearson

3. Enzo

4. Rodgers 

5. Shakey

6. Puel 

7. Sven 

8. Cooper 

9. Smith 

10. Souza

I can’t see how Enzo winning the Championship with the best players in the league can be better than Rodgers 5th place finishes and FA Cup.

[sharpylcfc]

1. Pearson

2. Ranieri

3. Enzo

4. Puel

5. Shakespeare 

6. Sven

7. Rodgers

8. Smith 

9. Cooper

10. Sousa 

 

 

[OntarioFox]

13 hours ago, Jakemoore said:

No way is cooper worse than Sousa. That 6-0 to Pompey under Sousa was as bad as I’ve seen.

Oi, some respect on Steve Howard's name - it was 6-1! 

 

That game also revitalised the then-flagging career of a certain David Nugent, who got a hat-trick out of nowhere after barely scoring for a calendar year. 4d chess from Paulo for sure. 

Edited 25 November 2024 by OntarioFox

[Jakemoore]

59 minutes ago, OntarioFox said:

Oi, some respect on Steve Howard's name - it was 6-1! 

 

That game also revitalised the then-flagging career of a certain David Nugent, who got a hat-trick out of nowhere after barely scoring for a calendar year. 4d chess from Paulo for sure. 

It did nothing for my relationship status. The girl I was seeing at the time got to witness me watch a game for the first time. We broke up shortly afterwards 😂

[foxfanazer]

Ranieri gave us the best season we've ever had supporting the club but overall my favourite time supporting City was Pearson's tenures

[Nalis]

Ranieri

Pearson

Rodgers

Enzo

Shakespeare 

Puel

Sven

Smith

Cooper

Paolo Sousa

[Koke]

Rest in peace Shakespeare but he's in the bottom 3 or 4 imo. Good managerial bounce to start with and good games against Sevilla and Atletico Madrid but he should never have gotten the job full time. 

[Nalis]

TThis is a good thread because I've changed my mind loads and only posted it about 10 minutes ago 

 

Really depends on criteria and weight on certain matches.

 

 

[BigC]

Top 4 is definitely Ranieri, Pearson, Rodgers and Enzo. 

 

Puel was boring but the club was stabilised. Had a few big game wins. Were we ever at risk of relegation? A bit steady but a crucial period for the club given we had to move away from the title winning squad ahead of Brendan's arrival. So probably fifth. 

 

Sousa defiantly bottom. Clearly wasn't a bad manager but we weren't capable of woke tippy tappy stuff back then.

 

 

[The whole world smiles]

Was Smith much better than cooper? Br interesting to see the points per game. Especially when in my opinion Smith had a far superior squad with Madison, Barnes, Tilemans etc

[foxfanazer]

Just now, The whole world smiles said:

Was Smith much better than cooper? Br interesting to see the points per game. Especially when in my opinion Smith had a far superior squad with Madison, Barnes, Tilemans etc

I sympathise with Smith more. Was handed a squad on its knees where most of them had checked out. Don't get me wrong I think he's a poor manager but don't really place any blame on him for our relegation 

[tinpot_fox]

Rodgers is hands down the most successful manager we have ever had. Winning the FA cup and then essentially winning the Premier League play off final by winning the Charity Shield. Deserves to be in a league of his own, the Charity FA.P League. Not sure I’d want to rank the other 9 as I wouldn’t know how to weight an actual Top Division Title against some kind of progression, growth and white trainer ratio. 

[AKCJ]

Sousa - 2 - Just a complete disaster of an appointment.

 

Sven - 4 - I think he did well to bring in some good players but ultimately failed to deliver success given the budget.

 

Pearson - 9 - Absolutely brilliant. Completely transformed the club.

 

Ranieri - 10 - Got to be a 10 for winning the Premier League.

 

Shakespeare - 6 - Did very well to steady the ship but ultimately was never going to be the man long term. I think it was a mistake to sign him up beyond the summer of 2017.

 

Puel - 7 - Probably never really the right man as such but definitely the right time. Did a Pearson-like job in preparing the team for Rodgers.

 

Rodgers - 8 - Should be higher but that last 12-15 months was horrific. 

 

Smith - 5 - Think he would have kept us up if he was given a few weeks extra but - like Shakespeare - was never going to be the man long term.

 

Enzo - 8 - I think he's the best manager on this list and I wish we could have kept him for longer.

 

Cooper - 3 - Just a complete disaster. Only goes higher than Sousa because he did it in the Premier League. Both managers tore apart good teams.

[Gubbins]

6 minutes ago, foxfanazer said:

I sympathise with Smith more. Was handed a squad on its knees where most of them had checked out. Don't get me wrong I think he's a poor manager but don't really place any blame on him for our relegation 

Smith gets a rough deal. If he'd been appointed 3/4 games earlier I think he'd have kept us up.

 

You can't have Ranieri below Pearson. Yes it went bad at the end but Pearson had a couple of equally bad spells and one of those was in the Championship and resulted in Deeney day!

[Izzet is God]

People also seem to forget how much time Pearson was given when he went through bad spells. Prime example is 14/15 season in which we were 18th after 12 games with exactly the same points as today. Also the fact we were largely in the bottom 3 for most of that season. Majority weren’t calling for him to be sacked at that time. Also went on a 12 out of 13 games run in the championship in 12/13 season without a win and only finished 6th on goal difference when we were in a comfortable 2nd at the beginning of February when it happened.

 

Ranieri should be number 1.

[Unabomber]

1. Pearson 

2. Ranieri

 

Not much point in going on further. 

[Fox92]

1 hour ago, Koke said:

Rest in peace Shakespeare but he's in the bottom 3 or 4 imo. Good managerial bounce to start with and good games against Sevilla and Atletico Madrid but he should never have gotten the job full time. 

Both Shakespeare and Sven were terrible. Not sure why some people have them rated so high.

[Trav Le Bleu]

18 hours ago, MattFox said:

Might as well do this now Coopers gone and we’ve had 10 managers under KP

 

Here’s mine 

 

1. Pearson

2. Ranieri

3. Rodgers

4 . Shakespeare 

5. Enzo

6. Puel

7. Sven

8. Smith

9. Souza

10. Cooper

So depressing we've got through so many when you consider Rodgers was here 4 seasons.

[Alf Bentley]

16 hours ago, Izzy said:

Here's everyone's win % with us FWIW

 

Enzo 67.92% (C1)

Pearson 48.44% (L1, C3.7, P1)

Rodgers 47.06%  (P4.3)

Ranieri 44.44% (P1.6)

Sven 43.64% (C1)

Shakespeare 42.31% (P0.5)

Puel 37.31% (P1.4)

Sousa 33.33% (C0.3)

Cooper 26.67% (P0.3)

Smith 25.00% (P0.2)

 

I've added a refinement to your data, Izzy. 

 

I've added the level at which the wins were achieved and number of years in charge: L = L1, C = Championship, P = Premier League, then a number for no. of years as manager.

 

Amazing to note that, out of 10 of them, only Pearson and Rodgers lasted 2 years! And NP's first 2 years weren't even under KP....

 

How we rate different managers will depend on our priorities:

- If winning major trophies and qualifying for Europe are dominant criterion, Claudio has to rank top - and Brendan second (success sustained over 2-3 seasons).

- If net progress is main criterion, NP has to rank top (L1->PL title squad) & Puel gets credit for stabilising and assembling a good squad, whereas Rodgers took over a secure mid-table side and ended up getting us relegated....albeit after some glory & great football in his first 2 years.

- If entertainment is key, early-period Rodgers rates top; NP & Claudio get kudos...and so does Sven, whereas Puel, late-period Rodgers & Cooper rate poorly. Patchy for Enzo, despite 23-24 glory.

- Yet if value-for-money squad building matters, it's the opposite: Sven arguably should be bottom of the table & Puel near the top.

- Then there's the personal likeability/entertainment factor. That's subjective, though most would rate Claudio, Sven & Shakey highly on this criterion - and many found Brendan unlikeable, even when his team was playing great football. NP was Marmite (I love Marmite, but some fools don't). Puel was a deadly dull interviewee. Enzo did a great job for us (his achievement turning round our relegated mess is under-rated) but I wonder how nice he is? He was a pro who never gave much away - Smith & even Cooper came across as more personable, at least on the surface.

- As for those lads lusting after Sousa's high cheekbones and elegant suits....just get out of the closet already, we're a tolerant, liberal bunch on here! 

 

My arbitrary personal rankings....

1. NP

2. Claudio

3. Rodgers (holding my nose, as I found the bloke oily & loathsome - and that last season was a needlessly damaging disgrace)

4. Puel

5. Enzo

6. Shakey

7. Cooper (I'm not sure other managers would be getting better results, more entertaining tactics could mean even fewer points & I reckon some over-rate our squad)

8. Smith

9. Sven (sorry, Sven - likeable bloke, entertaining cameo, but massive under-achievement pissing all that money up the wall)

10. Sousa - took a play-off squad into the relegation zone, the smart suits don't compensate