The Demise

[Harry the Cat]

The demise started with the helicopter crash and Top’s death. From that point onwards, in my view we completely lost focus. Consequently, we have declined from one of the best run clubs to the sorry state we are in currently. Poor recruitment, lack of accountability, woeful resource management and the lack of clear strategic direction has led us to the utter shambles we find ourselves in to date. 

[Angus Scott]

If LCFC was a listed company on the Stock Exchange, the share price & dividend payment would have collapsed. Hence the many shareholders would be very unhappy & demanding that the people responsible be held to account & removed from their jobs. Even though we are in private ownership this should still happen but we know lt won't

[gerblod]

On 31/05/2025 at 21:09, Kitchandro said:

2 things can be true at once, real life is nuanced.

 

Yes the club is run extremely poorly in almost every aspect.

 

And no, Rodgers was not speaking accurately or honestly when he was claiming he wasn’t backed. In fact it’s obvious to me that we threw all the money we had on him and his scouting ideas, which didn’t pay off and led to our downfall. We did need a refresh - we needed to sack him, Rudkin and Congerton and learn how to scout better players, managers and…scouts.

 

Clearly our recruitment has been horrendous, but no one can say we weren’t backed financially. The issue is we backed fools to spend the money - Rudkin, Rodgers, Congerton, Cooper.

 

My biggest gripe over the last 5 years in the media narrative is that Rodgers got a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it was the opposite.

Agree wholeheartedly. Rodgers did very well out of the squad assembled under Claude Puel. The 'cracks' in his team management began to appear even before the Cup success. I think he believed any team less significant than Liverpool wasn't worthy of his full commitment. To get relegated with players like Maddison, Barnes, Vardy, KDH, Tielemans, Schmeichel and Castagne is tantamount to incompetence. Celtic rescued him - that's his level. 

[Chrysalis]

No worries as soon as Top gets the bank to give us more money in exchange for a few more years of EPL money, Ruud will be fired and we will start signing more players on 60 grand a week, for the EFL season.

[Fox92]

22 hours ago, Gloria said:

The timing of losing Vichai (🙏) and our demise is no coincidence. 

  

18 hours ago, Harry the Cat said:

The demise started with the helicopter crash and Top’s death. From that point onwards, in my view we completely lost focus. Consequently, we have declined from one of the best run clubs to the sorry state we are in currently. Poor recruitment, lack of accountability, woeful resource management and the lack of clear strategic direction has led us to the utter shambles we find ourselves in to date. 

 

We won the FA Cup and Community Shield, and finished top 6 for two consecutive seasons, after he had died. 

 

People always go back to the helicopter crash but our main problem is Rudkin being DOF and Vichai gave him this role in the first place.

Edited 2 June 2025 by Fox92

[Gloria]

11 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

  

 

We won the FA Cup and Community Shield, and finished top 6 for two consecutive seasons, after he had died. 

 

People always go back to the helicopter crash but our main problem is Rudkin being DOF and Vichai gave him this role in the first place.

Yes, I'm aware. Things don't always fall apart overnight, but the loss of his influence and impetus has enabled other voices to be amplified. Just my opinion.

[davieG]

The proposed timetable for North Stand redevelopment at Villa Park.

#AVFC

 

 

 

[davieG]

[Glorious Leicester Fan]

I still maintain Covid played a key role in our demise. As a business, King Power was uniquely affected by Covid. It was therefore inevitable that ‘energy’ was primarily focused on saving its core business (duty free). 
 

Consequently, the manager, DOF,…….had more control/responsibility in managing the club and a litany of appalling decisions were made. As a club we are still trying to clean up the mess. 
 

What I find most disturbing is that the owners appear to not only be incapable of sorting out the mess (senior management sackings), but exasperating the situation. 
 

I fear dark times ahead. 

[Bablemikey]

Serious errors have been made on both the footballing and financial side of the club. DoF, FD, CEO, and Chairman are all culpable.

[Out Foxed]

what is this mystical europa league semi final? u mean the conference league in 2022?

[davieG]

2 hours ago, Glorious Leicester Fan said:

I still maintain Covid played a key role in our demise. As a business, King Power was uniquely affected by Covid. It was therefore inevitable that ‘energy’ was primarily focused on saving its core business (duty free). 
 

Consequently, the manager, DOF,…….had more control/responsibility in managing the club and a litany of appalling decisions were made. As a club we are still trying to clean up the mess. 
 

What I find most disturbing is that the owners appear to not only be incapable of sorting out the mess (senior management sackings), but exasperating the situation. 
 

I fear dark times ahead. 

I don't think you can use that as excuse other than the loss of attendance  ££s we still had an LCFC with a CE who's sole responsibility and energy was to maintain the success of the club.

[Corky]

2 hours ago, Glorious Leicester Fan said:

I still maintain Covid played a key role in our demise. As a business, King Power was uniquely affected by Covid. It was therefore inevitable that ‘energy’ was primarily focused on saving its core business (duty free). 
 

Consequently, the manager, DOF,…….had more control/responsibility in managing the club and a litany of appalling decisions were made. As a club we are still trying to clean up the mess. 
 

What I find most disturbing is that the owners appear to not only be incapable of sorting out the mess (senior management sackings), but exasperating the situation. 
 

I fear dark times ahead. 

So why did we sign three players for large fees and sell no first teamers in the summer of 2021?

[Glorious Leicester Fan]

3 hours ago, Corky said:

So why did we sign three players for large fees and sell no first teamers in the summer of 2021?

I think he gave Rudkin more authority who in turn was persuaded by Rodgers not to sell any stars. 

[davieG]

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/leicester-city-big-problem-change-expensive-3728050?ITO=newsnow

 

OPINION
By Daniel Storey
Chief Football Writer
Leicester City have a big problem: change is expensive
The overspend on wages, the poor recruitment, the strategic failings - supporters deserve to learn how recovery will be planned

June 04, 2025 6:00 am (Updated 6:01 am)

Monday, 7 April was the low point of Leicester City’s desperate season. It wasn’t just that they became the first team in the top four tiers of English football to lose eight home league games in a row without scoring. It wasn’t just that Ruud van Nistelrooy had talked about a fast start in a must-win game and they found themselves 2-0 down after 11 minutes.

Leicester’s starting XI that evening contained only one of the 10 players they had recruited since promotion at a cost of roughly £80m. It contained only one outfielder who had been signed the previous season – Conor Coady. Eight outfield players who had proven themselves incapable of survival in 2022-23 started the match and they were two years older and seemingly less wise. There is rolling a die and hoping for the best and there is rolling a die and hoping for a seven.

The decline of Leicester can be reasonably spun as a cautionary tale for every ambitious non-elite club who achieves their miracle. You assemble a brilliant team, you fight at the top, you win and you inspire. But then you quickly learn that yesterday means everything and nothing. The memories of 2015-16 and beyond cannot be taken away. It is just as well: everything else has been ripped up.

Jamie Vardy is a free agent after leaving the Foxes at the end of his contract (Photo: Getty)
But that lets them off the hook: blame the players, not the game. High-end success may not have been repeatable or sustainable, but competence, in the right hands, is. This is a case study of following bad decisions with worse ones. It ends in toxicity, a plane buzzing over your own stadium with a message of mutiny pulled along behind it.

Leicester (with the help of Nick de Marco QC) ran from their problems and now they have nowhere to hide. The charges that every rival felt were overdue have now landed and are likely to produce a heavy points deduction. Leicester argued that they existed in a hinterland, neither Premier League nor EFL. No man’s land is the natural habitat for now.

Paying the price for past excess is no fun. The greatest damage to Leicester’s reputation and financial health was done three, four, five years ago: the wage increases to keep key players, the pursuit of the Champions League under Brendan Rodgers, the poor transfer business of 2021. Relegation with the seventh-highest wage bill in the country was a gross negligence issue.

And, most gallingly, the players who retired or left for nothing: Wes Morgan, Youri Tielemans, Kelechi Iheanacho, Dennis Praet, Marc Albrighton, Caglar Soyuncu, Jonny Evans, Ayoze Perez, Nampalys Mendy, Christian Fuchs. Each was either a marker of a dying age or proof of a recruitment misstep. Some clubs can absorb this number of failures; Leicester never could.

The great frustration of supporters is that a difficult situation has been exacerbated by every guilty party. Losing Enzo Maresca was unfortunate – appointing a former Nottingham Forest coach who had kept a club up through defensive football was not. The inability to attract Graham Potter and David Moyes, and the extraordinary gamble upon Van Nistelrooy, was a death knell for the season.

This week, Van Nistelrooy let it be known that he is still to talk to his employers about his future. The expectation is that he must leave, but his contract runs until 2027 and thus will be costly for a club who can ill-afford any extravagance. Any sensible replacement might want to know the extent of the likely points deduction damage before signing up. That is expensive too: the only effective way to offset caution is with money.

Jon Rudkin, the now unpopular director of football, has enough questions to answer to last the entire summer. But the most pertinent is why a club who knew they were sailing close to the wind spent £20m on a central midfielder (Oliver Skipp) a fortnight before the transfer window closed, £13m on an unproven central defender in Caleb Okoli (three league starts since November), used one of their two loan spots on a forward (Odsonne Edouard) who played 25 league minutes, and spent £4m on another central midfielder who played less than a minute in all competitions (Michael Golding).

The usual advice is to look up the food chain, but many of Leicester’s players deserve their own censure here. Perhaps the defining image of the season was the grainy video of players on a Christmas party in Copenhagen in November while someone held a banner that read “ENZO I MISS U”. You need fight and unwavering commitment to survive as a promoted club. That night gave the impression that too few here possessed the will or the stomach for it.

Leicester’s biggest immediate problem: change is expensive. The managerial situation will be costly. The loss of Jamie Vardy (another free transfer) means that the highest goalscorer from last season still at the club is 33-year-old Jordan Ayew. There are two players with obvious sale value (Bilal El Khannouss and Mads Hermansen), but Leicester have already lost two goalkeepers and El Khannouss was their highest chance creator and assist provider.

This is how failure lays across you like a weighted blanket; it doubles over and folds and tucks into the spaces where potential is supposed to build. The wage bill has been greatly reduced but is still too high vs performance. The players that Leicester would like to move on most are likely to have few takers on permanent deals at prices that would avoid only causing more pain because they have to be replaced.

And so the principal task for this summer becomes far less tangible: reforming trust and a connection with supporters who have just sat through the worst home run of any English league team in history. Leicester’s statement regarding their charges led with a lede-burying “is pleased that it successfully defended” line. 

I think that was a mistake. Supporters know more than anyone else how much has gone awry here. They have seen the wastage in action and have watched, in gory detail, its results.

Running a football club, particularly over the summer, in an exercise in PR and excitement titillation. Here, they have seen too much for that to work.

Leicester fans need the truth. This club flourished because it punched above its weight and took supporters on a journey. Only by reconnecting the disparate, discorded strands can it realistically hope to take them on a journey of recovery.

Nobody should pretend that what comes next will not be painful. Talk them through the hardest calls and why they are necessary.

The new manager cannot be sold a dream. Every player must buy into a rebuild. Shortcuts should be abandoned. Academy players should get their chance. Leicester found out what happens if you try to come back quicker. Now it is only important to come back stronger.

[Corky]

Pretty fair article. I know some will jump on the Nottingham Forest fan talking about points deductions but it is relevant. Good to see all the issues covered and not just the usual "entitled, back to their place" tired tropes about the supporters.

[DJW1]

On 01/06/2025 at 09:56, Vacamion said:

 

 

Remember when Rodgers was reduced to playing Wilf and /or Big Dan Amartey as CBs, cos he had fallen out with Soyuncu, and wouldn't play Vesty, cos he realised only after spaffing a fortune on him that he was slower than nail growth and not even that good in the air for a giant?

 

All in front of Ward.

 

Fun times.

 

Insert "Masterclass" meme.

 

 

He also picked Choudhury at CB one game. 

The decline started 8 days after we won the FA Cup, when we lost to Spurs and so didn´t qualify for the CL. Poor summer signings and then a loss of interest from Rodgers seemed to cause a general malaise to set in among the othe rplayers and the fans.

[Mike the Metal Ed]

On 01/06/2025 at 20:05, Angus Scott said:

If LCFC was a listed company on the Stock Exchange, the share price & dividend payment would have collapsed. Hence the many shareholders would be very unhappy & demanding that the people responsible be held to account & removed from their jobs. Even though we are in private ownership this should still happen but we know lt won't

No actually I'm pretty sure the shareholders would stop moaning and get behind the team. At least that's what Facebook would have me believe

[broughtonblue]

On 01/06/2025 at 17:37, Harry the Cat said:

The demise started with the helicopter crash and Top’s death. From that point onwards, in my view we completely lost focus. Consequently, we have declined from one of the best run clubs to the sorry state we are in currently. Poor recruitment, lack of accountability, woeful resource management and the lack of clear strategic direction has led us to the utter shambles we find ourselves in to date. 

Didn't realise Top had died 😳

[Harry the Cat]

1 hour ago, broughtonblue said:

Didn't realise Top had died 😳

Haha. My mistake. Well spotted. Should have said Vichai of course!!