The underrated anti-hero

[Langston]

3 hours ago, filbertway said:

Don't disagree with any of your points though. Although I do think he was right to try and ease Vardy out, just replacing him with Dimi wasn't the way to go  We built up an unhealthy co-dependence with Vardy and I think it has affected us at times.

 

Wholeheartedly disagree, Vardy was still sensational at that time.. the club got the replacement signing right in terms of timing and looking to ease someone new in, they just signed an absolute dud in Daka..

[Dandy king]

Oh he could spot a player alright 

[Soar Fox]

3 hours ago, filbertway said:

A lot of credit has to be given to Macia as well who will have been in charge of indentifying the talents that were brought through. I think the job Puel did was selfless, in that he did a lot of the stuff that was going to be unpopular both with fans and players. Overall though, the job he did was for the betterment of the club.

 

Don't disagree with any of your points though. Although I do think he was right to try and ease Vardy out, just replacing him with Dimi wasn't the way to go  We built up an unhealthy co-dependence with Vardy and I think it has affected us at times.

53 league goals in his next 3 seasons and you wanted him replacing  

[Fox92]

I like him for getting us out of a mess, as I do believe we'd have gone down under Shakespeare, but he could never quite push us on. Despite the fact the quality we had. He stabilised us but we needed a manager like Rodgers to just win us something. 

 

I'll never have a bad word about Puel though. He never had us anywhere near a relegation battle.

[Trav Le Bleu]

6 hours ago, Finnegan said:

Oh **** me, more Puel revisionism. 

 

I've burnt all my programmes from that era. 

 

What happened?

[Kitchandro]

We signed some good players under him but that’s as much to do with the backroom staff under him.

 

He was a poor manager and for me, the sort that was only here for the money. He was less manipulative than Rodgers but equally disrespectful of the club, saying we couldn’t expect to compete with Wolves at one point. He never had any ambition to get the best out of the players we had. He was happy to sit midtable, play weak sides in the cup and just coast along, playing down our potential to make himself look better.

 

It was a genius move by Rodgers to come in after an underperforming and unpopular manager had just left. He knew that team couldn’t do much worse.

[Finnegan]

30 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

I've burnt all my programmes from that era. 

 

What happened?

 

Extraordinarily little 

[HankMarvin]

He was ahead of his time, slow ponderous sideways football 

[JimJams]

18 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Extraordinarily little 

No that era was the early 90's.

[lcfc_forever]

2 hours ago, Fox92 said:

I like him for getting us out of a mess, as I do believe we'd have gone down under Shakespeare, but he could never quite push us on. Despite the fact the quality we had. He stabilised us but we needed a manager like Rodgers to just win us something. 

 

I'll never have a bad word about Puel though. He never had us anywhere near a relegation battle.

I remember at the time posting on here about how we were significantly underperforming our xG, which suggested our overall style of play was very good - his failure to get the best out of Vardy ultimately cost him (the best example is actually vs Spurs where we lost 3-1 when actually we should have won 3-1!, it was one of the biggest differences in xG to match result). So it seemed like we needed someone to finetune the side, boost the confidence of the team and work with the current strategy rather than wholesale change. 

It was interesting when he was our manager as it's the closest I feel we got to a coach rather than a manager, and we had a very strong transfer team (Diabate aside which was Puel pick but then he deserves credit for Ricardo as well) so it worked well for us re. recruitment and youth development. 

But Puel was limited - he did have us near a relegation battle when he was let go but the fundamentals of the club were sound. Problem was that while Rodgers was a much better coach, he wanted complete control and took apart what had made us successful.

 

Reading 'How to Win the Premier League' and it's clear from that how destructive Rodgers likely was given his behaviour at Liverpool, will post on this soon. 

Edited 18 June 2025 by lcfc_forever

[FLAN]

10 hours ago, Soar Fox said:

He handled it no differently than anyone else would have done if they were the manager at the time. 
 

He made a few good signings during his time here and he also made some bad signings as well. The football was terrible the treatment of Vardy even worse. 
 

The last job he had since managing us was 4 years ago which then seen him sacked after sitting bottom of the French league. 

This thing about him handling it well. What was anyone expecting?  He’s hardly going to say “oh well we go again”

[l444ry]

Finnegan has it just about right. No other comments make sense.

[Tommy Fresh]

7 hours ago, Finnegan said:

The only thing Claude Puel is good for is using as a measuring stick to compare just how bad Brendan Rodgers is at recruitment and coaching a defence. 

 

Puel wasn't amazing at those things, Rodgers was just absolutely abysmal. This is the man that insisted that Liverpool sign Tom Ince instead of Phillip Coutinho for **** sakes. 

 

Puel only comes off with any credit because of Rodgers unbelievably huge flaws. It's like the idiots trying to defend Cooper by pointing at the fact Ruud is a terrible manager. 

 

At least, to his credit, Rodgers also had some very good strengths to (mostly) balance things out somewhat. 

 

I mean Benkovic, Ward, Ghezzal and Diabate is a combined outlay of, what, 50 - 55m? And people like to wank themselves off over how great a builder he was?

 

To be fair if Benkovic wasn't always injured he'd of likely made us a decent profit

[LCFCJohn]

Problem is, Puel attracts extreme views either way. People did and still go out their way to make out he was terrible, and did nothing good for us which is an extreme view based on people who didn’t like the fact he was boring or his accent. You then get those who probably go extreme in being over positive in reaction to that.

 

For me, he did some good work, navigated us through a transitional period that coincided with the accident. He built a good squad. For those who are keen to give him zero credit for that, we know our managers have a big say in this so I do think he deserves a lot of credit here.

 

Obviously on the pitch it didn’t work.

 

What I will say, and how I remember him, is he is one of very few managers I can remember (so the last 20 years or so) to leave the club in healthy place than he found it.

 

Pearson is the obvious one, twice. But who else really? Rodgers tanked us. Shakey I guess technically as we were in the bottom 3 but we were close when he left us. Ranieri for the achievement he did have with us, picked us up after the great escape, 14th and on a positive run of momentum and left us in the bottom 3 on a downward spiral. Maresca I guess as well. 
 

So by that measure, Puel was ok.

[Plastik Man]

16 hours ago, Sly said:

I’m talking about Claude Puel.

 

Our best years were under Rodgers in terms of where we finished consistently in the Premier League and also that historic FA Cup win.

 

However similar to the praise Pearson gets, Puel laid some solid foundations for what came afterwards.

 

Look at the signings that were made on his watch.

 

Maddison, Ricardo, Soyuncu, Benkovic, Ward, Ghezzel, Evans, Diabate, Tielemans and Lotente (If you don’t know that story he was an Italian waiter signed by Vichai)

 

Clearly Puel got a lot wrong with some questionable decisions, however he also got a lot right as well. His dignity with the passing of Vichai and how he conducted himself was faultless. His treatment of Vardy and the boring football, less so. 
 

He was also the person that nurtured Saliba and Fofana, who were arguably two of the hottest prospects in French football. 
 

He is maybe the person that is required in the Director of Football role, rather than Head Coach. 

I'd forgotten about the waiter. A bit indulgent wasn't it?

 

Imagine if it had been Top who'd made that decision!

[MattFox]

8 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

"Claude Poo-Hell" had to be the worst Leicester fan unfunny nickname. Closely followed by "Timmy Chestnuts". 

Strong correlation between people that use these and unironically call Vichai “The Boss” in public conversation 

[MattFox]

Puel wasn’t making the transfers at the time and he wasn’t getting the most of the players he had

 

Cost us Europe two seasons running and cost us our best shot (at the time)at winning the FA cup in 2018

 

We should have finished top 7 every season between 2016 and 2022 with the players we had

 

Edited 18 June 2025 by MattFox

[coolhandfox]

Probably the most boring City manager in recent times, terrible to listen to him droning on in interview.

 

Only thing worse was watching his style of play! 

[Fox92]

3 hours ago, lcfc_forever said:

I remember at the time posting on here about how we were significantly underperforming our xG, which suggested our overall style of play was very good - his failure to get the best out of Vardy ultimately cost him (the best example is actually vs Spurs where we lost 3-1 when actually we should have won 3-1!, it was one of the biggest differences in xG to match result). So it seemed like we needed someone to finetune the side, boost the confidence of the team and work with the current strategy rather than wholesale change. 

It was interesting when he was our manager as it's the closest I feel we got to a coach rather than a manager, and we had a very strong transfer team (Diabate aside which was Puel pick but then he deserves credit for Ricardo as well) so it worked well for us re. recruitment and youth development. 

But Puel was limited - he did have us near a relegation battle when he was let go but the fundamentals of the club were sound. Problem was that while Rodgers was a much better coach, he wanted complete control and took apart what had made us successful.

 

Reading 'How to Win the Premier League' and it's clear from that how destructive Rodgers likely was given his behaviour at Liverpool, will post on this soon. 

Agree. Although when Puel was sacked we were 12th. He never had us near the bottom three.

 

The season he was sacked though we were awful though in terms of always conceding first and that always being early on. 

[Sly]

54 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Agree. Although when Puel was sacked we were 12th. He never had us near the bottom three.

 

The season he was sacked though we were awful though in terms of always conceding first and that always being early on. 

Bizarrely, RVN had us playing worse football though and has kept his job. 

[lcfc_forever]

1 hour ago, Fox92 said:

Agree. Although when Puel was sacked we were 12th. He never had us near the bottom three.

 

The season he was sacked though we were awful though in terms of always conceding first and that always being early on. 

Cheers. I think we'd had a horrible run of results, something like 4 or 5 defeats in 7 games so we were moving towards it.

 

But he was the right person for the transition in playing staff, and helped set up the platform for Rodgers to succeed in his first couple of seasons. He had a limited ceiling for how far he could take us. Sadly, the person who took over had a much higher ceiling but a deeper floor as well. 

[broughtonblue]

Shows how bad things have got when Puel is remembered as being not that bad!

[BenTheFox]

Probably the most middle of the road manager we've ever had. He's nowhere near the top three best managers we've had in my lifetime, nor is he anywhere near being one of the worst three managers we're had in my lifetime. He didn't deserve anywhere near the level of vitriol that he got at the time, but let's not rewrite history, he ultimately couldn’t get anything close to the best out of the players he had. 

 

The one thing I liked about him is that was brave in giving academy graduates game time. He gave significant minutes to Chilwell, Choudhury and Barnes when he was recalled. I do think that Rodgers benefitted from some of the work that he did. Had Rodgers come in straight after Shakespeare, I think there would have been more teething problems. There is also no way that we would have finished fifth twice and won an FA cup under him though.

[BenTheFox]

8 hours ago, Stadt said:

Also what is the obsession with trying to appoint ex-managers as DoFs?

 

Appoint a good director of football with a proven track record in that position, you wouldn't sign a goalkeeper to play in midfield because he's good with his feet.

To be fair, I think similar things have happened at other football clubs. Dougie Freedman was sporting director at Palace for over 7 years. I agree though, I'd much rather we appoint a Director of Football with a proven track record than taking a punt on an average former manager. 

[BenTheFox]

I'd argue Puel was very good for the Leicestershire hospitality industry. I don't have any quantifiable evidence to back this up. All I know is that myself and the people who I went to games with had never turned up to home games as consistently hammered as we did when he was manager just to get through it.