The Clean Slate

[LCFCJohn]

16 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

People have hated the very idea of Vestergaard since the moment he arrived, or was even rumoured, there is no balance here.  (Ayew being another formidable example.)

 

Not young, not flash, did not come from fashionable club, came from a club we stuffed, these are all indelible marks.

 

Clean slate should not mean sack everyone, and start again, it should mean everyone gets a new chance to impress.

Ayew is unfashionable but it wasn’t a huge fee and it doesn’t take much to make it up. I don’t think he is a striker though, he was too deep yesterday and would be better playing a bit deeper. He has very noticeable strengths but also weaknesses but he is a decent pro even though he always looks mardy but you can’t judge by someone’s face! He’ll have at least repaid the fee by the time he moves on I think.

 

Vestergaard was signed for too high a fee. Personally I didn’t have issues with some

of the other things you have mentioned. I just don’t think he is a very good defender and definitely not the future. It’s a shame we offered him a new deal as he could have bowed out on a respectable season.

[Edingleyfox]

I wasn't sure about the choices in central midfield or at the back yesterday and Leicester started poorly. However I was massively impressed with the way the manager identified the lack of control in midfield and turned to Winks and made several other changes to liven things up. He seems to be able to think quickly and I liked the lap around the pitch to engage with fans at the start. The response to Faes from some fans was harsh and rather took way from our fantastic response to the Wednesday fans which won a lot of admirers in the media. I'm sure that the likes of Ben Nelson will get plenty of game time  probably as soon as midweek 

[Trav Le Bleu]

8 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

I am happy to see a clean slate for everyone - as long as the manager nips and negativity in the bud immediately, and picks on contribution on the pitch.  If Vestergaard and Faes are our best defensive pairing (again) this season, then fine.

 

Until we have a few games under our belt he can only pick on what he sees in training, so lets give him 10 games at least to work it out before we criticise him for picking players we don't like hey?

I agree, don't see what else ANY manager can do. Anything else and you immediately lose all the players that have been out of form or caused trouble in the past... which would leave us with very few motivated players.

Edited 11 August 2025 by Trav Le Bleu

[trooky]

39 minutes ago, LCFCJohn said:

Can’t agree that this is the way forward though. Yes they might get you up but they are proven that they will not keep us up. We need to have an eye on the medium term as well. Playing these two is very short term thinking.

 

If you are happy to go up and then come back down next season with them two at the heart again then fair enough, that’s your opinion. We will end up in a cycle until they leave on a free and need replacing and the financial problems along either yo-yoing at best continues.

 

Look, I’m not getting in a mood about Page, Evans etc not being chucked straight in. I think Mavididi is a good option and Monga is 16 so his minutes yesterday were good. Alves is an odd one but again, is in a position where senior players are Fatawu, Bilal, Mavididi and then Monga has developed quickly for his age. But the Nelson one is the kicker as we will risk losing him if he is not made an integral part of the team soon. He only has a couple of years left, now is the time you’d be trying to tie him down but from his view, why would he? 
 

Basically, playing Faes and Vestergaard (rather than one of them with Nelson) probably gets the same end result, that’s we can get promoted. You’re not telling me Nelson is going to hold us back from that target. But longer term it sets us back as Faes and Vestergaard are still not good enough and Nelson either isn’t there yet due to being behind them or has seen his future elsewhere and left.

According to reports we still want to shift 6 players before we think about replacements.

 

Hopefully it's Faes and not Nelson who departs in August. 

 

I'm not happy getting relegated but Cif will need to be a genius to break that cycle short-term, £150 million wasn't enough to keep Ipswich up, and we certainly don't have anywhere near that money to spend. 

[iancognito]

Unfortunately the only way for a real clean slate is to sell the players and we're genuinely abysmal at getting rid of deadwood.

 

All managers would love to come in and start again but the reality is that you can only change 3 to 5 players per season and it takes 3 transfer windows to change an entire culture or squad. They can't simply bin them off.

 

It's not impossible though. Brian Little turned 3 or 4 seasons of garbage round pretty rapidly. Micky Adams turned the Taylor failures into winners again. 

 

 

[Pliskin]

1 hour ago, honeybradger said:

Page can play CM.

He can’t to the capacity we need. We need a CDM, because that our biggest weakness at the moment. We’re so susceptible to the counter.

[The Guvnor]

Surely every Manager starts their tenure with a ‘Clean Slate’. Thereafter his starting eleven will be based on performances on the training ground and match games. 
I wouldn’t expect our more regular starting eleven to be chosen for a while, it’s very early days, and personally I shall wait for at least three matches before I’m calling the Manager a *****. 🤣

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

I think everyone has to have a clean slate because we can’t have a turnover in the squad of 12 players or whatever. And two people on everyone’s naughty list - Ayew and Winks - were superb yesterday. So I think we can need to grasp the reality of the situation for this year. It will be different next season with the number of players who will be out of contract.

[Donwebbio]

I don't think any manager can be blamed for playing experienced players who have proven quality at this level. Players who can help us gain promotion which is the job they are being employed to do. What should have happened - before MC took the job - is an aggressive clear out and car boot sale of players at the start of the window. It's another club error  where they have gone on holiday rather than try and clear the decks and set the foundations for a rebuild. Everything is so half-ar$ed. Faes & Vestergaard are quality CB's in this league no doubt, but their selection has a knock on effect on the development of Okoli & Nelson and they are the players we will need in event of promotion with a year of experience & building an understanding with one another.

 

Soumare is a dreadful player. I was watching him during the match and the number of times he turned down an opportunity to run into space to receive passes was ridiculous. He hides behind attackers so as not to be an option. When he does get the ball it is invariably a sideway pass. That wouldn't be so bad if he was an elite ball winner and game-reading interceptor, but their goal showed that he isn't that either. If we can't sell or cover his wages on loan then he should be a back up player at best. I have faith that MC will come to the same conclusion pretty quickly.

Edited 11 August 2025 by Donwebbio

[smudgerfox]

1 hour ago, damolcfc said:

 

But if faes and vest do the job in the championship  while Nelson and okoli bond during cup games and hopefully more, step up when needed for injuries etc 

Are you serious? Nelson has already proven himself at Championship level. He and Okoli are both young but they need to play first team football regularly to develop. There is no future in Vestergaard - whatever his passing ability his lack of pace is embarrassing.And did you see his shot? Park footballers would have been embarrassed..

 

As for Faes there is ample evidence he thinks he's too good for us but no club has come in for him to prove that...hes not going to improve - he nearly gave a goal away with a sloppy pass to the keeper yesterday ...

[Les-TA-Jon]

2 hours ago, dmayne7 said:

Faes will almost always make 1 big error per game leading to a goal or chance for the opposition. 

Clearly, we're a team that cannot afford players that make mistakes leading to a chance for the opposition. Luckily Faes is the only player in the squad that ever does this. Thank goodness. 

[leicesterseddon]

I’ve never really understood what a “director of football” actually does and this comment sums up why. 

[adejo92]

13 hours ago, Blue-fox said:

Ayew gets pelters on here but it’s only because he was a Steve Cooper signing. His value and contribution last season was about par for the course. I can’t see how you can put him in the same bracket as Daka/Soumare/Faes etc… 

Always liked Ayew and never understood the bandwagon esque dislike / mocking of him.

 

People who expected anything different from him probably just need to reevaluate their football knowledge. 

 

This is Ayew's style of play. He's always been a hold up, draw the foul type player hence why he shouldnt be played up top on his own.

 

If we could get a good striker in, sit Ayew just behind, we'd destroy teams.

[inckley fox]

35 minutes ago, iancognito said:

Unfortunately the only way for a real clean slate is to sell the players and we're genuinely abysmal at getting rid of deadwood.

 

All managers would love to come in and start again but the reality is that you can only change 3 to 5 players per season and it takes 3 transfer windows to change an entire culture or squad. They can't simply bin them off.

 

It's not impossible though. Brian Little turned 3 or 4 seasons of garbage round pretty rapidly. Micky Adams turned the Taylor failures into winners again. 

 

 

You've given two really interesting examples there. The turnaround under Little is one of the most dramatic in our history, though it's also worth checking out Frank Womack on the 'History' section of Foxestalk. He took over when we were in the second tier relegation zone in 1936 and still won the division! Notably, Womack did it with very few changes to the squad, and after a couple of years of struggling in the top flight we were relegated again, and stayed relegated for a long time.

 

In Little's case, however, the upturn was remarkable because we were in one of the most prolonged ruts the club had ever been in when he took charge. He didn't even bother watching the full highlights of the previous season. He already knew what he needed to change and there was no 'clean slate'. He swept out Hodge, North, Spearing, Ramsey and a load of fringe players like Des Linton, stripped Mauchlen of the captaincy (and dropped him) and rebuilt - with next to no money - from there. As with Pearson when he returned to the club, much of the effectiveness of his reset owed to the club's willingness to clear the decks, even if it meant losing money.

 

But clearing the decks is easier said than done, especially nowadays. Cifuentes may wish to overhaul the playing staff but he has to maintain a degree of credibility among the playing staff. If he were to lump for the youngsters ahead of the experienced pros, you'd probably see something more like what happened when Jock Wallace took over. He'd have Page, Alves, Monga, Evans and co. straight in the side, sign virtually nobody and wait for the old boys to find themselves a new club. It enabled us to build a new generation of players in the second tier, but we only finished 17th in his first season and when we did go up we were too inexperienced (with an average age of only 21ish) and came straight back down.

 

Adams is a curious one. He couldn't really give them a clean slate because he'd been Bassett's number two, and we were utterly broke. He cobbled together a side from our veterans, including 4 or 5 O'Neill-era players, and came straight back up. But in some ways he faced a similar, albeit more extreme, problem to that which we faced in 2024. The core squad was mostly unchanged from the one which came down, save for a few notable departures, and too much surgery was needed with too few resources when we went up. And, as with last season, we came straight back down.

 

In all of these examples - Wallace, Little, Adams, Maresca - with managers taking charge of sides that clearly needed a reset, and with differing approaches to the degree of 'clean slate' that they should be afforded, we came straight back down. If we want to go up and stay up there will have to be a hybrid approach; keeping senior players on board until they leave, or buy in and become better players, while simultaneously easing in the better youngsters. You have to be less radical than Wallace, and more radical - if it's viable - than Adams or Maresca. So I'd expect to see the likes of Faes, Vestergard, Soumare and Winks making appearances, but if that sets in over the course of the season - or, alternatively, if the manager looks too hard at how poor these players have been for us over time, grows weary of them and alienates them in favour of a wholesale introduction of young players - then we'll be in trouble if we do win promotion.

 

I'm not sure any of these managers are really our blueprint. And it's going to be very hard to secure a promotion that sticks in such a quick turnaround. I understand people saying that, as good as they may look at this level, we can't build around Faes, Vestergard and Winks again if we want longer term success. But equally, we can't sweep the whole lot of them out and start again with a bunch of kids either. Me - I'd prefer to be patient and rebuild even if it takes a few years. Many of the most successful periods in our history - the 20s, 50s-60s, 90s, 2010s - have come after lengthy periods in the second tier. But I'm not sure that this is the plan, nor even that it's financially viable in 2025.

[CL Fox]

13 hours ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

“It’s a clean slate for everybody”.

 

How many times do we hear this from a new manager? And, again, we hear it from Cifuentes today post-match about Faes.

When we’ve had the managerial turnover that we have, it’s a problem. I was sat there at half time wondering how we’d somehow turned out a starting XI with the likes of Vestergaard, Soumare, Justin, Skipp and Ayew who have all either contributed to our demise through poor performance, said/shown they wanted out or a combination of both.

 

We then see Daka, Winks and Faes stepping onto the pitch to whom the same applies. Meanwhile Alves, Nelson and others that haven’t had a crack at it are sat on the sidelines.

 

The truth is we’ve had a cancer in this squad for the last few years that has eaten away at the culture and success of the club. And it’s being given new life each time a new manager comes in and utters that phrase. 
 

The best we can hope for is that Cifuentes learns quickly about these guys, but it concerns me that any of them are being given a chance to play a part again. Where are our standards? And how can we expect any player who doesn’t take to Cifuentes to think anything other than “I’ll sit this out until the next new manager and clean slate comes round”?

 

Fair point - but I'm not sure the players are the problem - it's Rudkin and Top that are really the problem at the club and until they're gone we live in this perpetual cycle.

[The boy Linacre]

10 hours ago, CPepFox said:

Perhaps the problem lies higher up the ladder... looking at you, Rudkin!

Totally correct, said it before on here, how did Vestergaard get a new 3 year contract because he played well in the second tier AFTER the manager never picked him, strangely the next 2 managers in the top flight never picked him.  Same with Hamza, 3 year contract for mediocrity and general failure.  Probably more.

[AndyLimpey]

3 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

It’s got nothing to do with Oliver Skipp. Vestergaard acted a dick hence he’s not liked 

 

Give me a "Dick", who actually tries to win us the game, than a guy who literally plays with the purpose of marking himself out of it, anytime,  

[CosbehFox]

37 minutes ago, AndyLimpey said:

 

Give me a "Dick", who actually tries to win us the game, than a guy who literally plays with the purpose of marking himself out of it, anytime,  

Why do you keep bringing up Oliver Skipp? 
 

It has nothing to do with Vestergaard and why he’s disliked by a good chunk of our support. His part in our demise goes beyond anything he’s capable of on the pitch and it has aided a toxic atmosphere (not only between players & fans but players & managers) 

Edited 11 August 2025 by CosbehFox

[Old Fox]

2 hours ago, smudgerfox said:

Are you serious? Nelson has already proven himself at Championship level. He and Okoli are both young but they need to play first team football regularly to develop. There is no future in Vestergaard - whatever his passing ability his lack of pace is embarrassing.And did you see his shot? Park footballers would have been embarrassed..

 

As for Faes there is ample evidence he thinks he's too good for us but no club has come in for him to prove that...hes not going to improve - he nearly gave a goal away with a sloppy pass to the keeper yesterday ...

You cannot play Nelson and Okoli together as they are both not as good at passing as the manager wants - Okoli looked poor positionally and was awful on the ball - Nelson has the potential but whilst I despise them both Vesty and Faes are better players - if we do a proper rebuild I agree Nelson should play more but we will be in for a transitional season if they do that across the team 

[iancognito]

2 hours ago, Pliskin said:

He can’t to the capacity we need. We need a CDM, because that our biggest weakness at the moment. We’re so susceptible to the counter.

Two CDMs yesterday followed the ball into the box and were in a different postcode to Chalobah when he scored. We need Ricky doing the 6 role again, a player with actual positional awareness.

[Pliskin]

3 minutes ago, iancognito said:

Two CDMs yesterday followed the ball into the box and were in a different postcode to Chalobah when he scored. We need Ricky doing the 6 role again, a player with actual positional awareness.

I agree, it’s a major area of concern. I know they’re far from ideal, but Winks and Hamza may have to do. I worry about what state we could be in on September 2nd. One thing that’s clear is we can’t lose Bilal and Winks and not replace them, and sort out the CM….. genuinely concerned…..

[iancognito]

12 minutes ago, Old Fox said:

You cannot play Nelson and Okoli together as they are both not as good at passing as the manager wants - Okoli looked poor positionally and was awful on the ball - Nelson has the potential but whilst I despise them both Vesty and Faes are better players - if we do a proper rebuild I agree Nelson should play more but we will be in for a transitional season if they do that across the team 

You can't say Nelson isn't good enough on the ball and then talk about Vestergaard. Even if his passing ability was marginally better, he rarely makes use of it and it's outweighed by him having the turning circle of an oil tanker and being the worst header of a ball I've ever seen. Two years ago there was an argument Nelson wasn't ready, right now he's wasting his career on the bench.

[Tommy G]

24 minutes ago, iancognito said:

You can't say Nelson isn't good enough on the ball and then talk about Vestergaard. Even if his passing ability was marginally better, he rarely makes use of it and it's outweighed by him having the turning circle of an oil tanker and being the worst header of a ball I've ever seen. Two years ago there was an argument Nelson wasn't ready, right now he's wasting his career on the bench.

Calm down dear it's one game, imagine if Nelson threw his toys out the pram after one game? Maybe after 10 games and he hasn't featured a minute then moan.

 

He will mix it up on Wednesday. 

[turkish14]

5 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

Well the bloke has repeatedly doubled down on his city career. 
 

We went through this before with the bloke. Plays in the championship and everyone changes opinion on him. 
 

He’s fundamentally a bad egg 

My opinion doesn’t change.

 

He appears petulant, and childish. Is he a bad egg? Maybe… 
 

But so are 80% of our fanbase, listening to how we react to decisions, how we feel it’s okay to bring personal insults towards individuals. 
 

 

Edited 11 August 2025 by turkish14

[Hirsty The Blue 94]

Vestergaard is a cut above in the Championship in terms of ball playing centre backs there probably aren't many better in the league, and he reads the game pretty well to step in and make interceptions.

We all know his weaknesses, he is slow on the turn and for his size not as good or as strong as he should be in the air.

No point in worrying about what might happen if we go up til we get there, if you look at our squad there are only probably 3 players good enough for the Premier League as it stands, so just pick the team that's most likely to get you up. I would assume Faes is angling for a move and been plenty of talk of Okoli moving on too, so naturally Nelson would slot in there.

Think the whole argument that Vestergaard is a bad egg is largely nonsense, he was disgruntled because Rodgers bought him, hardly played him, and when he did set him up to fail with a high line. RVN clearly had a massive ego and wanted to seem the tough guy, but got no respect from many of the senior players last year.

The fact he got the armband when Justin went off over someone like Thomas or Winks suggests he is part of the leadership group, so obviously Marti and the rest of the squad seem to respect him.