What is the point?

[orangecity23]

So much of the damage has been caused by the brain dead decisions in the first relegation season. The club was so terrified of breaking PSR and getting a PL points deduction, that they got rid of Kasper to save on wages, did the bare minimum to replace Fofana and worst of all, kept Rodgers for months longer than he should have had. Keeping Kasper or binning the Bodge earlier would have been enough to stay up, and fellow PSR breakers Everton or Forest would have gone down in our place. The following season, we would have had a points deduction, but as Everton and the filthy cheating trees have proven, it would have been no great impediment. 

 

We on the other hand, intentionally got ourselves relegated to avoid a points deduction that might have got us relegated, fecked our PSR allowances into the floor by dropping into the championship a second time, lost every single player of Any value we had for under market rate, destroyed our squad value and set ourselves up to be marooned in the championship or lower for years to come, whilst adding more expensive shit like Skipp onto our books to cause problems for years to come, because the cheap clueless Gremlin manager we picked up (because our DoF has a contact list so short that it would fit onto a mouse's business card) needs to have an ex-england u17 player with him at all times like a comfort blanket, so he can have one player stick up for him in the dressing room when the rest of them quickly twig that he is a useless chancer with the coaching ability and tactical knowledge of a boiled potato.

 

This has all been entirely avoidable, but the people running the club were so focussed on psr they allowed the real financial danger of relegation to occur instead. Now we are stuck in a league where everyone makes losses, we will not financially recover for years to come. Everything we built up in our most successful period in our history has been destroyed, all for the sake of delaying a compensation payment to Brendan Rodgers that we ended up paying a few months afterwards anyway.

 

And with all that damage done, we didn't even avoid the PSR problem we were trying to prevent in the first place. It is still hanging over us, and will hang over us every season from now on, because there is no way we will return to financial good health in the championship, because out costs are too high and the TV revenue here is shit compared to the pl.

[whoareyaaa]

Leicester is also hardly seen as a place to live either, other places have more pull just because of where they are based, we also won the league with a squad that cost about 30m  

[Mark_w]

51 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

This has all been our own doing. Newcastle, Villa, Brighton, Brentford, Palace etc have all shown that you can disturb the elite with good decision making.

Palace, Brentford and Brighton really haven't disturbed the elite. They've overachieved for a little while, but that's all. Newcastle & Villa have only done so in the same way we did with out two 5th place finishes, they're probably in a better place to sustain it than us because they're bigger clubs and we were riddled with incompetence.

PSR is in place purely to stop clubs breaking through and sustaining any success, it is thoroughly depressing.

[jayfox26]

I agree to a point but I feel that some our fans use PSR etc as an excuse for the club being in the shit. We are not in the shit because of PSR we are in the shit because of an incompetent owner and board. 

 

Football in many ways, isn't any different from 20-30 years ago. Since the PL was set up, only us and Blackburn have won it outside of the cartel. I'd say it's unrealistic for any non cartel club to think they can win trophies every season and be in Europe every season but when your club is run well, it is achievable every so often. 

 

I've always said this and ill argue it to my death, teams like Leicester, Palace, Wigan, Portsmouth etc  winning the fa Cup, us and Blackburn winning the league, will always mean so much more than when the cartel clubs win trophy after trophy. 

 

We can't compete with the cartel, but we can upset them every now and again if we are run correctly. 

[murphy]

Bigger clubs preying on smaller has always happened, but a strange time to bring this up when the domestic cups were won by Crystal Palace and Newcastle last season.

[AjcW]

Wolves are currently considering selling a striker they bought for £30m a few months ago. It’s just a ****ing mess isn’t it.
 

That would have been a simple “**** off” from the player and club ten years ago  

 

And to add to it they’re being offered double what they paid!!

 

I get they’re doubling their money but it’s not like they don’t now have to go and find a replacement with a week left is it! 

 

Just think it’s the perfect example of how ****ed everything is 

[Fosse93]

Can't help but feel we had the chance of a lifetime to become a real force after winning the league, and we well and truly ****ed it. That was our chance.

[lanefox]

2 minutes ago, Fosse93 said:

Can't help but feel we had the chance of a lifetime to become a real force after winning the league, and we well and truly ****ed it. That was our chance.

Our chance to be a real force is if we got back to back champions league when we finished 5th , if we got CL both if them seasons the whole club trajectory would've changed

[Foxmeister]

17 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

They should just clear off to their European Super League, with a caveat. They can't sign players from any country's remaining domestic leagues, only players they produce themselves and sign off each other.

I think we could kiss goodbye to Monga now if, by signing a contract with us, it prevented him ever playing at the top level.

[Fosse93]

3 minutes ago, lanefox said:

Our chance to be a real force is if we got back to back champions league when we finished 5th , if we got CL both if them seasons the whole club trajectory would've changed

Hard to disagree. Chasing top 4 and signing Ryan ****ing Bennett to help the charge, christ.

[Fox92]

Bigger clubs take your better players, football has been like this for years if not forever. Nobody moans when a Championship club comes along and takes a good player from League 1.

[Fox92]

13 minutes ago, Fosse93 said:

Can't help but feel we had the chance of a lifetime to become a real force after winning the league, and we well and truly ****ed it. That was our chance.

We had one good season. If we were finishing top 6, top 3, then won the league then fair enough but one good season either side of relegation battles isn't going to make us a force. At the end of the day Kante left us for Chelsea when we were Champions of England. It doesn't matter what happens, players will always want to go to bigger clubs. Look at Isak, one league cup in 70 years doesn't make Newcastle more attractive than Liverpool.

[when_you're_smiling]

8 minutes ago, Fosse93 said:

Can't help but feel we had the chance of a lifetime to become a real force after winning the league, and we well and truly ****ed it. That was our chance.

 

4 minutes ago, lanefox said:

Our chance to be a real force is if we got back to back champions league when we finished 5th , if we got CL both if them seasons the whole club trajectory would've changed

If you’re trying to be a force in the Champions League though you fork out bigger wages - but then the moment you don’t qualify for it and don’t get that extra income your spending is severely limited by PSR, especially for a club our size who doesn’t have the daily income of a Man U or Chelsea.

 

We got relegated with a Europa league wage bill which is basically still the problem.

[filbertway]

1 minute ago, Fox92 said:

Bigger clubs take your better players, football has been like this for years if not forever. Nobody moans when a Championship club comes along and takes a good player from League 1.

 

Yep. There's absolutely no space for Premier League clubs to be crying about it as well.

 

Every single club in this division can sign 98% of available/eligible players in the world. Everyone has access to the internet and millions to spend on building a recruitment network.

 

The reason this division is becoming more competitive is that realistically someone like Brighton could sign one of Lyon or Juventus' best players. Which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

 

Good players will always move to better teams. Your club is only as good as the staff working for it.

 

The only real difference is that PSR has lowered the margin of error for clubs due to forcing amortisation over the length of a contract, if the amortisation was optional then clubs would have far greater control.

 

 

[Raj]

If we had the right people in charge and not making stupid decisions thinking we were massive, giving mediocre players deals of a lifetime we could have broken into that Top 6 and still be there.

We could have been an established Premier league club.

 

We fecked up BIG time, had a chance of a lifetime and are back to the good old days of being a yoyo club.

 

 

[Sampson]

Tbh I completely lost my interest in watching football since we won the FA Cup. Just feels very little to get excited about anymore.

 

Ended up getting into board games and tabletop RPGs after the pandemic and often do that on Saturdays now instead or go out with my partner. Only really watch Leicester if there's nothing else to do and have completely stopped watching games with other teams in as a neutral. I found board games/tabletop RPGs give me that same feeling of camradarie, competitiveness and scratch the same social itch in my brain that football used to.

Edited 22 August 2025 by Sampson

[CosbehFox]

17 hours ago, Jordan said:

What is the point of supporting a League One team when if one of your players does well, there’s a Championship club just waiting to swoop in and buy them?

 

Why bother supporting a National League side when your best players won’t be staying around if they get any interest from EFL clubs?

 

etc.

Was literally going to say this - point well made. 

 

Ultimately it's about pride and community. 

 

I'd still argue PSR is in principle a good idea but it's the application and the rules which are terrible which let it down. Without PSR, the likes of Wednesday would be in bigger shit. 

[CosbehFox]

15 hours ago, Mark_w said:

Palace, Brentford and Brighton really haven't disturbed the elite. They've overachieved for a little while, but that's all. Newcastle & Villa have only done so in the same way we did with out two 5th place finishes, they're probably in a better place to sustain it than us because they're bigger clubs and we were riddled with incompetence.

PSR is in place purely to stop clubs breaking through and sustaining any success, it is thoroughly depressing.

They have over achieved to their relative size and history though. That's as bigger achievement/gap as say Newcastle for example. 

[CosbehFox]

16 hours ago, ourla said:

People slag off American sports but in a way that is how it should be - if you want meritocracy and a level playing field.

 

On the other hand the vast majority of football fans know their clubs can never win the Prem anytime soon, so if that really mattered to them they just wouldn't go. In some ways winning the Prem League killed it for Leicester fans because now we can't have that mindset.

 

Caveat: It didn't kill anything to me, quite the opposite. Winning the League and the FA Cup just once was enough. I never thought I'd see it (and my first game was 1973). I actually don't give a toss anymore. Whatever will be will be.

It would impossible to implement in a truly global sport. It's a great idea but the big four American leagues don't have rival leagues to compete with (Hockey to an extent). If a wage cap was put in place, it would have to be enforced across Europe because clubs would complain they can't compete in the Champions League. This has happened in Rugby Union where French and Irish club sides dominate largely in European competition 

[Mark_w]

10 minutes ago, CosbehFox said:

They have over achieved to their relative size and history though. That's as bigger achievement/gap as say Newcastle for example. 

I’m not saying it isn’t a bigger achievement, I’m just saying it’s not disturbing the elite.

[ian__marshall]

I'm losing interest in the sport big time. It's becoming a bore fest and formulaic/choreographed. I wouldn't say it's isolated to football; Formula 1, Golf, and Boxing are all going down the same route of trying to prioritise monetisation over the actual sport. They're following the WWE model of trying to create drama and narrative that casuals can follow. As a sports purist who is only interested in seeing elite athletes do their talking in the their arena of choice, I really have no interest in how many times a day Messi changes his underpants, why Verstappen eats bran flakes for breakfast, or what trash talk Tyson Fury has directed towards his next opponent. 

 

Re: PSR and competitiveness of football in general, I don't think anything has actually changed in the forty years I've watched the sport. There's always been a hierarchy since transfers became a thing and money became the currency of success.

 

Trevor Francis going to Forest for £1m in '79 was just scandalous when you think about it. If memory serves me right we didn't spend £1m+ until the signing of Draper in '94, 15 years later.

 

Jack Walker along with the creation of the PL were probably the catalysts for accelerating change. Walker demonstrated a model where if you're willing to spend big you can buy success irrespective of the club's size, and the Premier League dangled the carrot of financially rewarding those willing to splash the cash. Add in the genius of Richard Scudamore who transformed the image of top tier English football and the path was set. 

 

In all honesty, for as long as I can remember it's always been a closed shop, Liverpool dominated the 80s, United the 90s, Arsenal early 00s, Chelsea after, and City during the 10s. It was completely unimaginable for anyone to break United's dominance in the 90s. Blackburn briefly succeeded, but is it any coincidence their journey was one similar to the one we now experience? Whenever challengers appeared, their top talents were poached, for instance United breaking the British record to sign Cole from Newcastle, Collymore to Liverpool, Ferdinand to United, Campbell to Arsenal, etc, etc. 

 

Point being, this is nothing new. PSR is just another tool to try and maintain the status quo. 

 

Let's get it right though, we are not in the situation we find ourselves in because of PSR, we are in the position we are because we've been poorly managed by the club's leadership team since winning the league. PSR or no PSR, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that if your business outgoings are greater than your income then the situation is effectively unsustainable and will eventually lead to ruin. 

 

We've created this situation. Yes, PSR is a challenge you have to navigate, but it's not insurmountable as others have shown. You just need to have people in your organisation who understand how to manoeuvre around the barriers. Sadly for us we don't. 

 

Edited 22 August 2025 by ian__marshall

[murphy]

4 hours ago, when_you're_smiling said:

 

If you’re trying to be a force in the Champions League though you fork out bigger wages - but then the moment you don’t qualify for it and don’t get that extra income your spending is severely limited by PSR, especially for a club our size who doesn’t have the daily income of a Man U or Chelsea.

 

We got relegated with a Europa league wage bill which is basically still the problem.

The problem was that we signed Skybet league players on Europa League wages

[murphy]

If we accept that bigger clubs will always take from clubs like ours there is still a way to be successful.  We understood this well and it underpinned our post title success.  Buying potential.  

 

I always think that you will do well as a PL club by buying the standout players of the league(s) below.  Players like Maddison, Bowen etc.  Also players with high ceilings on the way up.  These kind of signings won't always work but it only takes a relatively modest hit rate to improve your team and then sell on for big bucks to the big clubs.

 

Rodgers dismantled this approach, despite benefitting from the work of his predecessors, with his infamous 'silver medalist' strategy.  Actively seeking out players that have failed along with an uncanny eye for a journeyman.  Our calamitous post Puel transfer policy, along with the Rudkin contract clown show, is the reason we are now in this mess.

[when_you're_smiling]

11 minutes ago, murphy said:

The problem was that we signed Skybet league players on Europa League wages

From the side that first got relegated there was only Faes and Soumare actually in the team who you’d argue was ‘Skybet’ that we actually bought in. Daka on the bench.

[murphy]

2 minutes ago, when_you're_smiling said:

From the side that first got relegated there was only Faes and Soumare actually in the team who you’d argue was ‘Skybet’ that we actually bought in. Daka on the bench.

Amartey, Ward, Praet, Vestergaard off the top of my head.

 

Unless you're saying they're not good enough to be skybet?