Cifuentes OUT

[Foxin_Mad]

Which ever way you look at it he is a bang average manager, yes he has a team full of shit overpaid *****. As a manager he should have a certain aura, people play where he tells them to and do the job he tells them to, the buck stops with him.

 

The club failed us by employing him to lead a squad that needs a really strong leadership team. 

[JacobLCFC1234]

16 minutes ago, Chelmofox said:

Strongest in your opinion. Overpaid, weak and not good enough in mine. 

 

And its a far, far weaker squad than Maresca had, even though there are posters here who still think its the same team.

 

And talking about Maresca, can you explain how a far stronger squad then lost to Middlesbrough twice, Hull, Millwall, QPR and Plymouth (to name a few)? 

 

I think Marti is underachieving, and im not enjoying the football. But im not buying that we are some squad of super heros who are destined to get automatic promotion.  He's been dealt a tough hand and im not sure he's got much more to offer to turn then into anything better. This is a squad that should be getting playoffs. And we are placed 4 points under that. Such is the championship that you win 3 games and all of a sudden you are in the playoff spots.

 

The club is failing us.

 

Its more than good enough to be doing better than this.

 

Yes the Maresca team lost matches and youll always lose some matches thats the nature of the game within that 90 mins but in a third of a season Cifuentes hasnt managed to attain anything like a successful style, settled team or patterns of play, hence we REGULARLY drop points against all kinds of teams who are equal or worse than us.

 

Hes got a pretty damn good group of players by this level's standards unless he wants to swap them for oxford or portsmouths players and he should be doing better.

 

 

[Chelmofox]

12 minutes ago, JacobLCFC1234 said:

Its more than good enough to be doing better than this.

 

Yes the Maresca team lost matches and youll always lose some matches thats the nature of the game within that 90 mins but in a third of a season Cifuentes hasnt managed to attain anything like a successful style, settled team or patterns of play, hence we REGULARLY drop points against all kinds of teams who are equal or worse than us.

 

Hes got a pretty damn good group of players by this level's standards unless he wants to swap them for oxford or portsmouths players and he should be doing better.

 

 

At one point in the 2nd half of the Maresca season, we were bottom 6 in the form table - it wasnt just losing a few matches.  We were dross and teams had worked us out (press Jannik, flood the midfield, double up on wingers, exploit the inverted FB who is far up the pitch). It was only bellends like Russell Martin who refused to deviate away from that formula. This rot set in a long, long time ago and we haven't moved on. There is revisionist thinking of the Maresca era due to the good start, however some key players (KDH being one - who was a man possessed) overindexed our performances. I remember watching Cardiff at home early that season thinking this was some of the worst football i had seen us play. 

 

We've been sh1t for a really, really long time. I think people are only starting to notice, which scares me.

Edited 13 November 2025 by Chelmofox

[Eskay]

2 hours ago, Foxin_Mad said:

Which ever way you look at it he is a bang average manager, yes he has a team full of shit overpaid *****. As a manager he should have a certain aura, people play where he tells them to and do the job he tells them to, the buck stops with him.

 

The club failed us by employing him to lead a squad that needs a really strong leadership team. 

We should hire more managers based on Aura levels.....really missing a trick there!

[Pliskin]

5 hours ago, Bluetintedspecs said:

This site is ridiculous,  I wonder how many of the vocal 'knowledgeable' minority ,on here,  will be calling for Will Still to replace Marti if he goes?   I seem to remember a significant jizzfest going on about him 🤔 

Will still is terrible. 

[gurru991]

3 hours ago, Fox92 said:

Yes. The squad is one of the strongest in the league.

 

Please explain why we should be dropping points to Wrexham, Portsmouth, Oxford (granted we had 10 men), Blackburn, Millwall and Hull (the latter of which, Hull, hired a new manager and had a transfer embargo). 

 

We are currently below two teams promoted from league 1 and level on point as the other promoted team.

 

This manager is failing us. 

I don't think the squad is close to being one of the strongest in the league.  We don't have any strikers who can score & very few other players who can score either. Our defence is slow & error prone & we have very little imagination in midfield.  Marti is very definitely limited but Pep would struggle to get a tune out of this lot.

Poor recruitment has slowly dragged this team down to where it is now.

[Chelmofox]

8 minutes ago, Pliskin said:

Will still is terrible. 

Most managers are terrible. Many are bang average, and a select few are either very good or excellent.

 

Fitting a profile for a club like ours it tough. We are a big club, with leadership that have f***d up recruitment and wages over the last 5 or so years. We've had success and fallen from grace. Half our fans have their heads up their arses that our leadership are perfect and will just sort it given time, half are spitting mad and think we have players that Pearson would get top. 

 

We deserve better.

 

But a top drawer manager isnt coming here right now. So you are fighting for the type that is 'on the way up'. Our leadership dont think managers operate outside of the English Leauges, so we are stuck with anyone who has managed (or assisted) here.  

 

You might get the almighty bounce that Maresca did (which dwindled anyway). But everyone else is going to hit mediocrity until the swamp is drained, whilst a lot of our fan base think we are still as good as when we had prime Youri / Barnes / Vardy / Madders / Kasper. 

 

Marti is a manager who is going to fight for play offs. He might get there. But i dont know who is a reasonable appointment who is going to get us in the top 2 spots right now.

[Dahnsouff]

People look at names on paper, remember them being good and therefore decide they are of a certain quality, but alas that's not remotely realistic because

• They deteriorate over time with age
• They become stale at the same club for too long
• They need incomings to keep them sharp
• Repeated failures has left us mentally weak it seems

 

Not a 'we are where we are' post, we should be doing better, but we have some right dross amongst the players.

Edited 13 November 2025 by Dahnsouff

[Chelmofox]

6 minutes ago, gurru991 said:

I don't think the squad is close to being one of the strongest in the league.  We don't have any strikers who can score & very few other players who can score either. Our defence is slow & error prone & we have very little imagination in midfield.  Marti is very definitely limited but Pep would struggle to get a tune out of this lot.

Poor recruitment has slowly dragged this team down to where it is now.

A top tier manager would just throw his toys out the pram. This is where Maresca was headed anyway. You cleary saw this during that January window, and the talk about wanting change behind the scenes that he was never actually going to get.

 

Marti is trying to get through this being diplomatic, in the hope that the big earners all of a sudden to behaving like d**ks. 

[winteriscoming]

We are not gonna win enough games with Cifuentes in charge. 2 wins in 11 is pathetic in this league. 
Is a young up and coming manager gonna stand much chance with some of these ego centric arrogant pricks? No. 
I’d rather we go with an experienced manager who won’t take any shit and who knows the division. 
Tony Mowbray until the end of the season is who we should get if Cifuentes goes but more likely we’ll end up with Mr Ego Russell Martin on a 3 year contract. 

Edited 14 November 2025 by winteriscoming

[Clever Fox]

I don't think Marti has the strength of character to take no shit from the players. Which is why he's not getting the best out of the team. 

 

The Manager has to build that winning mentality by fixing what's wrong game by game, Starting with the little things.  Corner Kicks , Free kicks , throw ins etc. positioning around both boxes. 

Ball possession, Overplaying the Ball,  Not letting the Ball do the work. These are things I expect to see improvement in over the weeks but nothing.

I also understand he has to bring players onside also but there's a way to encourage players while giving them a rollicking too.

 

All of which makes me think he just isn't good enough right now.

[Richmondfox]

11 hours ago, Clever Fox said:

I don't think Marti has the strength of character to take no shit from the players. Which is why he's not getting the best out of the team. 

 

The Manager has to build that winning mentality by fixing what's wrong game by game, Starting with the little things.  Corner Kicks , Free kicks , throw ins etc. positioning around both boxes. 

Ball possession, Overplaying the Ball,  Not letting the Ball do the work. These are things I expect to see improvement in over the weeks but nothing.

I also understand he has to bring players onside also but there's a way to encourage players while giving them a rollicking too.

 

All of which makes me think he just isn't good enough right now.

He let Ayew stink out every aspect of the game for far too long, at least now he’s only stopping attacks and not on corners or free kicks. 
 

There’s no point us ever having a throw in, we take too long and just give it away. It’s the same when the JV holds onto the ball for too long, everyone stands around bored waiting, but also not offering new options up. All because the clown didn’t pass first time. 

Marti appears to be very limited in his ideas on how to attack and change in game tactics to our advantage.  Hopefully seeing the winner, a quick pass into space high up the for a winger to cross quickly might give spark an idea. Maybe he will have some intrigue and investigate what this simple passage of play was called. 
 

We really need a Jordan Henderson type figure or a shit house xhaka in the Skipp roll.  He plays like my dog, just happy to be chasing around for a while then stands and watches me get the ball. 

[Fox92]

16 hours ago, gurru991 said:

I don't think the squad is close to being one of the strongest in the league.  We don't have any strikers who can score & very few other players who can score either. Our defence is slow & error prone & we have very little imagination in midfield.  Marti is very definitely limited but Pep would struggle to get a tune out of this lot.

Poor recruitment has slowly dragged this team down to where it is now.

Yet is still a better squad than the opposition we are dropping points against.

 

Of course poor recruitment has dragged the team down but that's been happening for years. Nobody made this excuse for previous managers.

 

"Our defence is slow & error prone" yet the manager continues to pick the same players. Nothing ever changes. We had to wait 13 games for him to pick Nelson ffs.

 

A manager like Pep would not struggle to get a tune out of these players considering Maresca was able too.

Edited 14 November 2025 by Fox92

[Chelmofox]

11 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Yet is still a better squad than the opposition we are dropping points against.

 

Of course poor recruitment has dragged the team down but that's been happening for years. Nobody made this excuse for previous managers.

 

"Our defence is slow & error prone" yet the manager continues to pick the same players. Nothing ever changes. We had to wait 13 games for him to pick Nelson ffs.

 

A manager like Pep would not struggle to get a tune out of these players considering Maresca was able too.

Maresca dropped points against dross too. There is revisionism going on here.

 

What made us a success in the 1st half of that season was easily exploited by most teams in the 2nd half of the season, where we lost a massive lead and started playing like children. Lost to Millwall, Plymouth etc etc. 

 

Maresca stopped getting a 'tune' out of them, and the first half of that season we had a very different team to what we have now, so saying he 'got a tune out of them' is a pointless argument.

 

Marti isn't the main problem, because he's come in to do a specific job which to some degree is a continuation of what Maresca was doing. Problem is:

• Maresca team was already worked out and was performing terribly
• The team is now significantly worse, and took a beating in the PL
• The core parts of Maresca's vision (Winks and Vestergaard), are older and were worked out last time anyway. They are not as effective as they once were. Even Daka, who had a mini renaissance, has been shocking since that Leeds game where he seemed to lose his soul. I'd argue that Riccy, although technically good still, is nowhere near as effective as he was 1st half Enzo season.
• We have no KDH, Vardy or Ndidi (1st half that season Ndidi - wasn't the same after injury) to drag us through matches. James feels like the only one who can do something like this.

We need to move on from that formula. Maresca wouldn't have this lot in the top 6 right now, but i do think Marti is under indexing that still, but not massively.

 

I support getting rid of Marti if we decide to take this all in a different direction. However, i think heads are up too many arses right now, and even our fans think all this needs is a better version of the current approach. Thinking that we make older Winks, Vestergaard, Soumare, Skipp, Daka, Thomas into a Championship top 2 is mad.

[Fox92]

1 hour ago, Chelmofox said:

Maresca dropped points against dross too. There is revisionism going on here.

 

What made us a success in the 1st half of that season was easily exploited by most teams in the 2nd half of the season, where we lost a massive lead and started playing like children. Lost to Millwall, Plymouth etc etc. 

 

Maresca stopped getting a 'tune' out of them, and the first half of that season we had a very different team to what we have now, so saying he 'got a tune out of them' is a pointless argument.

 

Marti isn't the main problem, because he's come in to do a specific job which to some degree is a continuation of what Maresca was doing. Problem is:

• Maresca team was already worked out and was performing terribly
• The team is now significantly worse, and took a beating in the PL
• The core parts of Maresca's vision (Winks and Vestergaard), are older and were worked out last time anyway. They are not as effective as they once were. Even Daka, who had a mini renaissance, has been shocking since that Leeds game where he seemed to lose his soul. I'd argue that Riccy, although technically good still, is nowhere near as effective as he was 1st half Enzo season.
• We have no KDH, Vardy or Ndidi (1st half that season Ndidi - wasn't the same after injury) to drag us through matches. James feels like the only one who can do something like this.

We need to move on from that formula. Maresca wouldn't have this lot in the top 6 right now, but i do think Marti is under indexing that still, but not massively.

 

I support getting rid of Marti if we decide to take this all in a different direction. However, i think heads are up too many arses right now, and even our fans think all this needs is a better version of the current approach. Thinking that we make older Winks, Vestergaard, Soumare, Skipp, Daka, Thomas into a Championship top 2 is mad.

Of course Maresca dropped points but we still won the league. He might have had a couple of weeks where we were poor but we were still great over the course of a whole season. That's why we play seasons. Our current manager will end up dropping more points, we've already drawn more games than we did under Maresca. There's as much revisionism from me as there is from you.

 

I am not comparing managers. Our current manager is not good enough and nothing will change my mind on that. He is the manager so he is a big problem, maybe not the main problem, but a big problem. 

 

Personally I have never said we would be top 2. I've always said we should be top 6 and anything less than that is failure with the players we have. You have listed players - Winks, Skipp, Vestergaard - that would pretty much get into a lot of squads in the division. We have dropped points to Portsmouth, Oxford, Blackburn etc - go and ask them if they want these players because my guess would be yes, and that's not even taking into consideration the likes of Fatawu - our squad, relative to the division and opposition, should still be one of the stronger ones in the division. If the manager cannot get a tune out of them then we need a new one and I have wanted a new manager ever since we dropped points to Wrexham. We only just squeezed past Wednesday's B team ffs. It's not good enough.

[CarolinaFox]

My biggest issue with Marti is his inability to find a system where we create opportunities to score. We are averaging around 1.2 goals a game. I disagree that all parts of this squad are better than our championship rivals. Our strikers are rancid. If we could score more goals our lack of defense wouldn’t matter. Think about Ipswich when they got promoted. They were defensively very poor but could score goals in spades. All we do is pass the ball with no end product. I know Marti needs help with new transfers but he literally run out of ideas. It’s the same game plan every match. If he starts Daka we need to be playing on the counter. If he plays Ayew it should be as a false 9 with Daka or Carranza. Either we get Marti the players he needs or find a manager who can change us to a team that can score with what we’ve got. Relying on Fatawu every game is so frustrating at this point. 

[indierich06]

19 hours ago, gurru991 said:

I don't think the squad is close to being one of the strongest in the league.  We don't have any strikers who can score & very few other players who can score either. Our defence is slow & error prone & we have very little imagination in midfield.  Marti is very definitely limited but Pep would struggle to get a tune out of this lot.

Poor recruitment has slowly dragged this team down to where it is now.

I  think you're right - it's not actually that good in terms of quality, though we certainly do have players that would walk into most Championship sides. I think the main issue is the lack of any kind of cohesion - there are so many teams in this league that are better than the sum of their parts, I think we're worse than the sum of our parts and this lack of togetherness/cohesion is the main reason.

[markko]

22 hours ago, JacobLCFC1234 said:

Its more than good enough to be doing better than this.

 

Yes the Maresca team lost matches and youll always lose some matches thats the nature of the game within that 90 mins but in a third of a season Cifuentes hasnt managed to attain anything like a successful style, settled team or patterns of play, hence we REGULARLY drop points against all kinds of teams who are equal or worse than us.

 

Hes got a pretty damn good group of players by this level's standards unless he wants to swap them for oxford or portsmouths players and he should be doing better.

 

 

He has a striker who has not scored in almost a year and another who has not scored this season either. I would swap them out to be honest.

[inckley fox]

43 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Of course Maresca dropped points but we still won the league. He might have had a couple of weeks where we were poor but we were still great over the course of a whole season. That's why we play seasons. Our current manager will end up dropping more points, we've already drawn more games than we did under Maresca. There's as much revisionism from me as there is from you.

 

I am not comparing managers. Our current manager is not good enough and nothing will change my mind on that. He is the manager so he is a big problem, maybe not the main problem, but a big problem. 

 

Personally I have never said we would be top 2. I've always said we should be top 6 and anything less than that is failure with the players we have. You have listed players - Winks, Skipp, Vestergaard - that would pretty much get into a lot of squads in the division. We have dropped points to Portsmouth, Oxford, Blackburn etc - go and ask them if they want these players because my guess would be yes, and that's not even taking into consideration the likes of Fatawu - our squad, relative to the division and opposition, should still be one of the stronger ones in the division. If the manager cannot get a tune out of them then we need a new one and I have wanted a new manager ever since we dropped points to Wrexham. We only just squeezed past Wednesday's B team ffs. It's not good enough.

I know that there's a danger in saying 'at one point we were in the bottom six of the current form table' under Maresca, because we're hand-picking data to suit our argument. I also fully agree that Maresca deserves loads of credit for winning the title. We may well have been the most expensive ever FLC side and very strong favourites, but you still have to deliver and many don't manage that. He's a good manager, did well for us in the short-term, and only the other day someone showed me a curious stat about how our net spend compares to success in a season, relative to spending trends of the time, and given the profit we made on transfers under him he did very well by that metric. 2023-24 is right up there with the best seasons we've ever had while raking in relatively high sums for transfers.

 

But I still maintain that in the long-term his main positive contribution was to deliver a largely expected, but fairly meaningless, promotion. Its principal positive consequence was a much-needed financial one, but from a footballing perspective he did nothing to set us up for the longer term. Bearing in mind that as fans we have to focus on what we see on the pitch because we don't get to see the financial intricacies of how the club is run, I don't think we can say he was a particularly good appointment for us.

 

Why? He built the side around Faes and Vestergard at the back, who were never going to be able to develop into a top flight partnership. Nelson barely got a look-in. Ricardo as an inverted right-back was largely sussed by the second half of the season and never had much of a future in the PL. Winks as a solitary DCM had no future. Nor Ndidi as an 8. Or, given our financial constraints, KDH as a second 8. Vardy established himself as the first-choice striker over the course of that campaign. That didn't have much of a future either.

 

If we look at his quite costly outfield signings, they were mostly short-term fixes, and few - if any - had an especially positive long-term impact. Coady was past it. Winks has been mostly poor and at times, allegedly, problematic. Mavididi was never anywhere near a PL player. Fatawu hasn't shown that sort of level yet either (though there's time, of course). Cannon wasn't good enough.

 

So it was a season in which absolutely no foundations were set for a longer-term rebuild, even though the funds were there to do a lot more. Cifuentes hasn't had that luxury nor, with the departures of Ndidi, KDH and Vardy, anything like as good a squad to inherit.

 

On top of that, things were clearly on a downward spiral over the course of the entire second half of the season under Maresca. If you extrapolate our points-per-game for the final 23 games we'd have finished 5th. If you extrapolate them for the final quarter of the season (rounding up to 12 matches) we'd have been vying with Norwich for 6th on goal difference. And then, seeing that his style of play wasn't going to be viable in the longer-term with that set of players and little in the way of transfer funds, he - wisely perhaps - jumped ship. And we got relegated. And now we're in the FLC, and crap again. As far as legacies go, it's a pretty grim one, even if we can hold the board largely responsible for the turmoil.

 

It's just curious to me that we're going down that same road again with Cifuentes. He's been brought in to get existing players who we know not to be good enough at a higher level, and who have let us down over and over again, on board rather than to look for longer-term solutions. And to play a vaguely comparable style which would be fairly useless and require another about-turn if we were ever promoted, instead of attempting to do the groundwork for a change at this level (something which some players indicated was a problem when Cooper arrived).

 

Only this time, so far at least, it hasn't worked. And we're stuck with a short-term approach which, in the short-term, is yet to go anywhere. For me, the problem is not so much the manager, because I think most would have struggled to do what Cifuentes has been tasked with doing. The problem is the nature of the mandate that we're giving managers: to get a tune out of expensive flops, and to play the kind of football that Khun Top dreams of when he tucks himself into bed at night. It worked for a while under Maresca, but if the manager doesn't see that the directness and positivity we showed in the final 20 minutes against Norwich is the way forward, rather than the way he'd meticulously set us up to play over the other 70, then we're stuffed. There's only any point in changing the manager (and I'm not sure I'd be averse to that in an ideal world because I don't think he's very good) if we're also going to fundamentally change our approach.

[DJW1]

I think he should be given more time.

On the eve of the season a poll here showed that the majority of us didn´t think we would finish in the top 8, so we are where  many of us thought we would be. However, there are certain areas of play (throw-ins etc.) that need to be improved and there are some players with talent whose confidence has disappeared (Mavididi etc.) - these are things that managers and coaches can improve.

We have this playing squad (and manager) because we are skint, even after taking in 50+ million quid in the summer. If we are in this league position in January then the owners will have to decide whether to stick (spend no money and accept a probable mid-table finish) or twist (spend some money on a couple of players to try and get promotion).

[Chelmofox]

2 hours ago, Fox92 said:

Of course Maresca dropped points but we still won the league. He might have had a couple of weeks where we were poor but we were still great over the course of a whole season. That's why we play seasons. Our current manager will end up dropping more points, we've already drawn more games than we did under Maresca. There's as much revisionism from me as there is from you.

 

I am not comparing managers. Our current manager is not good enough and nothing will change my mind on that. He is the manager so he is a big problem, maybe not the main problem, but a big problem. 

 

Personally I have never said we would be top 2. I've always said we should be top 6 and anything less than that is failure with the players we have. You have listed players - Winks, Skipp, Vestergaard - that would pretty much get into a lot of squads in the division. We have dropped points to Portsmouth, Oxford, Blackburn etc - go and ask them if they want these players because my guess would be yes, and that's not even taking into consideration the likes of Fatawu - our squad, relative to the division and opposition, should still be one of the stronger ones in the division. If the manager cannot get a tune out of them then we need a new one and I have wanted a new manager ever since we dropped points to Wrexham. We only just squeezed past Wednesday's B team ffs. It's not good enough.

No way does Vestergaard feature in any of the other top 6 plans.  Astonishes me anyone would think otherwise.   Winks / Skipp are possibles, although both have flaws. Neither have stella output numbers.

[gurru991]

2 hours ago, Chelmofox said:

No way does Vestergaard feature in any of the other top 6 plans.  Astonishes me anyone would think otherwise.   Winks / Skipp are possibles, although both have flaws. Neither have stella output numbers.

Leicester fans have a tendency to overate the quality of the players. If any of them were half decent other clubs would be interested in them !!!

No-one wanted Faes or Soumare in the Summer even though they were cheap. Vestergaard is slower than a glacier & even though he can pass, he always has a mistake in him.  

Ayew & BDR are well past their best before date & we don't have any strikers.

With a couple of additions Top six is the best we can hope for.

[gurru991]

4 hours ago, markko said:

He has a striker who has not scored in almost a year and another who has not scored this season either. I would swap them out to be honest.

Who does he swap them out for ?? Let's be honest .. we are stuck with Ayew & Daka cause no one else wants them .. maybe we can return Carranza & get another loan in !!

I think he has to give some academy players a chance but though he talks about it he seems reluctant to do it.

[Chelmofox]

1 hour ago, gurru991 said:

Leicester fans have a tendency to overate the quality of the players. If any of them were half decent other clubs would be interested in them !!!

No-one wanted Faes or Soumare in the Summer even though they were cheap. Vestergaard is slower than a glacier & even though he can pass, he always has a mistake in him.  

Ayew & BDR are well past their best before date & we don't have any strikers.

With a couple of additions Top six is the best we can hope for.

I can make a case for many of them as squad players - but not many would be standout performers anywhere. If Winks / Ayew / BDCR were playing for Cov or Middlesborough, you would probably only remember when we played them. 

 

But anyone who thinks that Jannik Vestergaard starts for any other top 6 Championship club is absolutely barking mad. 

[JimJams]

Well he was an ever present in the team that won the league 2 seasons ago.  Has he regressed that much? Or is the current quality of the division that much better?  Or was he being carried last time? 

I don't think Vestergaard is great, but I don't look at the options at the likes of PNE, Hull, Millwall and think they're all better players.