Why did we force out MA?

[Katy]

He went because his heart wasn't in it after the La Manga rollocks.

[evs_the_fox]

if you want to go back even further why did we sack Peter Taylor. Most fans hate (despise) him and hold him responsible for our relegation.

anyone that can take a top 10 premiership side AND £25million & manage to produce what he did, deserves to be despised & held responsible for a lot of the shit that has happened since.

in 6 years we have gone from being in the strongest position the club, arguabley, has ever been in to the weakest (admin 2/3 years later) to the lower-than-mediocre postion we currently reside in with no light, as yet, in view at the end of this seemingly never ending tunnel.

[Fez of Mahrez]

But in reality, the majority of players brought (perhaps not Dickov) in by Bassett were adequate Division 2 players that's why we still got relegated and were able to get promoted and they were all so short term there was no strategy to replace and build, just to replace and replace with diminishing quality and sustainability. Low transfer fees and high wages due to buying aging mercenaries meant our capital was getting smaller and smaller. At least now we have some saleable assets all on low wages, from Levein's yime our player worth has increase by a significant sum.

Although that has been put back somewhat by the recruitment of Low, McCauley and Johnson mainly because now we're in a no transfer/low wage situation..

Thing is, we were skint even then. We had 50k here and there to spend on Dickov and Deane etc, but we couldn't afford any good young players at that time. What Bassett and Adams did was ensure promotion and then try and raise money by staying in the Premiership. Even when we were back in the Premiership, we had the money for wages but no million-pound transfers etc. With hindsight, we would have been better off spending a bit of that money on fees rather than free transfers wages but that squad needed a lot of work and players like Thatcher and Ferdinand added a lot of quality. There of course were some shocking signings but it was easier for Levein to spend 200k-500k apiece on players like McCarthy, Hume, Hughes etc when we're in the Championship than it would have been for Adams to spend £1m on promising youngsters on higher wages when the board was demanding Premiership stability. That can go horribly wrong i.e. Trevor Benjamin.

[Manwell Pablo]

Thing is, we were skint even then. We had 50k here and there to spend on Dickov and Deane etc, but we couldn't afford any good young players at that time. What Bassett and Adams did was ensure promotion and then try and raise money by staying in the Premiership. Even when we were back in the Premiership, we had the money for wages but no million-pound transfers etc. With hindsight, we would have been better off spending a bit of that money on fees rather than free transfers wages but that squad needed a lot of work and players like Thatcher and Ferdinand added a lot of quality. There of course were some shocking signings but it was easier for Levein to spend 200k-500k apiece on players like McCarthy, Hume, Hughes etc when we're in the Championship than it would have been for Adams to spend £1m on promising youngsters on higher wages when the board was demanding Premiership stability. That can go horribly wrong i.e. Trevor Benjamin.

Adams was three or four players short of doing a fantastic job for us in the premier league, if we had had anything resembling a mildley poor prem league defense we would of stayed up with ease. These players could not of been that hard to find.

We did so well scoring the amount of goals that we did but when you have players like Steve Howey, John Curtis, Nik the Greek, and Matt Heath all keeping out Frank Sinclair in defense you know you have a problem. The only decent defender we had was that thug thatcher, and the only cover we had for him was Jordan :pinch: .

[Mad Dog]

It's a shame the board was weak enough to listen to all the buffoons who wanted rid of Adams. What a fantastic job he did for us, and will do for Coventry. I hope you're all pleased with yourselves, given that since he's left we've now had two seasons of probably some of the worst teams in Leicesters history. Cheers lads.

[Guest]

It's a shame the board was weak enough to listen to all the buffoons who wanted rid of Adams. What a fantastic job he did for us, and will do for Coventry. I hope you're all pleased with yourselves, given that since he's left we've now had two seasons of probably some of the worst teams in Leicesters history. Cheers lads.

Yes I am pleased. I personally thought Adams was the wrong appointment, and the whole La Manga thing was the icing on the cake.

He was tactically inept, he tried his luck with journeymen and couldn't handle them. In fact, he was inconsistent in the way he dealt with a number of issues, and from what I could gather at the time had lost the dressing room long before that fateful trip.

[lcfc2k]

Yes I am pleased. I personally thought Adams was the wrong appointment, and the whole La Manga thing was the icing on the cake.

He was tactically inept, he tried his luck with journeymen and couldn't handle them. In fact, he was inconsistent in the way he dealt with a number of issues, and from what I could gather at the time had lost the dressing room long before that fateful trip.

I do not think he was tactically inept, for a better defence I feel we adequated ourselves very well i nthe premier league under his guidance, the football may not have been great just defensive errors but thats the past. What he did was better than anybody else since MON. We had Peter Tayor dismantle a great squad with 25 million to spend, bassett who couldnt perfrom a houdini act even if he was told how to do it, craig levien who had a decent eye for good talent and tryin to get us playin football but he was just tactically inept (hearts seemd to have progressed well without him) and RK did a great job keeping us up and thought this would spread into this campaign but the new signings bar kenton in my opinion have to be questioned. At least with adams we had the experience and youth to get us straight back up. I was one who didnt want adams to go he could at least keep the team into playoffs minimum

[wirralsimon]

To be fair to Rob Kelly the budget he is working with is a small fraction of the one MA had.

MA continuing wiith a policy of recruiting older established pros was never an option because we wouldn't have been able to continue to pay them.

This means saying MA is a better manager than RK because his team was top half isn't really fair, RK would be top half with a £13 million + wage budget,

Simon

[The Don]

I do not think he was tactically inept, for a better defence I feel we adequated ourselves very well i nthe premier league under his guidance, the football may not have been great just defensive errors but thats the past. What he did was better than anybody else since MON. We had Peter Tayor dismantle a great squad with 25 million to spend, bassett who couldnt perfrom a houdini act even if he was told how to do it, craig levien who had a decent eye for good talent and tryin to get us playin football but he was just tactically inept (hearts seemd to have progressed well without him) and RK did a great job keeping us up and thought this would spread into this campaign but the new signings bar kenton in my opinion have to be questioned. At least with adams we had the experience and youth to get us straight back up. I was one who didnt want adams to go he could at least keep the team into playoffs minimum

Adams wasn't tactically inept. He only had one tactic - long ball to bigstriker playing right wing to head inside to another big striker to head ball at goal. He was extremely lucky to have such a great deadball expert in muzzy to whip the ball in for deane to head in and dickov to poach all the scraps

[Guest]

I do not think he was tactically inept, for a better defence I feel we adequated ourselves very well i nthe premier league under his guidance, the football may not have been great just defensive errors but thats the past. What he did was better than anybody else since MON. We had Peter Tayor dismantle a great squad with 25 million to spend, bassett who couldnt perfrom a houdini act even if he was told how to do it, craig levien who had a decent eye for good talent and tryin to get us playin football but he was just tactically inept (hearts seemd to have progressed well without him) and RK did a great job keeping us up and thought this would spread into this campaign but the new signings bar kenton in my opinion have to be questioned. At least with adams we had the experience and youth to get us straight back up. I was one who didnt want adams to go he could at least keep the team into playoffs minimum

I take it you weren't at the Riverside then? If we had kept the leads we got during that premiership season, we would have finished top half comfortably, and whilst I don't like to focus on the what ifs, the number of times we gave points away rather than the opposition winning them on their own merit was ridiculous. Towards the end of the promotion season, we were heading that way, and it was only the quality of the side that prevented us from ballsing that one up.

As for youth, he played Matt Heath, and that was it. I know I have had a few run ins with a certain well respected poster on this forum, but my honest opinion is that teams need a balance between experience and the enthusiasm of youth. Since MON left we have seen us going from one extreme to the other, and neither works.

[FNQ]

You all got it horribly wrong didn't you. It would be laughable if it wasn't so **** depressing.

[Fox Doc]

Looks like there's a lot of score settling going on here. I don't have an axe to grind, have one or two contacts with the powers that be and have an elephantine memory. So here is why I think it all went wrong after MON left:

1) MON himself: he stirred things up both immediately before and after his departure. He said that Prem P8 was as far as the club could go and he unsettled a number of our better players.

2) PT: biggest scapegoat in LCFC history? His misfortune was that his failure looked catastrophic because it followed one of our most successful era's. However, he still should not have been appointed in my view.

The board had been warned by insiders at the FA about his tendency to alientate colleagues. His successes at lower league clubs were over sold as was his record with the U 21's (his 17 match unbeaten run was made up of qualifiers and friendlies). Critically, he had never handled big budgets before and (with one or two exceptions) predictably spent over the odds on the players that he knew - lower league types with lower than lower league technical ability.

Steve Walsh took the board's rejection of his own managerial bid very personally and spitefully undermined the new man at every turn. Although getting rid of Walsh was PT's only realistic option this action only served to damage the morale of the experienced pro's further. However, despite all of this (and a number of the aforementioned pro's DELIBERATELY under-performing to get lucrative moves away) LCFC were still P5 in the Prem and in the QF of the FA Cup come late March of PT's first season.

It was Mr Essendoah's late show that did it for PT. His strike ignited the fuse leading to the powder keg of tensions carefully nurtured by MON & Walsh. That's when all our Division One second stringers (realising they were all alone on the high wire) looked down and screamed 'Yikes!'

And thats when LCFC started to set different kinds of records such as longest losing streak in the Prem. As pressure mounted for PT's dismissal a delegation of senior pro's led by Muzzy Izzet went to the board to protest that the drop in form was not PT's fault.

If ever there was an admission of guilt...

3) DB: if he had been in charge from the very start of the 2001 season things MIGHT have turned out differently. Certainly we would not have lost 0-5 to Bolton on day one. That's when we became goal fodder for the rest of the Prem.

4) MA: club historians will probably look back in 50 years time and state that his achievement in getting the club promoted in his first season after the Taylor debacle whilst in administration was probably our finest hour (the fact that this success was so quickly forgotten prompted one Midlands Premiership manager to comment in an after dinner speech that LCFC fans, 'deserved a special award for being the biggest shits in the history of football').

Contrary to what people think now, MA's acquisitions for the Prem campaign were highly thought of at the time. In order to throw away seemingly decisive leads you must first of all score lots of goals. Poor teams struggle in that department. Losing big leads is prinicipally down to psychology. Complacency turned 3-0 into 3-4 at Wolves, blind panic 3-1 to 3-3 in added time at Boro.

MA initially tendered his resignation over La Manga as a result of barbed comments about the wisdom of the trip and his supposed role in it by former pro's (Steve Walsh again) before the full facts of the scam and the extraordinary corruption of the Spanish criminal justic system became apparent.

One of the facts behind his eventual resignation is still largely unrecognised - he was expected to leave anyway. Posters here with slightly longer memories than the average fan may recall that at that time there were manoeuvrings behind the scenes at the FA to ease Sven out of the England job after the revelations of his affair with 'Fire Alarm.'

In the game of musical chairs following Sven's demise it was expected that the present incumbent would take his job. MA was pencilled in as his replacement at Boro. To compensate, LCFC brought in Martin Keown to learn the managerial ropes. In the end Sven stayed, so did McClaren, so did MA. And ominously, so did MK.

More ominously still, the very players that MA had stood beside during the La Manga crisis showed their appreciation of his support by invoking the 'get out' clauses in their contracts that allowed them not to stay. MA, somewhat naively, saw this as a kick in the teeth.

It was this 'treachery' combined with MK's constant carping (Steve Walsh MK II) and a lacklustre start to the 2004/5 season (as well as the over reactions of some fans to it - their inflated expectations stoked no doubt by the bookies' short odds on LCFC promotion) all conspired to send MA into his final LCFC hissy fit.

Although I must confess I've always thought it rather odd that this came after a draw in the Carling Cup. Hardly the biggest set back in the world. How long was it before he was 'unveiled' as the returning hero at Highfield Road?

5) CL: seemed like a good appointment at the time. Like PT, his achievements (with Hearts) were over sold. Although a thoughtful and intelligent man he didn't internalise what was really expected of him at LCFC. He sometimes gave the impression that the height of his ambition was Championship mid table.

It soon became clear that this quiet, reserved man found it difficult to motivate and lift his charges (particularly away from home). Considering LCFC spent nearly two whole seasons in the lower reaches of the Championship under CL he was given a remarkably easy ride by the fans. A combination of sharply reduced levels of expectation and a measure of guilt over the way in which MA was 'hounded out' were possibly the reasons behind supporters' (over?) generosity.

A striking example of this was the claim by some fans that LCFC played some 'good stuff' under Levein. Playing statistics show that LCFC conceded more possession and gave the ball away more frequently under CL than at any time since the DB era. It seems to me that you see what you want to see.

6) RK: it appeared that he worked a minor miracle last season in maintaining LCFC's Championship status (and preserving our enviable record of only having ever played in the top two tiers of English football since admission to the Football League).

But was this a measure of of how good RK is or how bad CL was? The bright new dawn or the dead cat's bounce (the brief revival in an ailing club's fortunes that sometimes occurs when a new manager takes over)? Whichever way you look at it the board, no doubt, would want to take some credit for their decisive intervention.

So far so bad this season. No away wins and we've failed to score in 5 out of 7 matches. But it's too early to press the panic button.

Isn't it?

[Manwell Pablo]

I'm used to reading Thracians posts but there is no way I am reading that.

[Daggers]

3) DB: if he had been in charge...

...but there is no way I am reading that.

Even the suspicion that I have been name-checked hasn't roped me into that diatribe I do like the concept of being put in charge mind you

[Fox Doc]

I'm used to reading Thracians posts but there is no way I am reading that.

Sorry about the length - I just got carried away.

It might be worth it if you persevere - some inside info there that possibly has not seen the light of day.

[Chrysalis]

Reasons we 'forced' MA out:

• we had a bad start to the season (at this time point of the season we had 8 points, better than now but this was along with promises of promotion and parachute payments)
  
• he wouldn't play the youngsters (with the likes of Stearman, Sheehan, Wright, O'Grady and Wesolowski all being talked about)
  
• the football was awful (worse than under Levein and Kelly)
  
• the average age of his signings was 29/30
  
• the average age of his squad was 28/29
  
• he said 'don't talk to me about top six talk to me about top two' at the start of the season
  
• he'd shown himself to be tactically inept in the Premiership
  
• he'd lost his passion for the job, should have left after La Manga (as Barton has already pointed out) and we must remember when he eventually left here he resigned and was not sacked.
  

one thing I will say about adams he is good at getting his players to score.

looking back I think it seems it was wrong to get him out, he said talk about top two so at least he was aiming high, and with the lack of young players been used I dont know but I would put it down to either he was told to only use players that can do the business right away not people who have potential in future or he decided because using older players worked previously why not again. He had got us promotion in the past so proven he can get out this league and for that reason he really should have had longer.

[Chrysalis]

At the time Bassett was frustrating but he brought in Dickov and Deane and Adams got to know the club before taking the reins. Yes, that season was a total write-off but they set us up for automatic promotion the next season, and how far away are we from that now? I think another example of that working is Kelly seeing a few of Levein's mistakes and rectifying them i.e. playing Hume and switching Kisnorbo to defence. Of course that is in danger of going tits up at the moment but he saved us last season.

I think thats the reason basset was brought in, look at his promotion record for this division, how many managers have got more promotions?

[Chrysalis]

Thing is, we were skint even then. We had 50k here and there to spend on Dickov and Deane etc, but we couldn't afford any good young players at that time. What Bassett and Adams did was ensure promotion and then try and raise money by staying in the Premiership. Even when we were back in the Premiership, we had the money for wages but no million-pound transfers etc. With hindsight, we would have been better off spending a bit of that money on fees rather than free transfers wages but that squad needed a lot of work and players like Thatcher and Ferdinand added a lot of quality. There of course were some shocking signings but it was easier for Levein to spend 200k-500k apiece on players like McCarthy, Hume, Hughes etc when we're in the Championship than it would have been for Adams to spend £1m on promising youngsters on higher wages when the board was demanding Premiership stability. That can go horribly wrong i.e. Trevor Benjamin.

Agree, it almost worked, we were winning so many games and when you take the lead more often then not you win, we went down with a very high goals scored record especially away goals.

[Chrysalis]

I take it you weren't at the Riverside then? If we had kept the leads we got during that premiership season, we would have finished top half comfortably, and whilst I don't like to focus on the what ifs, the number of times we gave points away rather than the opposition winning them on their own merit was ridiculous. Towards the end of the promotion season, we were heading that way, and it was only the quality of the side that prevented us from ballsing that one up.

As for youth, he played Matt Heath, and that was it. I know I have had a few run ins with a certain well respected poster on this forum, but my honest opinion is that teams need a balance between experience and the enthusiasm of youth. Since MON left we have seen us going from one extreme to the other, and neither works.

you think levein and kelly would be capable of even getting 3 goal leads? how often have they achieved that, whilst we did throw away leads to throw away leads you have to get them first.

[Chrysalis]

Looks like there's a lot of score settling going on here. I don't have an axe to grind, have one or two contacts with the powers that be and have an elephantine memory. So here is why I think it all went wrong after MON left:

1) MON himself: he stirred things up both immediately before and after his departure. He said that Prem P8 was as far as the club could go and he unsettled a number of our better players.

2) PT: biggest scapegoat in LCFC history? His misfortune was that his failure looked catastrophic because it followed one of our most successful era's. However, he still should not have been appointed in my view.

The board had been warned by insiders at the FA about his tendency to alientate colleagues. His successes at lower league clubs were over sold as was his record with the U 21's (his 17 match unbeaten run was made up of qualifiers and friendlies). Critically, he had never handled big budgets before and (with one or two exceptions) predictably spent over the odds on the players that he knew - lower league types with lower than lower league technical ability.

Steve Walsh took the board's rejection of his own managerial bid very personally and spitefully undermined the new man at every turn. Although getting rid of Walsh was PT's only realistic option this action only served to damage the morale of the experienced pro's further. However, despite all of this (and a number of the aforementioned pro's DELIBERATELY under-performing to get lucrative moves away) LCFC were still P5 in the Prem and in the QF of the FA Cup come late March of PT's first season.

It was Mr Essendoah's late show that did it for PT. His strike ignited the fuse leading to the powder keg of tensions carefully nurtured by MON & Walsh. That's when all our Division One second stringers (realising they were all alone on the high wire) looked down and screamed 'Yikes!'

And thats when LCFC started to set different kinds of records such as longest losing streak in the Prem. As pressure mounted for PT's dismissal a delegation of senior pro's led by Muzzy Izzet went to the board to protest that the drop in form was not PT's fault.

If ever there was an admission of guilt...

3) DB: if he had been in charge from the very start of the 2001 season things MIGHT have turned out differently. Certainly we would not have lost 0-5 to Bolton on day one. That's when we became goal fodder for the rest of the Prem.

4) MA: club historians will probably look back in 50 years time and state that his achievement in getting the club promoted in his first season after the Taylor debacle whilst in administration was probably our finest hour (the fact that this success was so quickly forgotten prompted one Midlands Premiership manager to comment in an after dinner speech that LCFC fans, 'deserved a special award for being the biggest shits in the history of football').

Contrary to what people think now, MA's acquisitions for the Prem campaign were highly thought of at the time. In order to throw away seemingly decisive leads you must first of all score lots of goals. Poor teams struggle in that department. Losing big leads is prinicipally down to psychology. Complacency turned 3-0 into 3-4 at Wolves, blind panic 3-1 to 3-3 in added time at Boro.

MA initially tendered his resignation over La Manga as a result of barbed comments about the wisdom of the trip and his supposed role in it by former pro's (Steve Walsh again) before the full facts of the scam and the extraordinary corruption of the Spanish criminal justic system became apparent.

One of the facts behind his eventual resignation is still largely unrecognised - he was expected to leave anyway. Posters here with slightly longer memories than the average fan may recall that at that time there were manoeuvrings behind the scenes at the FA to ease Sven out of the England job after the revelations of his affair with 'Fire Alarm.'

In the game of musical chairs following Sven's demise it was expected that the present incumbent would take his job. MA was pencilled in as his replacement at Boro. To compensate, LCFC brought in Martin Keown to learn the managerial ropes. In the end Sven stayed, so did McClaren, so did MA. And ominously, so did MK.

More ominously still, the very players that MA had stood beside during the La Manga crisis showed their appreciation of his support by invoking the 'get out' clauses in their contracts that allowed them not to stay. MA, somewhat naively, saw this as a kick in the teeth.

It was this 'treachery' combined with MK's constant carping (Steve Walsh MK II) and a lacklustre start to the 2004/5 season (as well as the over reactions of some fans to it - their inflated expectations stoked no doubt by the bookies' short odds on LCFC promotion) all conspired to send MA into his final LCFC hissy fit.

Although I must confess I've always thought it rather odd that this came after a draw in the Carling Cup. Hardly the biggest set back in the world. How long was it before he was 'unveiled' as the returning hero at Highfield Road?

5) CL: seemed like a good appointment at the time. Like PT, his achievements (with Hearts) were over sold. Although a thoughtful and intelligent man he didn't internalise what was really expected of him at LCFC. He sometimes gave the impression that the height of his ambition was Championship mid table.

It soon became clear that this quiet, reserved man found it difficult to motivate and lift his charges (particularly away from home). Considering LCFC spent nearly two whole seasons in the lower reaches of the Championship under CL he was given a remarkably easy ride by the fans. A combination of sharply reduced levels of expectation and a measure of guilt over the way in which MA was 'hounded out' were possibly the reasons behind supporters' (over?) generosity.

A striking example of this was the claim by some fans that LCFC played some 'good stuff' under Levein. Playing statistics show that LCFC conceded more possession and gave the ball away more frequently under CL than at any time since the DB era. It seems to me that you see what you want to see.

6) RK: it appeared that he worked a minor miracle last season in maintaining LCFC's Championship status (and preserving our enviable record of only having ever played in the top two tiers of English football since admission to the Football League).

But was this a measure of of how good RK is or how bad CL was? The bright new dawn or the dead cat's bounce (the brief revival in an ailing club's fortunes that sometimes occurs when a new manager takes over)? Whichever way you look at it the board, no doubt, would want to take some credit for their decisive intervention.

So far so bad this season. No away wins and we've failed to score in 5 out of 7 matches. But it's too early to press the panic button.

Isn't it?

You made some every good points the most interesting one been in that our relegation form under taylor was down to the players, were they unsettled by MON prior and then all wanted out?

[Chrysalis]

I'm used to reading Thracians posts but there is no way I am reading that.

read it, its a well written post.

[Bloomer]

Herin lies the crux of our frustration. We only ever look back an compare. How far back do you want to go? We were pretty good in the early 60's and again in the early 70's y'know?

We have to try and look forwards, and be patient. Rob Kelly is not the man to lead us to great things but he is probably the the right man now because he is cheap, and we didnt have to buy a new expensive manager. Likewise these players are not going to bring glory, but they might keep us in this divsion - just. (The flaw in this plan is I don't know what happens next or where success will come from).

MON was a one-off, he and we were there in the right place at the right time, but he's gone so has his/our success, and so has the money.

Who could we bring in (at little or no cost) and what would they change (with little or no money)?

Having said all of that, we must win our home games and pick up the scraps elsewhere, its the home fans that bring in the cash (of course those that travel are important too for different reasons) and the more we can attract with successful results the better. We have to have more of a go at home (I tought that was out strategy). We just don't look dangerous do we?

[davieG]

You made some every good points the most interesting one been in that our relegation form under taylor was down to the players, were they unsettled by MON prior and then all wanted out?

It can also be interpeted as week management, it's not as if he didn't have the authority or the funds to do something about it, and even if it was true there was still a sizeable number on his side:

a delegation of senior pro's led by Muzzy Izzet went to the board to protest that the drop in form was not PT's fault.

I haven't got the time or the inclination to go thorough so much past history but a lot of it sounds like excuses for poor/weak management.

[Chrysalis]

agree that its down to the manager to make the players onside.

[jumbo mills]

ma was tatically inept