Leave Rudkin alone

Didn’t LEICESTER sack the DOF under Pearson in the great escape?

OOps typo alert

it should say ' and as for SILVA was that great.

Im not saying that our owners arent great and its Rudkins fault coz he brought them in

UTF

Nev

Thats my point. I dont know what Walshy does at Everton, and I suspect not many Everton fans do.
If its control of transfers, he had an even worse summer than Rudkin. ( except for Silvagate )

TB that shows my interest in DOFs. That was only 3 years ago and I couldnt remember it, till you just mentioned it. and I know Im getting on a bit , but Im not losing my memory yet.

UTF

Just searched for Claudio Ranieri's assistants - the only mention I can see are the two who were released at the same time as him; one (the assistant manager) was Paolo Benetti, who Wikipedia lists as a defender. The other (Andrea Azzalin) doesn't appear to have a Wikipedia page but is listed in the Club Statement as a Sports Science and Conditioning coach.

Can you give more info, Nev?

To be honest I actually think that Nev does have a bit of a point here.

Football fans always need a scapegoat. There is always one guy who gets blamed for everything. Conversely there is usually a hero and a person identified who can do no wrong. There was a time when Pearson was the scapegoat and Steve Walsh was the hero. Every poor player we signed was a “Pearson signing” and every good player was a “Walsh signing”.

When Ranieri was sacked we needed a new villain. Our poor performances couldn’t possibly be blamed on the guy who won us the Premier League or the much vaunted Chief Scout. So Jon Rudkin came to the fore. Subsequently the blame for most things that have gone wrong since have been laid firmly at his door.

The evidence behind this is, admittedly, some very poor recruitment. That’s not just in terms of the quality of players that we’ve signed, but in terms of the fees that we’ve paid for them. Much of the problem, however, was caused by our dreadful performance in the transfer market in the summer of 2016 (after we’d won the league). It was not entirely clear about what transfer strategy we had in terms of the way the team was going to develop or the positions that we needed to target. There had never been a time in our history (or so you would have thought) when we’d been a more attractive proposition to any potential new signings. Instead we spent a lot of money on players who have all failed to break into the starting eleven, or even the squad in some cases, on a regular basis.

I actually think that, apart from the summer of 2016, our performance in the transfer market hasn’t been that bad. We appeared to have done pretty well in the summer of 17 until we found out the fax was 14 seconds late. We appear now to be targeting fewer players, of a higher quality, in the areas of obvious weakness. There also seems to be a definite emphasis on promoting youth and giving opportunities to those younger players who were threatening to break through.

Rudkin, like our owners, has been at the club during the time when we we’ve progressed from promotion to winning the league. I’m not saying that he is responsible for all the good bits, but I’m also fairly sure he isn’t responsible for all the bad bits either. There are people closer to the club than me who might have a better insight on his real influence, but I can’t say (for definite) that he is detrimental to what we are trying to achieve with any confidence and I’m not sure that many others can either.

I think you've misread my article nev. I said the checkatrade trophy team was an example of the flawed transfer policy under Jon Rudkin - that's not the same as pinning all the blame on Rudkin himself for every player signed

Rudkin sure as hell didn't identify Ahmed Musa as a player or Slimani. He relies on a combination of scouts, head of recruitment and managers to guide him on targets

The article was more focussing on the one area he is responsible for - which is the sums of money paid for these players and deals negotiated for the likes of Musa and Slimani and I would expect the owners to look at the return on their investment and hold the DoF account.

BS - the problem for me isn’t those players, it’s that they don’t fit it the team.

That to me says that the signings aren’t the problem, it’s the cohesion between the coach and first team manager, and the recruitment team.

Slimani is a good player, and Iheanacho is excellent, but they haven’t fitted in under two managers now - why?!

Who is sanctioning these signing and to what brief? Shakey made it pretty clear he was distanced from that element and hinted he should be closer. It looks to me like the playing element of the game is too cut off from our recruitment.

Ps. Rudkin OUT! Just head Trump is all down to him as well.

Shakey wasn't involved and we had our best summer signings. But BS i except your point. But as for return on investment our selling policy has done well except for Kante but we could not up the price but others Rudkin has got a good price for them

comment by True Blue (U9486)
posted 4 hours, 41 minutes ago
Didn’t LEICESTER sack the DOF under Pearson in the great escape?
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Indeed. Terry Robinson was sacked and Rudkin took the role. He has, however, been around the club much longer.

My theory, and it is only a theory, is that the owners either think he's really good or he's just very compliant.

Interesting point Mersey regarding who is signing the likes of iheanacho etc

For me what is interesting is that the moment we won the title, the recruitment policy appeared to change. We quickly went from being linked with the likes of Gueye at reasonable value to suddenly abandoning the blueprint of success and spending huge amounts of money on players largely untested in this division

After that title win, I saw players being signed that we didn't need and an influx of largely French, Italian and Spanish signings (remember luis Hernandez?) - something different was happening

Now I don't think it's as simple as Steve Walsh leaving - some of these targets were identified by Walshs teams but John Percy made an interesting point about Eduardo macias relationship with Rudkin.

When Ranieri was sacked it came out that Rudkins relationship with Macia was strained with Rudkin not feeling that enough information was being provided to him on transfer targets identified

Where the blame certainly does lie with Rudkin is in the negotiating of these deals however. £70m on iheanacho, musa and Slimani represents terrible value for money - all three selling clubs must have been laughing all the way to the bank.