Come on Mersey

Hiya 99 🫶

Ok, so I’m not going to defend the club for the mistakes made in getting us into this situation. But I can see how and why they happened, and what’s most important is that we keep the club in a stable financial footing as we do so.

Nobody is arguing that it’s one fine mess we’ve got ourselves into, but you can discuss who is to blame.

- Rodgers
- Rudkin
- The Commercial Board (Whelan)
- Top

Now you could argue that all have played their part and that a complete change of ownership and board is the right way forward. I know that is passionately your view. However I’m still aligned with Nuneaton’s view in that I don’t want to see our ownership change yet.

We’ve been over the mistakes and they are plentiful. Rodgers’ ego made him request we spend beyond our means which requires us to stay in Europe, Rudkin said yes, too signed it off. All are culpable. Rodgers was then more culpable for the shambles of man managing the bloated squad. Rudkin and Top for not sacking him earlier and for holding onto key assets that ran contracts down and left for free (Tielemans, Soyuncu etc).

So we know what went wrong and we’ve been trying to fix that since. It can’t happen over night as we can offload expensive problems like Soumare, Daka and Kristiansen. But I think we’re slowly but surely building back and we’re trying to do it within the confines of the FFP and PSR restrictions but struggling.

So, what do we do? A new owner comes on with a new board with a total revamp under a new manager. New squad needed but can’t be funded because we’re under a transfer embargo and can’t invest our way out of it.

Or.

We back the current structure and continue to rebuild and challenge any restrictions.

It’s a rubbish situation. Many people are to blame. Am I still willing to give Top tile to see if he can rectify the errors, yes I am. Much to your annoyance.

Soz for the delay again!

Good to hear from you as always Mersey. So what gives you the impression that the mistakes that led us to this point are being fixed rather than compounded? This is the key difference between us

Let’s start with the first one - Rudkin. Rudkin was Rodgers chief ally. The one who fought hard for him to stay at the club when it was all going so wrong. It was Rudkin that hired Congerton and negotiated ludicrous wages for bang average players. The man who let £120m of talent walk out the door for free

In the aftermath of our relegation - rather than hold him accountable, Top decides he should be the man to review where it went wrong. Can you explain how keeping the chief architect of our demise is meant to help us start to rebuild the club?

Secondly - the appointment of Maresca. He’s Rudkins man. No one else’s. He’s blown a 12 point lead playing a style of football you know is getting us panned next season and that’s if we even get up. Explain how that hire was the right pick

Thirdly the response to the charges. All Leicester are doing is trying to play the PL and the EPL off each other and storing up a much harsher penalty in the process. Their legal challenge will be a pyrrhic victory designed to maximise chances of promotion this season while taking a hammering in the next one.

So let’s hear your defence of the decisions POST relegation. Because I’m not seeing evidence of acknowledgement, contrition and rectification. I’m seeing bad decisions continuing, panic and delusion

First point is apologies to Mersey for agreeing on your quiet point on the other thread before seeing his response on this one.

I suspect that although I'm not in the Top Out camp (yet) I'm probably closer to your position than Mersey is. What concerns me massively is that Rudders is still in place, I don't see evidence of much improvement of decision making - the 4 year contract given to Hamza being an example of something I would find difficult to justify, I can't see what the thinking was? If Top had taken decisive action and moved Rudkin sideways after the shambles of the last couple of years, then got someone better aboard as DoF I would have more faith.

I did have a modest smile when TB persists in defending the club - strictly speaking they (and he) may be right, but it's seriously unlikely to do us much good in the medium term reaching for the lawyers at every opportunity. I can see that any hefty points deduction we get as a result next season will presumably be challenged.

What a mess!

Yeah I echo the apology. To be fair to Mersey, while it sometimes looks like he’s ran off when the going gets tough he never actually does. And given the stick I’ve given him on here it’s impressive he’s still debating

comment by 99 Problems (King Power OUT) (U12353)
posted 1 day ago
Good to hear from you as always Mersey. So what gives you the impression that the mistakes that led us to this point are being fixed rather than compounded? This is the key difference between us

Let’s start with the first one - Rudkin. Rudkin was Rodgers chief ally. The one who fought hard for him to stay at the club when it was all going so wrong. It was Rudkin that hired Congerton and negotiated ludicrous wages for bang average players. The man who let £120m of talent walk out the door for free

In the aftermath of our relegation - rather than hold him accountable, Top decides he should be the man to review where it went wrong. Can you explain how keeping the chief architect of our demise is meant to help us start to rebuild the club?

Secondly - the appointment of Maresca. He’s Rudkins man. No one else’s. He’s blown a 12 point lead playing a style of football you know is getting us panned next season and that’s if we even get up. Explain how that hire was the right pick

Thirdly the response to the charges. All Leicester are doing is trying to play the PL and the EPL off each other and storing up a much harsher penalty in the process. Their legal challenge will be a pyrrhic victory designed to maximise chances of promotion this season while taking a hammering in the next one.

So let’s hear your defence of the decisions POST relegation. Because I’m not seeing evidence of acknowledgement, contrition and rectification. I’m seeing bad decisions continuing, panic and delusion


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What makes me think we’re not compounding the issue is we’ve looked to offload players and rebuild. The biggest issue when we went down wasn’t ability it was the poisonous mentality Rodgers had installed.

The club acted to bring in Maresca and he changed that mentality and got us winning games. We also had a turnover of players and went back to a more sustainable model. And mainly got it right. Not perfect, but my word better than the error strewn windows before it.

We look to have got a better plan to sell players and refresh the squad properly. Maresca may have rigid tactics that have been exposed but they have got us in a position where we should get promoted. If we don’t (and I am worried we’ve been found out like you) then there’s no question we’ve got it wrong. But until that point, getting us promoted was the only task this season and if that happens the club got enough right.

I share your concerns over Maresca’s philosophy and whether it can work without top players. I share Nuneaton’s concern that Rudkin has made too many errors and needs to be held to account.

I’m not clued up enough on the legal challenges to know whether we’re doing the right thing or not there and I’ll see how it plays out. But where we do differ is that I think Top has led the club in the right way since relegation, even if there was so much wrong before that.

I always think you believe I don’t share lots of your opinions and concerns. That’s not true, I agree a lot with what you say. I just think that the mess we got ourselves into can’t just be fixed with a change of ownership. It’s going to take us time sadly.

Good response Mersey. If I may counter on some of that

Your first point was that we have looked to offload players and rebuild. Well we didn’t really have a choice did we? Relegation put us in such a financial pickle we had to. That’s not really a change in strategy - more of a forced necessity.

The question is whether we did enough of that to be compliant with FFP this season and avoid sanctions. What the EFL are saying is ‘no you haven’t and you won’t be’. If the EFL are right then the club hasn’t rebuilt sustainably as you say - we’ve gambled on a loophole to get promotion this season and take a bigger points deduction in the next.

Secondly - the hiring of Maresca looks to be another gamble that smacks of short term thinking rather than long term thinking. It’s part of nearly every argument you seem to make on behalf of the club - the here and now without thinking of the longer term. Eg let’s get promoted at any cost (points deductions, implementing a style of play that can’t work in the long term) and then worry about the fall out later. That’s not rebuilding anything. We’ve hung onto players we probably shouldn’t have, hired a manager with no track record who is being exposed at the wrong time and seemingly have no plan for how to compete in the longer term with this philosophy

What you see as a rebuild and a change in thinking post relegation, I see as a continuation of the philosophy that got us here. Financial gambling (exploiting loopholes between the PL and EFL to retain players we shouldn’t have), living on the edge of FFP, short term thinking with Maresca, risk taking with a coach with no experience etc,

While you lay nearly everything at Rodgers door - what you’re not seeing is the heart of the problem. Tops faith in Rudkin. Your argument about the club not compounding its mistakes falls at the first hurdle, because the person really responsible for our relegation is here and co-ordinating everything

So what you see as a club moving forward and rebuilding successfully, I see as a club that was too good to go down (but did), holding on to players it shouldn’t have done (part of the reason we have done so well) gambling financially again (and now legally), putting our club at huge long term risk with financial regulations and seriously at odds with the fanbase with its alarming lack of communication.

When do you think you’ll come around? Because a points deduction, an embargo, a lawsuit, and a manager that’s blown a 12 point lead playing a blunt style of football doesn’t seem to be enough to make you question this ownership

By the way this is the point I’d really like you to address

‘While you lay nearly everything at Rodgers door - what you’re not seeing is the heart of the problem. Tops faith in Rudkin. Your argument about the club not compounding its mistakes falls at the first hurdle, because the person really responsible for our relegation is here and co-ordinating everything’

How has Top looked to rectify his mistakes post relegation if he kept the person chiefly responsible to oversee the rebuild? Can’t you see the flaw in that? It’s like having a dent in a cake tin and then wondering why every cake you bake afterwards has the same dent.

The reason we got relegated wasn’t because of the poisonous mentality from Rodgers. That fatally misses the point. It was because our DoF kept Rodgers (his man) in post until the end AND we had a group of players who had no reason to fight because he let them run down their contracts

By saying we are turning the corner post relegation you are actually championing our DoF

Hi All,

It's been a while since I've contributed and, whilst it may not be as much as I did before, I feel I'm in a position now in life where I can hopefully join in with the debates.

I've simply picked this thread as it was the most recent and I didn't want to create a fuss by creating a new article. I've scanned through the last handful or so of articles and it seems that some long time posters aren't around anymore which is a shame I hope all is well.

Anyway, as always, it's never dull being a Leicester fan!

Hey KTF - great to have you back! It’s been a long time and good to hear from you. Agree we’ve lost a few of the old posters. I miss Dunge, Your Honour, Joby, Florida and the gang. Even miss Foxello and regret having a go at him a couple of weeks back - tensions are high at the moment and I think the very sad predicament of the club might be the reason some have given up.

Ooh and Nev remember him? Never dull when he was on the site was it