Matchday Chat - Saturday 28th April, 2018

[Stan]

7 hours ago, Dan said:

Right, I said I'll explain it in detail, you might not be bothered, you might be. But this is why we're a shambles, and why us being 9th is an absolute misleading travesty.

9th in the table would actually be our third highest finish in my lifetime, which makes you wonder why we're unhappy - the problem is, we've seen this all before. This is now the third time in not far off over a year that we have seen a total implosion from the team and we are quite sick at the fact some people seem to be untouchable in this strange pattern, and how the manager is always the fall guy.

Leicester didn't get to where they were through good planning from the club. Leicester got to where they got to because of the forward thinking of Pearson, the foundations he laid out in terms of recruitment, team ethic, sports science and the overall feel-good factor about the club. Pearson gets fun poked at him because he's a bit mad and he's prone to a stupid incident, but people really do overlook how big a part he played here. He was always a step ahead of Dyche and Burnley. They were always giving us a run for our money, but we'd always come out on top.

Then 2015/16 happened. Pearson left in controversial circumstances and in came Ranieri, a total wildcard appointment, ridiculed by the masses and with a good reason, everything about him screamed past-it. Yet incredibly, we won the league. It was a mixture of what Pearson had built, and what Ranieri added that season. He handled things brilliantly and deserves a lot of credit himself, but he was never the builder, and that showed months later when we nosedived and looked certain for the drop.

Shakespeare came in, we went on another good run that was enough to steer us well clear of the drop, but finished weakly - not weakly enough to cost himself the full-time role. A three year contract was given to him. He was binned eight games into it.

We had been built all of these years on being an aggressive, counter-attacking side, unfased by possession stats and largely built around the ultimate counter-attacking striker. So when we brought in Claude Puel, what were they thinking was going to happen? Puel is a possession football man, totally opposite to what we've been playing for a long-time, so there is naturally going to be some turbulence along the way. Yet again, we start well under him, he steers us comfortably clear of the drop and then the bookies make us odds-on favourites to finish 7th. You can see the logic in that.

But once again, it's all gone tits up. We've won 4 games in 18, we haven't beaten a single one of the bottom five at home, we've stopped creating chances and our defence is appalling. How can this possibly be happening yet again? How can we be such an up and down team?

So to summarise who we've appointed under these owners:
- Paulo Sousa (Similar to Puel and given a percentage football team, sacked after 9 games)
- Sven-Goran Eriksson (A big name who started well, then blew millions on rubbish and put us in trouble with FFP, sacked within a year)
- Nigel Pearson (Brought back to the club on the basis he was here before, eventually got us up, kept us up, and was unluckily sacked)
- Claudio Ranieri (A wildcard appointment who threw his name into the hat, amazingly won the league, saw us plummet next year, sacked)
- Craig Shakespeare (Interim manager gets the job permanently, sacked within months)
- Claude Puel (Inherits a team unsuited to him, starts well, implodes, I expect he'll be sacked this week)

The bottom line, for me, is that the majority of the good that's happened was through co-incidence and luck, rather than anything real footballing nous within the club. I'm fed up of seeing manager after manager fall to the sword while these over-powered players and director of football keep getting away with it. The owners I think have their hearts in the right places and they've got some genuinely exciting ambitions for the club, but I think what happened two years ago has deluded people within the club into thinking that we're running the footballing side far better than we truly are.

We are largely bailed out by Vardy and Mahrez. We are not a good side.

We were bottom for six months three years ago, and at no point during that season did I feel as close to as disillusioned with the team as I have done on a number of occasions since, including that disgrace earlier. I have attended I reckon well over 500 games of ours and that was the first time ever I have by choice left the game early. A complete humiliation in every possible way.

It isn't that we aren't up where we were in 2015/16. I'm not stupid enough to demand we compete with the top six clubs as things stand, but it's that I see things getting a lot worse for us, and one of these bad runs is eventually going to sink us back into Championship, whilst probably having the biggest wage bill ever seen at that level.

I look at clubs like Sunderland, like Blackburn, like Bolton. I won't sit there and just accept us making the same mistakes because we're only Leicester. I want us learning from your mistakes.

We need some changes before it's too late.

Mate, roversgirl has a weird dislike for us so i don't think anything you say will hit home much

 

[Honey Honey]

We have lost 1-0 nine times this season.

 

[Dan+]

4 hours ago, Stan said:

Mate, roversgirl has a weird dislike for us so i don't think anything you say will hit home much

 

Yeah, noticed this myself, extremely weird.

[Guest]

On 28/04/2018 at 15:54, The Palace Fan said:

@Dan @Stan you might want to run in to the dressing room at half time and replace your players flip flops with football boots.

How do you think Hodson has done mate? I think he has done a good job and I think you could finish top ten next season. Bare in mind all your points and goals have come with him in charge

[Dave]

9 minutes ago, Gunnersauraus said:

How do you think Hodson has done mate? I think he has done a good job and I think you could finish top ten next season. Bare in mind all your points and goals have come with him in charge

If we keep Roy and Wilf I'd be quietly optimistic of a top half finish.

If we lose both of them I reckon we will go down.

He's got a big task on his hands this summer as we've got so many players out of contract and so many backup players that are not good enough.