The Premier League Rise and Fall of Leicester City
In 2016 Claudio Ranieri led Leicester City to the most unexpected of Premier League titles. Five years later, Brendan Rodgers brought back an FA Cup trophy to the East Midlands after guiding the club to a fifth-place finish in the Premier League.Four years on from that, Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Foxes have been relegated for a while. That’s after having already spent a season in England’s second tier following an unexpected relegation in 2023. They are likely to be favourites for promotion in the football betting ahead of next season, but there’s no denying the past few years have been disappointing. In this article, we attempt to explain in brief, just exactly what has gone wrong at the King Power Stadium. How are a club who won the sporting lottery in 2016 stood on the brink of a second relegation in just three seasons? Read on to find out…
(FAO all beleaguered Leicester fans, it’s OK, you can watch this after to soothe your current football woes.)
Poor Decision Making
Football fans – that includes the author of this piece – tend to buy into the fiction that next season could just be their club’s season. That’s despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Yet typically, well run football clubs perform well on the pitch and poorly run football clubs perform poorly on the pitch.
It’s not a hard rule, as Leicester City themselves are testament to, but more of a general one and one that is unfortunately coming home to roost for the Foxes. In general, since King Power International (KPI) took control of Leicester, the club’s managerial appointments have left a lot to be desired.
In their time with the club, the Thai consortium have appointed: Paulo Sousa, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Nigel Pearson, Claudio Ranieri, Craig Shakespeare, Claude Puel, Brendan Rodgers, Dean Smith, Enzo Maresca, Steve Cooper and Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Of course there have been some good managers in there, but in general the pattern of appointments doesn’t point to any long-term strategic planning. In fact, it could even be argued that the managers who succeeded at the club did so despite being seen as poor appointments at the time (Claudio Ranieri and Brendan Rodgers).
The decision to replace positional play Pep Guardiola devotee Enzo Maresca with a tactical reactionary like Steve Cooper who last managed the club’s biggest rivals was an odd one. To sack him only 15 games into his tenure and replace him with a manager with as flimsy a managerial record as Ruud van Nistelrooy was even odder.
The Dutchman’s 15.79% win rate in his 19 games so far is less his fault than the owners, who saw fit to give such a mammoth task to such an under experienced manager.
(Ruud van Nistelrooy’s frank honesty could rival Mick McCarthy’s brutal directness.)
Financial Constraints
Despite having the immense misfortune to support Huddersfield Town, I did in fact live in Leicester for four years from 2009 to 2013 and regularly attended games at the King Power Stadium, or Walkers Stadium as it was known for some of that time.
I distinctly remember that for most of that period my friends and those sat around us in the stadium were incredibly excited by the financial power of the club’s owners. At the time the main issue seemed to be their ability to spend it wisely.
Yuki Abe, Darius Vassell, Ricardo, John Paintsil, Paul Konchesky and Marko Futacs were just a few of the duds that I saw the club bring in during that period. Fortunately for Foxes fans though, Steve Walsh returned as Chief Scout to the club with Nigel Pearson and brought with him a wealth of knowledge.
(Not one of Leicester’s most memorable signings.)
Soon players like Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante were joining the club in place of the Paintsil’s and Vassell’s. Unsurprisingly the club began to flourish again and went on to secure their historic Premier League title, largely off the back of signings like Mahrez and Kante.
The problem since though, is that once Walsh left the club, Leicester reverted to their old ways, spending poorly on players with limited resale value and, not selling up when they really should have.
That led to the club running up against the limits of the league’s Profit and Sustainability (PSR) rules under Brendan Rodgers. In order to stay below the PSR limits and avoid point’s deductions, Leicester could not bring in much needed defensive reinforcements in the 2022-2023 season.
The club were relegated and once again were hamstrung in the transfer window by their inability to bring in transfer fees.
In Summary
The combination of poor managerial appointments and poor transfer dealings have left Leicester in a situation whereby they have a squad that isn’t fit for purpose being managed by a man with only 12 months and 5 days previous experience as a full-time Head Coach.
Typically, that’s not a recipe for success…
