Leicester City: A cautionary tale of incompetence, dysfunction and decline

Birmingham CityBlackburn RoversBristol CityCharlton AthleticCoventry CityDerby CountyHull CityIpswich TownLeicester CityMiddlesbroughMillwallNorwich CityPortsmouthPreston North EndQueens Park RangersSheffield UnitedSheffield WednesdaySouthamptonStoke CitySwansea CityWatfordWest Bromwich AlbionWrexhamScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsStephy Mavididi looks distraught as Leicester's relegation is confirmed Michael Regan/Getty Images Share articleIt was just under 10 years ago, on May 7, 2016, that fans gathered outside Leicester City’s King Power Stadium to celebrate their side being crowned as the most unlikely champions in the history of English football. Fast-forward a decade, and fans were again at the ground on an early spring evening — only this time the mood was toxic. After a 2-2 home draw with Hull City, Leicester had just suffered their third relegation in four years as they slipped into League One following the worst season in the club’s 142-year history, and many fans could no longer contain their anger.  Many players attempting to slip towards their cars and disappear into the night were berated. Other fans demanded the departure of owner and chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, known as Khun Top. Fury has been threatening to boil over for weeks. Anti-board protests have been a feature of many games and players were heckled by travelling fans after the 1-0 defeat at Portsmouth last weekend. Midfielder Harry Winks, one of the highest earners in the squad, was involved in a verbal altercation with supporters as he stepped onto the coach outside Fratton Park. He was booed against Hull on Tuesday and needed additional security to walk to his car after the game. “There’s no magic answer,” captain Ricardo Pereira told reporters on Tuesday evening. “It’s a lot of things that went wrong. We’ve had different managers, different players, and it didn’t work out, and we need to introspect everyone at the club to see what didn’t work well.” Pereira wasn’t wrong. This has not been a spontaneous slide into trouble. Nor, even, can it be explained by the English Football League’s six-point deduction for a breach of profit and sustainability rules applied in February. Leicester would have likely gone down even without that punishment, having claimed just one victory in 18 league games. Instead, this is a decline that has been months, even years, in the making. And very few senior figures at the club escape blame. Jordan James, one of the few players to emerge without significant reputational damage, was in no mood to sugar-coat the players’ culpability. “I wouldn’t say the players don’t care or aren’t trying because I have been there every day and have seen us working very hard — we all want the same outcome,” said James, who is on loan from Rennes, in an interview with Talksport after being named the Championship’s young player of the year. “But I understand where they (fans) are coming from. This squad shouldn’t be where it is, but we just haven’t been good enough.” That sentiment is valid. Leicester’s players have underperformed massively and have been doing so consistently for several seasons. Of the seven managers who have led them since the start of the fateful 2022-23 season, when the slide began under Brendan Rodgers despite them boasting the seventh-highest budget in the Premier League, only Enzo Maresca has been able to get anything close to the squad’s potential to show. Gary Rowett has been the latest to be handed the onerous challenge over the final 15 games of the season, but he has seen his side win just once. When asked by reporters before the Portsmouth game why the squad had so dramatically underperformed, Rowett replied: “People haven’t managed to get the best out of the squad. Maybe they have got the best out of the squad, you know. Who knows?” It was a revealing comment.  Rowett has been vehemently defending his players over recent weeks, but he also pointed out that it is “not a squad that’s necessarily been designed for a relegation fight”. That may be because the club wasn’t expecting to be embroiled in a relegation battle again this season, despite the looming threat of that points deduction dating back to the 2023-24 season, when they won the Championship.  When Khun Top sat down to speak to the UK press for the first time in a decade in January, he was about to sack manager Marti Cifuentes with Leicester 14th in the division, but he was still talking about a late promotion push.  “The expectation for me is that I know that it takes time to build the squad, the players and the whole club, to be ready to get back to the Premier League,” he said. “The elements of that have to be at the same time to make sure the club is a success in the long term… Nobody wants to see us play in League One.” It was as if no lessons had been learned from the 2022-23 campaign when the club sleepwalked into relegation from the Premier League. When the January transfer window opened this time round, instead of adding battle-hardened players with experience, they brought in youngsters such as Divine Mukasa from Manchester City and Dujuan Richards from Chelsea – talented youngsters but lacking in senior experience, especially for a relegation battle. Sure enough, Richards has yet to start a game These youngsters were thrust alongside some team-mates who had wanted out the previous summer, only to be denied moves. Others have long known they are leaving this summer anyway; the contracts of Pereira, Patson Daka, Jordan Ayew, Jamaal Lascelles and Asmir Begovic all expire in June.  It is a dysfunctional dressing room lacking true leadership. Inevitably, given the huge drop in revenue following relegation, the squad will have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt amid huge financial cuts across every department of the club.  The squad-cost-to-revenue ratio has been reduced to 81 per cent from 116 per cent in 2022-23, but it will have to come down by another 20 per cent at least next season. Young assets such as Ben Nelson, Abdul Fatawu and possibly Jeremy Monga may have to be sold. Attacking midfielder Bilal El Khannouss’s permanent move to Stuttgart, where he has been on loan this season, will be confirmed on July 1. Whoever remains will see another relegation clause activated to cut their wages further. Leicester will be looking for another new manager, too, as Rowett’s agreement is only until the end of the season. On Saturday, April 11, Rowett told BBC Radio Leicester after the 1-0 home defeat to Swansea City that his 10 games in charge had felt like 40, but he was probably only half-joking. He declined to say whether he wanted the challenge after the Hull game, but did add: “I think anyone would like that challenge, to rebuild it.” The harsh truth, however, is that Leicester are not as attractive a proposition as they once were. Resources will be limited and Leicester may have to rely massively on their academy, which has been productive in recent years, but will also face cuts. The young players will need some leadership and experience around them. It is a huge job, but the supporters have lost all confidence in the club’s leadership to competently oversee the recovery. While the fans may have turned on the players, their real target is the club’s leadership, particularly chief football officer Jon Rudkin, and ultimately owner and chairman Khun Top and his King Power company. They point to poor leadership, bad decision-making, a lack of accountability and a general lowering of standards across a club that had been held up, not so long ago, as the model for smaller but aspirational sides. At least, this time, Khun Top held his hands up publicly after the game with a statement that acknowledged and apologised for the failure. The two previous relegations were followed by silence from the hierarchy. “I am truly sorry for the disappointment we have caused,” he said. “I understand the strength of feeling among our supporters, and we do not take your support for granted, especially at moments like this.” After the death of Khun Top’s father, Khun Vichai, in a helicopter crash outside the stadium in 2018, his son pledged to realise his father’s vision for a club that could consistently challenge for Champions League football. There were notable highs on the field, including an FA Cup win and successive fifth-placed league finishes. Khun Top pressed ahead with plans to build a state-of-the-art £100million ($135m) training ground and an expansion of King Power Stadium to increase capacity to 40,000. There were plans to build huge revenue earners outside the ground, too, such as retail outlets, a hotel, restaurants, offices and an indoor arena. They had committed to the training-ground move when the global pandemic hit and dramatically increased the cost of materials, as well as King Power’s business more widely, given that it is rooted in duty-free tourism retail. The stadium redevelopment has been quietly shelved. But while the pandemic was unforeseen, there were other mistakes which were far more avoidable, notably the gross spend on player contracts under Rodgers and a departure from the transfer model of selling one asset and reinvesting to avoid financial rule breaches.  Rodgers himself earned £8million per year, making him the highest-paid manager in the club’s history. He negotiated his contract renewal in his first full season in charge when Leicester were second in the Premier League and Arsenal had shown interest in recruiting him. Again, Leicester decided to award the bumper contract to retain his services in the belief he would keep them challenging at the top. The recruitment towards the end of Rodgers’ reign, with his chosen head of recruitment Lee Congerton in charge, went awry in the summer of 2021 when they signed Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard without selling a key player for big money. The spending was out of control as they tried to consistently compete with the elite, with the club committed to hefty player contracts, just as revenue was starting to be hit by external factors. At the time, Leicester had been regularly finishing in the top five of the Premier League and had serious hopes of Champions League participation. Relegation wasn’t even on their radar, so they decided to try to break the glass ceiling. But it was a gamble that hasn’t paid off. “When we were in Europe, at that time, the pressure from the fans and the ambition of the club were there,” Khun Top admitted in January. “If we didn’t do anything at that time, I would have pressure from another side. “The Leicester story is that we tried to create the underdog story. We tried everything and we did a lot of things to make sure that the Premier League, even football in the UK, looked very interesting. It’s not easy for Leicester anymore because the size of the club does not match what we tried to achieve.” For fans, the recriminations have been bubbling for some time, although pinning the blame on one individual is not straightforward. “They tried to compete on a certain level, but the finances and the size of the club weren’t there to deal with that,” says Steve Moulds, treasurer of the Foxes Trust supporters’ group, which has doubled its membership in the past two seasons.  “It’s difficult to say whether it was just financial exuberance, poor recruitment, a lack of development prior to the setup of the new training facilities — I don’t think you can point to any one given thing. “The fans want to blame Rudkin because of the players that were bought or not bought, and sold and let go for free (big-money signings like Youri Tielemans, Ayoze Perez and Caglar Soyuncu all departed for nothing). There is something in that, too.” The Trust surveyed its members during the season, and the results showed an overwhelming loss of confidence in the club’s ownership and management team. Many now want a change of ownership and a complete clearout in the boardroom. “It all comes down to a cultural lack of standards at the moment,” says Chris Rice, a board member of the Trust. “People have been allowed to coast to a level of performance that’s not acceptable, and not a lot’s been done about that.  “If Vichai were still here, you would feel something would have been done. If you combine that with a lack of accountability and maybe arrogance — the idea that ‘We’ll be fine, everything will be OK’ — then mistakes, maybe even incompetence, are just allowed to spread. “I’ve never felt this way before. I don’t recognise the club, and that’s so much more than the fact that we’re not winning games. It’s also about how the club engages with and treats us as supporters. It feels like a widespread cultural problem, and I don’t see any way that doesn’t go right to the very top. That is where the standards and culture are set.” There have been changes. Earlier this season, chief executive Susan Whelan left as Khun Top decided change was needed. Her relationship with Rudkin had deteriorated to the point that they hardly communicated. The two sides of the club — football and commercial — had become divided. After several months, he announced that finance director Kevin Davies was stepping up to replace her, while there is a new football structure with a sporting director, James McCarron, arriving to work under Rudkin, whose change of role was seen as a promotion by disgruntled fans.  “I was always in the King Power stay camp until November,” says Jack Munton, also of the Trust Board. “You can only forgive naivety for so long. I hope Davies does well, but in other industries, it is rare that you get someone with only two years’ directorship experience being thrust into a CEO role. “Regardless of how good they are, it doesn’t scream ambition. It screams, we don’t know what to do — and that’s where my main concerns come from.” Leicester City is now a club torn apart, with some fans so disenchanted they are refusing to go back to King Power Stadium until there is meaningful change. With the financial hit of relegation, the complete overhaul of the playing squad and lingering fan discontent, it will take a huge effort to win back hearts and minds. Khun Top, for his part, insists he will not sell up. “Selling the club is not the way to exit,” he said in January. “I have to make sure that I complete everything that I did here before I want to leave. Now I need to make sure the club is in a good place. Then, if some prince comes in, maybe yes, and the club can be like Manchester City, for example, but I am sure that is a long, long way to go. “I still love it here. I want to make sure the club is successful again.” Leicester will always have that extraordinary 5,000-1 title win, but it feels much longer than 10 years ago. And within the anger, resentment and indignation at the club’s fall from the pinnacle of English football, the overriding sentiment is sadness in seeing one of the sport’s great fairy tales turn so toxic, so quickly.  Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms