The Fosse Way

Enzo Maresca has finally left Leicester City. Amid the immediate fallout, two sentences of almost identical length have leapt off the page.

Firstly, there was this in David Ornstein’s report for The Athletic on Enzo Maresca’s impending departure to Chelsea:

“Chelsea are said to be sensitive to the disruption caused to Leicester ahead of their return to the Premier League and appreciative of the class and professionalism they displayed throughout.”

Then, on Monday afternoon, we had this gem from our very own club website:

“Given the promising foundations established during his single season in charge, the Club is disappointed that Enzo has decided at this stage that he no longer wants to be part of our vision.”

The sentence in Ornstein’s report is the kind of patronising, vomit-inducing big six client journalism that offers nothing to anyone, portraying Leicester as little more than a feeder club to one of those most responsible for the financial hell that is top-level English football.

Nevertheless, it opened up an avenue for Leicester to show professionalism in the way Maresca’s departure was handled publicly. To quickly move on, and to reassure fans of the future by using words with weight.

Instead, we got something vague and half-hearted that looked like it had been thrown together by someone halfway out the office at the end of the day. Fans don’t always require a rallying cry, but it’s occasionally nice to read something more than the bare minimum.

Look on the Brighton side

It’s interesting to look back at the statement published by Brighton when Chelsea last poached an up-and-coming manager. That was Graham Potter in September 2022.

Paul Barber, the deputy chairman and one of three separate members of the club’s executive to be quoted, says:

“Tony [Bloom, chairman], David [Weir, technical director] and I have already begun work to replace Graham and to secure the very best candidate for the club.”

I have no doubt there will be unprecedented interest in the job, not least because of the excellent work done by Graham but also because of the footballing infrastructure in place at our club.”

Compare and contrast:

“The Board will now commence the process of appointing a new manager that will lead our return to the Premier League and continue the implementation of our long-term vision for the success of Leicester City Football Club.”

Where Leicester just talk about a vision, Brighton illustrate it. Who’s going to be leading the hunt for the new manager, and relaying the fact they’ve already started that hunt. They talk about why it’s an attractive job. They ended up, of course, appointing Roberto De Zerbi and qualifying for Europe.

After De Zerbi’s exit, Brighton are experiencing a certain level of flux themselves this summer and this is certainly not a declaration that they are perfect or that we should copy everything they do. But at least they always give the impression that they’re trying.

Enzo and onwards

For all their faults, Leicester City’s board members are actually pretty good at appointing new managers – the vast majority of those brought in under the King Power / Rudkin axis have been pretty much exactly what the club needed at the time.

Enzo Maresca continued that tradition. He was the perfect sticking plaster for Leicester’s long-term problems, as evidenced not just by the Championship title or the £10million compensation windfall but the implementation of a tactical plan that largely overrode the incompetence above him.

Last summer, after the internal review that never was, Leicester’s best way back to the big time was to appoint a big personality – someone who would impose himself on a squad and a club that had been drifting.

But Maresca could only ever be a sticking plaster. The problems caused by the huge wages dished out to mediocre players are longer-lasting than even a promotion to the richest league in the world can solve. And the words echoing louder than any current reference to a grand vision are those of Susan Whelan a couple of months ago, when the record £89.7million loss was announced.

“After a sustained period of growth and success for the club during the last decade, the 2022-23 season was a significant setback, the consequences of which will be felt for some time.”

This is probably the real reason Leicester can’t go into any detail about the owners’ big vision. Because, despite numerous transfer windows when we haven’t been able to buy and announcements of record losses threatening to derail such an important season, the worst of it hasn’t hit yet.

BBC Radio Leicester called their excellent recent three-part season review podcast series “The End of an Error”. But the error was wider than relegation and the resolution will take longer than promotion.

Seemingly inevitably, the big hit will come with the club’s first ever points deduction. The mere threat downgrades the calibre of manager the club will be able to attract. We’re already primed for a firefighter, someone with little or no experience at the top level, someone who can get the most out of a squad with few resources.

The long road back to reality

While that Brighton statement looks good, it’s obvious why we don’t get any detail about who might be leading the quest for Maresca’s replacement.

The most we’ve ever heard about Top’s footballing acumen is his request that we “play like Manchester City”. Translate that into Latin and stick it on the club crest.

The club also can’t mention Jon Rudkin, because even the best player in the club’s history is happy to get off an open-top bus and throw Rudkin back under it while tens of thousands cheer his every word. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else with any kind of profile in the football decision-making ranks, which remains one of the biggest issues of all.

This sounds gloomy, but there’s still reason to reflect optimism using specifics rather than one vague allusion to a vision. In the absence of anything else, the vision is presumably still to challenge the established elite of English football.

It may be a long road back to that being a reality, and it may never happen, but we do have a couple of the building blocks in place – a world-class training ground, a crop of excellent youngsters on the verge of breaking into the first team. 

Would the club invite ridicule by laying out the vision more often in more detail? Perhaps, but the ongoing lack of communication, accountability and transparency is worse.

John Percy’s Telegraph article referenced Maresca’s U-turn after initially agreeing to stay this summer prior to Chelsea’s interest, but the supposed end-of-season talks about things like transfer budgets, PSR or the ludicrous Sensi situation feels like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Maresca not being kept up to speed with Leicester’s financial situation is clearly not the reason why he took the many millions on offer at Stamford Bridge, but it wouldn’t have helped him forge any lasting love for the club. After similar complaints from Brendan Rodgers, there will always be a lingering fear that the director of football will continue to undermine and alienate the manager of the football club.

Maresca appeared to be making inroads into influencing that side of things. But, as with Rodgers, the detective was shot before he could bring the suspect to rights. Or he removed himself from the case, in pursuit of another flaky vision.

Despite it all, this is a fanbase desperate to get on board with our club again. We may continually be left dumbstruck by the way senior figures lurch from complacency to arrogance and back again, but it wasn’t so long ago that all was rosy. Another summer presents the opportunity for positive changes and a clear appetite to change bad practices.