The Fosse Way

The past few weeks, utterly remarkable for the lack of remark, have seen the club challenge the notion that apathy had plumbed new depths during the run of nine home games without a point or a goal.

We normally publish at least two or three times a week, even if there’s nothing much happening. But this period has taken the concept of “nothing happening” to extreme levels. The result has been more “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” – and not just for us. The BSLB podcast has taken a break too, while the more worrying concern is the fall in membership renewals at the Foxes Trust.

After feeling the heat briefly with small-scale protests at home games during the dismal run of results last season, it seems the club’s strategy of total inaction is paying off. This is not the most militant fanbase in the world.

The long-held belief that those in charge of Leicester City Football Club have been asleep at the wheel was given more credence in two conversations at the Union FS charity tournament last weekend. Traditionally, you would associate young people with protest and rebellion when the thing they love is in decline. But Union FS are seeing fewer and fewer young fans join their attempts to improve the atmosphere and the lowest take-up of the Foxes Trust’s survey on the state of the club has been amongst younger supporters. The club can no longer take it for granted, if they ever should have, that young football fans in Leicestershire will inevitably “go down the Citeh.”

A couple of days on, these conversations were given a backdrop of news from Thailand: King Power reportedly in severe financial trouble after failing to respond to growing issues with tourism numbers and the appeal of duty free. Throw in the club shop being unavailable in the United States for weeks and the failure to sell hospitality boxes, losing customers to other Midlands clubs in the process, and the overall impression is bleak. The attitude of the few individuals leading Leicester City and King Power appears to reflect that of the playing squad last season: people who didn’t have to fight for their positions getting too comfortable and letting standards slip to the point of crisis.

In truth, the reports this week may have seemed like a bombshell but this news isn’t a shock to everyone. It’s been there in the background all along. Nobody cared much about talk of an unfair King Power monopoly on duty free in Thai airports when we had jostled our way in to disrupt the traditional big six. The signings of Conor Coady and Harry Winks were largely heralded when we knew deep down the financial situation had to improve. We chuckled away at the tat being sold in the megastore when we were top of the Championship under Enzo Maresca. There was always this underlying hint that the billions hadn’t been earned solely through commercial genius and that the way they were being spent at our football club wasn’t always in the most effective way.

It’s understandable that a lot of supporters continue to feel sentimental about King Power, and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha in particular, given the unimaginable highs and lows in our recent shared history. But if Leicester City can go on without Jamie Vardy then it can certainly go on without King Power.

In the short-term, there are some desperate needs to restore trust. As the Foxes Trust has recently noted, we have to see a complete turnaround in the approach to communications with supporters. There has to be some kind of meaningful acknowledgement of what has happened and what the long-term plan is to turn things around.

The value of the playing squad has declined hugely over the past few years to the point where the club has very few saleable assets and a massive chunk of the squad set to be out of contract next summer. Yet the mismanagement means money will have to be raised somehow, while remaining competitive. In any normal summer, replacing Jamie Vardy would be a story of seismic proportions. Amid the managerial situation, the noise from Thailand and the charges for financial breaches, it feels like a minor footnote.

A popular managerial appointment with a strong character and a sense of identity and style on the pitch would help the mood, but we saw two years ago with the arrival of Enzo Maresca that managers are just sticking plasters if the overall culture of the club is rotten. Good managers can be poached, but nobody seems to be interested in poaching any of our top executives. Hopefully, more fans will be cottoning onto why that is and the ramifications for Leicester City’s future.

The culture at the club has become a major talking point. For all Ruud van Nistelrooy’s faults, he has seemingly had to deal with issues that feel linked to the hierarchy’s inability to make consistently smart decisions.

Whether it’s huge wages and contract renewals still being dished out to players who are then cast out of the playing squad, players signed for giant transfer fees who offer nothing to reflect the value placed on them or simply dogs being walked around the training ground, there’s very little to inspire confidence that this lot will suddenly sharpen up.

It all adds up to a feeling that King Power are in last chance saloon, but that’s not always the way things play out. The EFL is rife with owners clinging to power in the most dire circumstances. Vincent Tan is still at Cardiff City. Venky’s are still in charge at Blackburn Rovers. Clearly, the Dai Yongge situation at Reading has surpassed most crisis club scenarios. And these are the kinds of clubs Leicester fans will be talking about even more as a benchmark if things don’t change dramatically.

Either way, the great Leicester City social experiment rumbles on with its continual offerings of unprecedented events. This has been a bizarrely quiet few weeks. Things are finally about to liven up.