“It’s the same old you, the same old me, you get bored and I get cold feet”.
Chances are you’ve heard this song even if you don’t recognise the lyrics, probably multiple times at football grounds if you went to matches during the 2010’s. There’s probably some grounds up North still cranking it out on match days.
It’s not an obvious football song, but it’s lyrics are about a couple who find themselves straying, losing interest in each other and their relationship, but eventually always coming back to one other. A perfect song to portray the relationship between a fan and their football team.
Your club’s form and success comes and goes. Your personal life takes precedence at certain times, like when marriage, kids, or buying a house come around. But even when you leave a ground swearing you’re done, you’ve never been so angry leaving a match (for me, it’s still the 3-2 loss to Tottenham in 2021/22), the next week you’re back in the stands, ready to go again.
Prior sins are forgiven if not forgotten. Until they’re not, and you feel bitterness creeping in. Like any doomed relationship, at some point, no matter how great things were, you need to accept that it’s just not working anymore.
It’s a shame that the focus isn’t on the good things at Leicester, like Jeremy Monga’s history-making goal. With his strike at Preston, he became the youngest Championship goal scorer. Our very own wonder kid, taking over the record from another, Jude Bellingham.
But as happy as fans are for him, it’s been overshadowed by a growing sense of worry. Fears and feelings from last season are back like a bad hangover. Not just for how the season may pan out, but how the last days of this transfer window will go.
The response from a large portion of the away end at Deepdale, and the online swathe of discontent, suggests the relationship between Leicester City and its fans is close to breaking point. Again.
Some fans hit their own breaking point last season or earlier, various factors on and off the pitch were the final straw. This was apparent from the growing protests and noise, and the sheer number of empty seats in the Kop. A lot of fans relished the summer break, until that felt stagnant and the same old issues carried through and remained unaddressed.
Pre-season felt slow but some hope started to return, with the club tying down our young prospects, dare I even say there was excitement in the air? A new manager and the prospect of seeing those young players fuelled a sense of hope as we made our way back to the King Power.
It was a sobering crash back to reality when Leicester City kicked off Championship life with a lot of the same flaws as last season, too many of the same old personnel and almost a banana skin start.
The opening day win, no matter how, was what mattered. But following it up with more of the same dross in the Carabao Cup, exiting on a poor penalty shootout, and then losing away at Preston serving up yet more dismal football has forced us fans to face the uncomfortable reality that we’re really not as close to the fresh start as we need to be.
If you were to ask the average Leicester City fan how many players over the age of 21 they’d be keen to retain, or who they actively like, you’re getting a pretty short list of names back. One of whom, Ricardo, is injured again.
Ok, the club cleared out some of the deadwood this summer, getting rid of those whose contracts expired and selling the likes of Conor Coady and Wilfred Ndidi. But there are a lot of names in that side who have been underperforming and underwhelming for far too long. Their commitment to the cause is unconvincing at best.
You’d be forgiven for thinking somebody at Leicester City had hit the fast-forward button and we’d skipped ahead to January or February, given the current vibe.
We’ve had no additions to the squad as the transfer deadline approaches, one of the more senior players cupped his ear to the crowd having scored a winner in the opening game, we’ve had “Rudkin Out” chants loud and proud, and we’ve been outplayed and outworked by two and a half opponents (Sheffield Wednesday did until their own fitness caught them up).
Leicester City apologists, and there are still some, will find a way to excuse this latest round of bad decision or lack of decision-making. They will tell you that Martí Cifuentes is still finding his way, a fair argument and one that is hopefully true.
The slightly less convincing argument is that there are still just under two weeks of this transfer window left. We haven’t been in a rush to sign anybody so far and all of the rumours suggest we are about to lose our best attacking threats.
This is particularly ominous given we still haven’t replaced some of the last attacking threats we sold, most notably Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. But the silence from those in charge of our club is beyond deafening at this point.
In the ongoing absence of anybody senior releasing actual statements or open letters, the players and the manager have been left to do the talking. We saw three different examples of that post-Preston.
Harry Winks, a senior player we have to be getting 100% from, stormed off straight off down the tunnel, not even daring to acknowledge the away end. Abdul Fatawu posted an unfiltered response on Instagram voicing his disappointment at the result but asking the fans to essentially back the lads (fair, as he really isn’t the problem). And Marti Cifuentes, enjoying that true LCFC experience at last, acknowledged the fans deserve to be annoyed when the performance isn’t there.
None of those are the people the fans really want or need to hear from.
In 2025, we’ve seen local rivals Coventry City having a fan forum with their owner in attendance, justifying their choice to sack their long time manager and reassuring fans about their vision. Brentford posted an entire YouTube video with their Director of Football reflecting on the changes and their managerial appointment and strategy. Port Vale fans had a glimpse into how their club is run in a detailed interview with their owners.
Our club? There was an interview about King Power over the summer, which actually just made people panic more with the classic quote about putting on the oxygen mask. Otherwise, the closest we get are the notes that Top puts in the programme. But they’re brief and hardly address the big ticket items. It’s full lockdown and no comment where serious matters are concerned.
The club choose to let the on-pitch antics do the talking, which hasn’t done them many favours either. When we do get statements, they’re word salads signed off by lawyers, telling you nothing and taking several re-reads to work out what the message is.
It’s been utter silence about the BC.Game debacle and the fact we have no current sponsor. Nothing about why the decision to sack to sack RvN took so long, crickets about the vision, the new stadium plans and…we could keep going.
There are things they can’t say (on PSR) but so much of it is a choice to say nothing, to let the manager take the hard-hitting questions. To allow a 21-year-old winger to throw himself into the firing line by a well-meaning but not PR-supported post. Though any fan given the choice would prefer a genuine post like Fatawu’s in comparison to the type of safe, vanilla posts we got from the likes of Conor Coady last season.
Abdul Fatawu isn’t the only player thrust into the position of holding things together. The other one is a 16-year-old. Jeremy Monga is the other main attraction, keeping fans trudging to games and almost making you forget about the mess around them. But dribbling and quick feet can only do so much unless they have somebody to pass to or a competent foil to take defenders away from them.
Fatawu could hold the key to whether this current flurry of discontent fades away or escalates. If Cifuentes can retain him and get the team purring, it’s early enough that all of this could be forgotten by Christmas.
However, the rumours this week are appearing thick and fast about clubs looking to buy Fatawu. Were we to sell, regardless of the price, everything will boil over.
There’s ingrained paranoia amongst fans given our track record of replacing or not, which is doubled given the lack of time left in the window, but to sell one of the only exciting players who doesn’t seem to take their position for granted would be a sign of defeat. Of giving up. Excitement extinguished.
The rumour-mill for arrivals has been slow, but we often sign people we’ve never seen a link to. The concern is how little we’ve moved in the market, despite having some money coming in. Are we ready to replace a player like Fatawu? We’ll likely need to replace Bilal El Khannouss too. Plus that lack of a regular goalscoring striker is looking worse with each game.
Cifuentes hasn’t been afraid to change things so far, but is it enough? He’s been trying to weave in the talent of Jeremy Monga while balancing the side with older heads. At this point in time, there’s a cry for just playing all of the kids and dropping everyone else.
‘You can’t win anything with kids’ is the well worn saying, but the commitment and possible excitement we might see has to be worth it. Ultimately, if it’s a case of losing 4-1 instead of 2-1, but being less angry afterwards, that has to be the lesser of the two evils.
A few wins and the departure of Jamie Vardy is what the saved the club from a wider fan backlash last season. This time, it’s down to Martí and the kids and hoping that the club see sense and hang on to the likes of Fatawu.
Our next home game isn’t until August 29th, a tough fixture against promotion wannabes, Birmingham City. The window won’t be closed and the atmosphere could be pretty volatile, depending on the decisions made in the next ten days.
The Fosse Way 
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