On the surface, achievement may seem wholly positive. Winning an individual honour is a proud moment that should reflect well on a football club.
But less than 36 hours earlier, Jordan James had been crouched on the pitch at Fratton Park after Leicester’s 18th league defeat of the season and facing a barracking from a furious away end.
Alongside him were players who deserved some home truths but there was also Olabade Aluko, 19, and Jeremy Monga, 16. Even the 18-year-old Divine Mukasa, despite being partly at fault for Swansea’s winning goal the previous weekend, shouldn’t be experiencing this in his first real taste of senior football.
There’s no need for us to replace the photos in the Wanted posters from the usual. The culprits here are, as always, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha and Jon Rudkin. But let’s take a look at ourselves first.
There’s an oddly large section of Leicester fans who seem to relish laying into players who have come through our Academy more than anyone else. You won’t find them in the stands reserving their worst bile for Monga or Page but they must be walking the streets among us somewhere because you can definitely find them online.
It makes no sense as an approach to football fandom. Psychologically, it appears to lay in the same sphere as those who hate being told what to do or how to think in general society. These people react to being told Leicester have an exciting young crop of players coming into the first team by delighting in anything that might appear to prove the opposite.
The understandable hype around the incredibly talented Monga creates not just an expectation but a demand. While some fans are on the edge of their seat when Monga gets the ball, others are pushed as far back as they can be with arms folded. They’re waiting to be impressed and take more satisfaction from a 16-year-old’s inability to influence a game than is healthy.
Of course, Monga shouldn’t have to be handed any responsibility at 16. He should be coming off the bench with 20 minutes to go with Leicester comfortably in the lead. If that sounds entitled, it’s not. It’s a reflection of how professional football clubs measure success by the size of their wage bill.
The reason Srivaddhanaprabha and Rudkin are on the Wanted posters is because they’ve created a culture of complacency which is actively harming the development of young players.
Neglect to scout properly. Sign substandard players on inflated wages. Fail to implement a consistent style of play across multiple managers. Reap the rewards.
The real blame lies with the custodians of the club, even if some supporters aren’t helping to create an atmosphere conducive to letting young players learn from their mistakes. None of it adds up to being a football club you would want your teenage prodigy to spend any time at, no matter how nice the training facilities are.
Even the lure of first-team football is a double-edged sword. The only brief interview the club have published with Monga saw him talk about the sole aim of “getting more minutes”. While he has struggled more than most fans could have foreseen this season, there’s still a strong argument he should have been handed more given Stephy Mavididi’s form this season.
Page’s experience sums up the catastrophic failure of this football club better than most. Promising when played, he was subsequently dispatched to the Under 21s in favour of a place in the squad for a highly-paid loanee from, you’ve guessed it, Southampton who has been underutilised, presumably due to poor training ground performance. Money for nothing and the kid goes free.
The weight of expectation means it’s difficult to think more playing time would have benefitted the likes of Monga, Page and Aluko. Yet they would have had a meaningful chance to contribute, and built more experience for whatever lies ahead.
As it is, successive managers have either given them ten minutes here and there with little chance to impact the game or frozen them out completely in favour of an equally inexperienced loanee, a veteran winding down their contract or a player blatantly going through the motions.
Such is our current lot in life, Leicester fans have been left with the worst of all worlds – dislikeable players playing the same stale and ineffective football and failing over and over and over again.
If the frozen-out Page, underused Monga and unused Aluko can feel hard done by then there’s even more sympathy to be had for Jordan James. A loanee who has spoken brilliantly, save for his slip-up about a relegation he couldn’t have foreseen, James has been taken to hearts in a way no other player has achieved this season.
He’s spoken like someone who has found his home, only for it to be torn away from him by circumstance. He may not be local or an Academy graduate but there will still be a sense of loss when he inevitably departs for a more well-run club.
It will feel similar to when Harvey Barnes exited for Newcastle in 2023 or Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall left for Chelsea a year later. Although they left for bigger clubs, those both felt like unnecessary exits for players who were proud of representing Leicester City. If others hadn’t failed, they’d still be here and we wouldn’t be forced to endure the sight of them succeeding elsewhere.
It says everything about our current situation that Jordan James has appeared the most proud among our squad of wearing a Leicester shirt and, to repeat a phrase heard all season, “he’s not even ours”.
Thoughts turn now to League One, the long overdue clearout of overpaid players and an opportunity out of necessity for even more youngsters to stake their claim for a shirt. There should be chances for Sammy Braybrooke, another EFL award-winner after a stellar season on loan in League Two; Jake Evans, impressive in difficult circumstances at relegated Northampton; perhaps even Will Alves, who has had a difficult loan at Huddersfield but may yet have one final chance of making it at Leicester.
Of those who haven’t experienced a loan yet, there are high hopes for centre-back Kevon Gray, attacker Logan Briggs and the prolific strikers Lorenz Hutchinson and Kirsten Otchere.
And all of this is before we get onto Ben Nelson, another let down by a lack of reliability and guidance from more senior colleagues. Nelson will probably be sold for a cut-price fee to a Championship club that will be getting a bargain to develop properly, but could still stay and build a career from the third tier.
We’ve suffered several wasted summers where a reset seemed necessary. Instead Leicester City didn’t just retain an assortment of disinterested players picking up huge salaries but acquired even more of them.
This summer has to be different. There will be no other option. We can only hope our young players are treated better through this upheaval and beyond than they have been this season.
The Fosse Way 