Iain Wright
One of the fundamental parts of supporting a football club is that ultimately, you have no choice but to “give the manager a chance and get behind the lads”.
The club has rewarded the loyalty of the fans by appointing a manager with a style of play and attitude that could alienate the remaining devotees, let alone those who have long since given up on this ownership. Actually, he could unite the fans.
The reality is that Russell Martin wouldn’t have received universal approval at any club, let alone one that’s on fire like Leicester City.
He’s a manager that’s had one good season, with promotion at Southampton in 2024, which was arguably below par as it took the play-offs to be achieved. He was sacked after a handful of games in the Premier League (even managing to lose to Steve Cooper) and lasted a similar amount of time in the Scottish Premiership. He does have experience of League One, but in mid-table.
Aside from his results, his style of play has come into question from an entertainment and risk perspective and he comes across as someone with a huge opinion of himself, which is something that always goes against the grain for Leicester City fans, and the county in general.
However, I’ll obviously give him a chance. What choice have I got?
What I want to see is three things to earn the support – it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
1. Amending his style of play to suit the situation. I’m absolutely in favour of a manager having a style and a belief in how he sets a team up, but good managers are able to adapt that to the players and situation they inherit. Even Pep Guardiola, the Godfather of possession football, has Manchester City playing in a different way today than his Barcelona tiki-taka team did 15 years ago. League One will need steel as well as silk.
2. Immerse himself in the club. We’re in League One, he was out of work. There really shouldn’t be an acceptance of him ‘commuting’ or burying himself at Seagrave. Get out and about, bump into fans, have a few selfies. Show us that you’re invested in the club and not just soft pedalling until a Championship job comes up. There has to be a connection between the club and the fanbase. The high and mighty attitude needs to change, and Russell Martin has the opportunity to show some humility and start that process.
3. Build us a team and squad that cares and deserve our support. Please Russell, don’t go back to the likes of Vestergaard and Winks just because they suit your style of play. We have to draw a line on the past and progress forward with players who want to be here and will give everything for the shirt, rather than wind down their contracts by phoning in performances. Basically, give us some lads worth getting behind.
Andrew Smith
One of the glaring frailties of Leicester City last season was an almost comical inability to keep a clean sheet.
As our managers fiddled but failed to find a watertight defensive combination, a catastrophic Championship season was the inevitable result of a team conceding an average of nearly 1.5 goals a game.
Into that wreckage, now walks a high priest of possession football.
Intuitively, teams whose primary ambition is to keep the ball should be at lower risk of conceding goals. But a cursory glance at our new manager’s record suggests otherwise.
In fact, if Russell Martin does defensively at Leicester what Russell Martin normally does defensively, things are unlikely to get any better.
For Martin has taken charge of 269 games, conceding an average of 1.4 goals per game. That figure isn’t skewed by one club’s bad backline. Indeed the Russell rearguard record is remarkably consistent: MK Dons (1.3 goals per game conceded); Swansea (1.4); Southampton (1.5) and Glasgow Rangers (1.4).
Even in his one and only, unambiguously successful season, Martin’s Southampton won promotion via the 2024 play-offs despite conceding 1.3 goals per game.
Obviously to get promoted amid such defensive incontinence points to a powerful and considerable goal threat. So does Martin see the defensive incompetence he has delivered so far in his career as a gaping vulnerability to be addressed as a matter of urgency? Or as an unavoidable consequence of playing the Russell Martin way?
David Bevan
With Russell Martin’s appointment at Leicester City, there will understandably be a lot of talk around his suitability for a League One promotion campaign. That’s the short-term focus and if Leicester stroll to the title then job done – up to a point.
But this is bigger than one season. We’ve spent each of the past four or five summers desperately crying out for a reset. It seemed almost inevitable after two years of constant defeats and calls for change. This summer’s ten-year Premier League title anniversary has strengthened that feeling with prolonged reminders of the true Leicester City identity: fearless, the underdog, the fox that never quits.
Instead, Leicester have swung the other way entirely. Top has doubled down. The style that has been so poorly received in the stands, even in victory, has been handed a three-year contract. It’s a desperately disappointing decision at a time when the club needs to be united.
The pressure to get the recruitment right, after years of incompetence, is higher than ever. The last hope for those of us who feel more disconnected than ever is that we’ll finally see more young players given the chance to start building their career at the club. But whereas the appointment of someone like Dave Challinor or Christian Fuchs would have bought some time and goodwill among the fanbase, there’s barely any room for further error from this failing regime now.
The Fosse Way 