A lot can change during a three-week international break, and then seemingly nothing can change at all.
One notable change pre-match was ‘Chief Football Officer’ Jon Rudkin finding his voice a decade since he last spoke publicly. There wasn’t much substance in his BBC Radio Leicester interview, but he did at least acknowledge the role he has played in one of the biggest declines seen in English football.
The long-term objective? Get back to the Premier League. The short-term objective? Get promoted this season. It’s just the October 2026 version of the January 2026 “we promote”, and it’s hard not to conclude that the lack of any explanation of how is because there is no detailed plan to achieve it. When senior leaders like Rudkin and Top do speak, we get these fluffy statements because that’s all there is.
The surprise expressed by the BBC Radio Leicester team suggested the interview had been sprung upon them, leaving little time to prepare or think through the questions.
There were some good lines of enquiry considering, but it would have been nice to hear Rudkin explain why a bigger role as Chief Football Officer was justified given his track record, why, if he truly accepts responsibility, he hadn’t offered his resignation, and besides saying his role was to “oversee the men’s and women’s teams”, exactly what he is accountable for.
It doesn’t escape attention that the person granted the interview, Owynn Palmer-Atkin, has at times worked on the club’s own media channels already this season. That might explain both the choice of interviewer and why the questions only reached a certain point.
That all of this happened hastily before Robbie Savage’s Peterborough visited Russell Martin’s floundering Leicester simply made it the latest instalment in a long series of bad decisions by those running Leicester City Football Club. More of the same.
The team news brought some depressing familiarity: Thomas at left back, Okoli at centre half and Decordova-Reid as the number 10. The club has pillaged a plethora of midfielders this summer, Howell, Watson, Chaplin, Cullen, Doyle and, most recently, Smallbone, to add to promising talents like Alves, Braybrooke and Page, but Decordova-Reid continues to get opportunities to disappoint. Semper Eadem.
Peterborough had brought a Premier League-sized away end and the opening 10 minutes were lively. The international break felt like an opportunity for a fresh start.
Emil Riis, who already looks capable of staking a claim as the best striker in the division, flashed an early shot just wide and Will Alves off the left wing looked one of Leicester’s more creative outlets. Peterborough threatened too, and it looked like either side could get the opener.
Bade Aluko, brought into the team at right back, struggled. The lively Owura Edwards seemed to have the beating of him every time. When Aluko failed to get tight, Edwards breezed past him. When he got tight, Edwards turned him with ease.
Then came the opening goal in the 12th minute. With the hot topic around Leicester centring on style of play, how fitting that Peterborough’s opener came from a punt into the channel and a winger running at goal. Edwards faced up Aluko, who was nowhere near close enough, chopped inside and curled a fine finish into the far corner. One end of the pitch to the other in under 10 seconds.
That the second goal in the 36th minute came in similar fashion, this time from a long ball into the right-hand channel where Luke Thomas (again) failed to deal with a high ball dropping behind him, was dripping with schadenfreude for those convinced Martin’s style is incompatible with this division, and perhaps with modern English football altogether.
Leicester are like a sandcastle. Sometimes it looks nice. You can appreciate the craft that has gone into making it. It can even give the impression of substance. But it doesn’t endure, and it doesn’t take much to make it crumble. A bit of physicality, directness or aggression and it’s falling apart.
Martin is wedded to building elaborate sand sculptures in the face of crashing waves from unspectacular places like Oxford, Stevenage and Peterborough. As his latest work of art dissolves away, he stands bemused that the walls fail to repel tides that have washed over his teams time and again.
A video circulated after the Stevenage defeat showing Martin engaging with a fan outside the stadium who was questioning the style of play. The exchange essentially boiled down to a supporter pleading with him to abandon his principles slightly and Martin remaining steadfast, citing shot numbers as evidence there is something to get behind.
He has been praised for engaging and clearly didn’t know he was being filmed. But it also exposed an arrogance in the way he dismissed any suggestion that his approach could be flawed. “You’ve been **** since Enzo” was one of his retorts, highly ironic given his failing predecessors also tried to play a slow build-from-the-back style. He’s simply the next instalment of a manager recruited to “play like Man City”, the extent of our incompetent owner’s strategic vision.
There is an arrogance that has beset our club. It has led them to ignore the findings of the Foxes Trust End of Season Survey, completed by 4,413 fans, and to treat supporters with contempt. Whether it’s ticket pricing, the away-ticket priority system, poor communication or a social media team still tweeting kick-off times in Accra, Cairo and Brasilia for a League One fixture that people in Leicester are barely interested in watching.
The club’s approach is: continue acting like you’re a Premier League club and you’ll become one again. Martin’s is: continue playing like you’re Barcelona and you’ll become them eventually.
In the build-up to half-time, the home crowd were Ole’ing pass after pass, chanting about “sideways and backwards everywhere we go” and joining in with away-end taunts about Martin getting sacked in the morning.
This is where Martin is paying a price for his lack of humility. With even a little introspection, he’d have acknowledged the scepticism that greeted his appointment and engaged in an open discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of his philosophy. Instead, he has doubled down and treated any bit of criticism with an almost belligerent contempt.
As O’Hora diverted the ball into his own net to make it 0-3 on the stroke of half-time, vocal discontent turned into stunned silence as people trudged home en masse.
What happens to a fanbase when you subject it to disappointment year after year? When there’s no accountability for failure? When poor standards persist and supporters aren’t engaged with? We’re seeing it play out before our eyes. They give up. They become apathetic. “Nothing will change, so what’s the point?”
The official attendance showed 29,839 (lol). Less than half that number stayed to see a second half that felt like an inevitable conclusion.
Peterborough threatened to make it 0-4 and should have converted at least one of their chances before Riis, looking like that capable finisher again, slotted home to make it 1-3. More concerning than the defensive fragility, though, was Leicester’s lack of intensity in trying to get back into the game.
Lundstram dropped deep to collect possession and build from the back, McCarthy looked uncomfortable being asked to play with his feet, and midfielders like Page, Doyle (who threatened in patches) and Braybrooke kept the ball tidily without really progressing it.
Peterborough, meanwhile, were everything Leicester are not: committed, direct, resolute and dynamic. Savage had his players united behind a simple approach that played to their strengths and brought a whole away end with him immediately in his first match in charge.
Prior to the match, Rudkin had said: “it’s important that we listen to criticism and act and respond”. Well, perhaps the club should listen to what it was told today. Sack Martin and abandon this obsession with possession football that has seen Leicester regress while the game moves on and opponents see success with an increasingly direct style.
You wait ages for an interview with someone from the football operation and then two come along at once. James McCarron also spoke to BBC Radio Leicester pre-match about Martin’s appointment: “We really wanted a manager who could impose a certain style of football we fully believe in as a football club that helps us to win matches. He’s implemented a clear style wherever he’s been and we feel if we can give him the right squad, the right support and the right directional alignment he can be successful just like he was at Southampton.”
That quote aged like milk in the 90 minutes that followed. The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.
