New Year, New Us: The resolutions Leicester City fans are hoping to see in 2025
As we get ready to wave 2024 into the past, the hot topic is New Year’s Resolutions. We asked our writers what resolution they hope Leicester City will laying out on their vision board for 2025.
Get engaged
Jamie Barnard
Genuinely engage with, and listen to, the fans.
A club’s on-pitch success is often symbiotic with how happy and engaged their fan base are. Positive energy, an atmosphere, a togetherness… this club has seen better than any where that can get you. But I can barely recall a time in which there was such disillusionment amongst the Leicester City fan base.
The ‘in-bowl experience’, as they might term it, is flat – save for Union FS giving it their best efforts in one corner of the ground. The stadium empties from 75 minutes onwards, regardless of the score. Those who want safe standing, authenticity and tradition are instead served honesty flags, light shows and crunchy coconut rolls.
Our football club did not show the best version of itself in 2024. The £25 loyalty tax, a gambling sponsor on the front of the shirt, alleged PSR breaches, charging kids to meet their heroes, not offering general sale tickets, not allowing mental health support leaflets to be distributed. It would be great to see some ‘New Year, new me’ from Leicester City.
The Fan Advisory Board should offer some hope – although there are already concerns about its makeup and how genuine the club are about it as a vehicle for change. The Foxes Trust are growing in number and hopefully in influence. Union FS are continuing to do great things which show their passion for our community and fanbase. There are lots of people to help the club do better. They just have to accept that help.
The club will need the fans more in 2025 that it possibly realises, either to help a team lacking in quality over the line to Premier League survival, or to again show up on a Tuesday night in Plymouth, or Stoke, or Preston, in a Championship campaign that might even entail a points deduction. I hope it does better than it has this year.
From sheep to pioneers
Becky Taylor
Take accountability. From bottom to top, on the field off the field, it feels like almost everyone at the club just tries to keep their head down, to do what they've always done, and promise things will get better.
We've never had the results of the internal review that was coming from the relegation, things have gone as stale as it was then, but with an even worse squad to play the games.
The whole club needs a lift to have leaders stand up and say I'm not letting the same crap happen again. On the field there's plenty of experience and hopefully Ruud is here to drive the accountability from every player. You might be pampered at Seagrave but time to get your hands dirty.
From the club, can we stop being sheep and be pioneers in topics of interest, not hide behind 'safety' and 'eco-focussed' false reasoning. I wonder whether in 2025 we could do something first that no other club has done, that fans actually want? (Ok, I'll wake up now).
A fever dream
David Bevan
New Year’s Resolutions are usually complete fantasies, aren’t they? More exercise, sleep, reading. Less eating, drinking, laying about.
So when you’re sprawled across the sofa on New Year’s Day watching TV while scoffing Pringles and swigging from the previous night’s leftover bottles, I want you to picture this flight of fancy: the people in charge of Leicester City Football Club will speak to us.
The number of potential routes out and away of the bottom three to safety look to be closing off more and more each week. As a result, the club’s one-time long-term vision of challenging the established elite of English football feels increasingly like a distant memory rather than an ongoing policy.
The lack of an overarching vision was laid bare with the Steve Cooper failure and signings like Jordan Ayew and Bobby Decordova-Reid. After all, there is a parallel universe where the club had a strong and strategically-minded director of football who made a continuity appointment to succeed Enzo Maresca and kept signing players to deliver the style of football we aspired to play.
It remains to be seen whether that continuity appointment was finally made with Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Either way, we need something to believe in and the ownership has to stop rewarding mediocrity in the boardroom if this club is ever going to achieve anything again at the top level. Tell us what the plan is and regain our trust.
Decide on a philosophy (and stick to it)
Matt Jedruch
Top has made it fairly obvious that he strives for us to adopt a "Guardiola-type" tactical approach of possession control, and the recent appointments of Ruud van Nistelrooy and Brian Barry-Murphy signify a reset of sorts after five uninspiring months under Cooper.
But a club's philosophy is so much deeper than the playing style of the men's first team, so for 2025 (and beyond), we need to see a shift in the culture and values of a club which has drifted from what has made it so special in the past.
The list is endless, but includes: alignment in recruitment strategy and player retention, more investment in LCFC Women, starting to take the youth teams seriously again, and unity and co-operation with the fans.
Believe in, and reward, the next generation
Helen Thompson
For the record, I'm not a fan of resolutions as such. If you want to change something, you shouldn't need the arbitrary date and peer pressure to do it. But our club often seem to be slow to the uptake when it comes to changing or addressing things, so perhaps they need a set resolution or ten, the facade of a clean slate kicking in on January 1st.
Originally when I wrote the header, I was mostly thinking of our younger players. Our teasing Will Alves cameo at the weekend got some excitement going, but it's hard to deny that the minutes for the next generation have been generously given out.
Ruud van Nistelrooy seems more likely to trust in them than Cooper so perhaps we'll see more of Alves integrated into games and others. For a time we were spoiled with how many of the academy players we saw breaking through around the same time, but the line has slowed down of late. It's time to see the next three or four who may make it with us.
The club should also be looking at the next generation off the pitch too. Whichever unlucky sod bought my Wolves ticket from the club paid £51 for the displeasure. Tickets for Manchester City were likely more and yes, that's the price for an adult, but kids need at least one adult to bring them to games to a certain age, we have to stop pricing them out.
When nothing about modern football seems particularly geared to nurturing a loyal fanbase. It'd be great if we could be one of the clubs trying to focus on that and change in 2025.
Invest properly in defence
Iain Wright
This season was always going to be tough. But we've made it so much more difficult for ourselves by having so many defensive players that were relegated last time round still at the club (Faes, Justin, Kristiansen, Thomas, Ricardo). This is compounded by the fact that we are now picking Jannik Vestergaard, who couldn't get a look-in as Rodgers' ship sank, and Conor Coady, who was 3rd or 4th choice last season.
This isn't a new problem. The reality is that we've not looked solid defensively since the FA Cup win, even with far better players than we have at present.
When you look at the season so far, it's a Mads Hermansen-shaped miracle that we've 'only' conceded 42. Even during the last two 'better' displays against Liverpool and Manchester City, we've still made a number of errors and look far from secure.
The alarm bells should have been ringing last season when we conceded 41 goals, more than 4 of the previous 5 champions. Far more than a team so supposedly dominant and well remunerated should have been conceding.
Going into this season, Caleb Okoli signing and Victor Kristiansen returning was never going to be enough. In the interest of balance, it's not just the defence - it's the team as a whole.
Almost everyone we've faced has looked more energetic and more committed to ferociously winning the ball back. The front four against Manchester City did a better job of this than we've managed all season. Boubakary Soumare and Harry Winks looked better positionally too, so hopefully we've set a marker for future games.
However, I do not believe we have the personnel to be any better defensively. As we've seen over the course of 19 games and will certainly see over 38, the current defence will send us down.
Therefore, we have to get moving immediately in the transfer market to bring in at least a centre back and a full back. I'd like to see Okoli return to the team too.
If we do what we normally do and dither our way through January, burning through games against the likes of Crystal Palace and Fulham with our substandard defence, the season could well be all over by the time we get to February.
