Lessons for Brighton and Brentford: How the hierarchy defeated Leicester City
After the long-awaited post-relegation club statement gave little detail on how Leicester City will set about returning to the Premier League, Jamie Barnard shares his view on where we stand in the natural order of things.
I have, for some time now, believed in what I call the ‘Football Hierarchy’. The idea is that all clubs have their natural level and will eventually find their way there. Portsmouth will always be a second or third tier club. Wigan will always be a third or fourth tier club. Birmingham City will always be a first or second tier club.
In recent decades we’ve seen these clubs rise, even win domestic cups, and eventually regress to where they came from. It’s like there is a gravitational pull. A need for the natural order to be restored and that the Football Pyramid could crumble were we to find ourselves with a top tier full of middling North Western sides, minnows from the South Coast or too many Midlands teams in the mix at the same time.
How to smash the system
I caveated the rules of the ‘Football Hierarchy’ in two ways.
Firstly, it can be overcome with truly transformational investment. The amount of money that has been pumped into Manchester City, and all of the infrastructure around the club, will of course mean that they will never return to from whence they came.
Similarly, the financial reserves that Newcastle United now find themselves with mean that they should have a pretty good chance of establishing a new prominence in ‘The Hierarchy’ - even though they’re fighting against an ingrained trophy-less, nearly man existence.
Secondly - and this one is, on reflection, laced with Leicester City bias - I figured that a transformational success could break the chain. My thinking was that if, as Leicester City did, a club could win the Premier League against all odds, the fruits of this success could have similar effect to the outside investment.
In a world where this would bring Champions League money, global profile (you only have to look at how the club’s social media followers compares to others that would previously have been considered similar sized clubs) and a major trophy on the Honours List, that surely should be enough to establish yourself on a new level in the 'Football Hierarchy’, right?
I guess I was wrong.
Are you watching, Brighton and Brentford?
The ‘Football Hierarchy’ should give comfort to many. Sunderland fans, you’ll find your way back. Sheffield Wednesday, this period in the third tier will soon be a distant memory. Derby County, The Championship will see you now.
But isn’t it also utterly deflating that Leicester City, after a 5,000/1 Premier League triumph, a handful of European Tours, an FA Cup, a £100m training ground and becoming known globally, are now notching up a joint-record (with Birmingham City) of the most relegations (12) from the top tier to the second tier of English football?
The past season has been a fascinating case study in how to undo a lot of work and progress by those no longer around the club.
Leicester City have developed a genuine recipe for disaster and, in case you were wondering Brighton or Brentford, it includes ceding control of critical parts of your football operation (like the medical and recruitment departments) to a manager that talks a great game but ultimately cares only for himself. It includes not upgrading your senior leadership teams as you move through the levels of the English game. And it includes taking the fan experience, and the relationship between supporter and club, and torching it.
What you won’t read
In the coming days and weeks we’ll be treated to long-form sports journalism articles and radio phone-in soundbites that will try to explain what happened to Leicester City. As we saw when we won the Premier League, they’ll struggle to actually hit the mark because, again, those delivering them will have found themselves focusing on a handful of clubs at the top of the league, regardless of the true story being right at the bottom.
We’ll be told that Leicester City didn’t back Brendan Rodgers in the transfer market. We’ll be told that our rotten ‘luck’ with injuries deprived us of key players over the past - *checks how long Rodgers was at the club* - four years. We’ll hear how losing key players like Maguire, Chilwell and Fofana gave us an impossible task of replacing them despite none being our best or most important player when sold and that none have really justified the money spent on them at their new clubs.
What they won’t address is that we had a manager that chose to ostracise large chunks of his squad.
It wasn’t, as he claimed, that the players had achieved all they could at the club, it’s that they’d stopped listening to him or grown bored of his futile possession-based tactics.
It wasn’t that Brendan Rodgers wanted young players that he loved to develop, it’s that he hated the fact older or mentally stronger players pushed back against him.
It wasn’t that survival was all this squad could realistically be expected to target this season without new additions, it’s that the manager set the bar so low in the hope of looking like he’d done a good job even though it was all unravelling.
Tell the team they’re relegation fodder and that you wish you’d been able to replace them enough times, Brendan, and I’m sure it’ll work out well for the club.
A club hoping to sustain itself at the elite level had a Director of Football whose CV could be summarised as ‘ran the academy for a while’. When Leicester needed someone operating at the cutting edge of the game, we had a bloke who sent a fax 14 seconds too late and left a multi-million pound asset sat in the stands for months.
We now learn that on the big deals (Maguire and Fofana), the CEO had to step in to get the job done and that it was the Director of Football who dug his heels in on keeping Rodgers in post. He should be the first the go this week.
You’ll not hear anything about the way the club began to take on the air of a man that had discovered the gym, had his teeth done and bought a sports car, in leaving behind the wife that had been there when times weren’t so good for him.
Fan fare
It has occurred to me in recent months that the clubs who get it right off the field with their fans often see results on the pitch. Arsenal are experiencing this now - their Ashburton Army organised support group have brought some noise to what was previously one of the quietest grounds in the league, the club are creating murals outside the stadium giving a nod to their history, the Louis Dunford song ‘North London Forever’ has become an anthem for them - and they’ve had their best season in years.
Newcastle United, although much of it manufactured by the Saudi money, have got a stadium where fans are rolling out a display every week. One of the first things the new owners did was to rip down the Sports Direct branding and score some easy PR wins to get some positivity going where there could easily have been more dissent around the ethics or morality of their ownership. I’m certain it’s accelerated their on-field progress to clinch a top four spot.
And Leicester? Well, our club used to be one of the best. During what we can already reflect were our glory years, the King Power Stadium was loud and the connection with the club was strong.
This season, however, a singing section the club seemingly supported has been stewarded like a Millwall away end with hefty bans handed out for trivial matters. Kids have been left crying outside away ends because they haven’t got ID to collect a ticket that was clearly theirs. Blokes grieving a dead family member have had to take to social media to get the club to relent on not refunding or transferring a ticket for the recently deceased.
Fans who previously walked into the stadium like they would any other social event, are frisked like terrorists. Mobile ticketing has been forced on people under the disingenuous guide of sustainability while the club wastes money and paper on clappers weekly. In a cost of living crisis, you couldn’t get a home ticket unless you bought a membership or knew a season ticket holder who could buy another for you thanks to no general sale.
The atmosphere in the stadium matched Rodgers’ team on the pitch: tired, limp and lifeless.
A relegation has devastating consequences for those making a living away from the playing operation. The silver lining to this cloud could be that those who have no affiliation with our club and have found themselves in roles making decisions on these matters might have to find their next club to meddle with.
We were in League One once…
My final realisation that the ‘Football Hierarchy’ cared not for our prior achievements came yesterday. For years I’ve been fighting against the “we were in League One 13 years ago” and “get behind the lads” types as we’ve squandered top four spots or slipped out of cups and European competition with a whimper. I thought they were part of the problem. I used to say that accountability was what kept standards high and if you weren’t moving forward in the Premier League you were hurtling backwards.
Maybe they were right. Maybe they were smarter and their understanding of the ‘Football Hierarchy’ was that it had no caveats. Maybe they were right to just enjoy the ride as they knew it was a flash in the pan.
Maybe on Sunday, as I glanced down at the turf and saw our players walking out with babies in arms like some kind of end of season jolly, ahead of a must-win fixture where their sole focus should have been one thing, - and as I clocked 13 minutes in that we were actually using this game to promote our gold-laden new kit - I should have realised that it’s so far gone that I just shouldn’t have ever originally cared.
There was too much broken for the outcome to be anything other than relegation.
So, to the ‘Football Hierarchy’, we fought against you pretty hard for a while back there. We’ll now let you get back to sorting out a few of those clubs that have been sneaking up on the sly whilst we diverted your attention.
But history also tells me that, as you return Brighton and Hove Albion back to the second tier, or Bournemouth back to the third or fourth tier, or Brentford back to the third or fourth tier, Leicester City will find our way back to the top tier.
And next time, we’ll be free from those who gave you a huge helping hand this time. It’s in this club’s DNA to defy you at every possible opportunity. But when we do, I’ll see the temporary reprieve for what it really is.
