The Week in Leicester: A whiff of ambition and the price of failure
Looking at the big picture, the exciting on-field rebuild at Leicester City has been in sharp contrast to the many off-the-pitch problems this week.
It’s the second This Week in Leicester feature - this time with David Bevan at the keys.
The good
It feels like an age since we signed Conor Coady and Harry Winks. But it happened since we published our first The Week in Leicester feature last Friday, so let’s start with our ratings out of 10 for the incoming business so far: a towering 8.45 for Coady, a more cautious 7.41 for Winks.
If Coady’s first interview as a Leicester City player gave off captaincy vibes then Enzo Maresca’s first press conference as Leicester City manager was a little more understated.
Coady certainly had it right about Seagrave, which has been catching some stray bullets in the wild-eyed search for scapegoats. As you walk around the place as a Leicester City player, what you should be thinking is that you have no excuses. Everything is set up for you and all you need is the right attitude to go out and perform.
Coady seemed excited about what’s ahead, while Maresca was more relaxed.
In truth, Maresca appeared keen to play down expectations. He chuckled at the questions from journalists about working for Pep Guardiola and the Manchester City players he’d like to bring in.
If our idea of a stereotypical Italian manager veered between Claudio Ranieri’s constant soundbites and someone like Gennaro Gattuso banging on the table, this was instead pure Ancelotti - a raised eyebrow and a “relax, trust me”. Nonetheless, Maresca told us we could expect commitment and passion. Which was what the majority of us probably wanted to hear most of all.
Meanwhile, LCFC Women brought last season’s loanee Courtney Nevin back on a permanent basis. Nevin was a key part of the great escape to WSL safety, providing assists for important goals with her delivery from set pieces and when marauding forward from left-back. We’ll be able to watch our new/old recruit in action in the Women’s World Cup which starts later this month - she was this week named in the squad to represent hosts Australia, although City team-mate Remy Siemsen didn’t make the cut.
We also got a new two-year contract for New Zealand right-back CJ Bott, one of the players of the season and another on the plane for the World Cup, and a long-term contract for promising winger Missy Goodwin. Things are looking up for LCFC Women - now we just need a certain German number one to sign on the dotted line…
The bad
If you cast your eyes away from the positivity of new signings and a whole new coaching staff, the club still has some making up to do to disgruntled fans surrounding off-the-pitch affairs.
Tuesday’s announcement of ticket prices for this season’s Championship matches was met with a mixture of astonishment, anger and, perhaps from some, acceptance that things have changed since we were last in the division.
When you’ve got a season ticket it’s difficult to gauge how much individual match ticket prices should be but there can’t be too many people who think it’s reasonable to price second tier football at £49. Expect empty seats or free ticket offers to local schools.
Then on Wednesday, news broke that the club are facing a fine of £880,000 for colluding to fix the price of replica football kits. Our attempt to forge an identity as a low-rent Manchester City continues apace. At least it’s only one allegation, as opposed to 115. We’ve got a long way to go.
The club’s statement in response felt very Manchester City. We’re so above apologies…
The Fosse Way’s miniscule role in all of this is simply to reflect feelings among the fanbase. The general vibe? This was yet another way the club has been screwing over its supporters. I didn’t get into football writing for the bits about the Competition and Markets Authority, so suffice to say: it’s not a good look.
The daft
You may have missed this unless you read the press release in great detail but this week we saw a “nostalgic reunion”! No, Riyad isn’t returning to team back up with Enzo and Vards. We’re being sponsored by King Power again, in “a renewed era of collaboration and shared ambitions”. Which brings the previous era into question somewhat and makes you wonder whether we’d stayed up if the owners had shared their ambitions with the football club they owned. But whatever.
That previous era was, of course, FSB’s sponsorship. Blink and you’ll have missed it, although we’re still seeing an awful lot of them on the pink training shirts in the (actually quite good) pictorial and video content pumped out endlessly by the club this week. Either way, they’re off the matchday shirts and it’s fair to say I still don’t really know or care what they actually do.
If you fancy showing your vigour for this renewed era of collaboration by buying a special edition nostalgic reunion shirt, that’ll be £63 please.
Hot goss
The Venn (or should that be Euler?) diagram between The Daft and Hot Goss was quite crowded this week - take your pick from rumours of Kelechi Iheanacho to Notts Forest for £8million, Danny Drinkwater’s come-and-get-me plea and Celtic fans absolutely devo’d that Daniel Amartey might reject a Rodgers reunion in favour of… quick, Saudi or Turkey? Saudi or Turkey? It’s… Turkey.
Sneaking up on the rails, the winner this week might in fact be our transfer battle with Morecambe and Barrow for - you guessed it if you’ve been paying attention - yet another Aston Villa academy reject. His name is Arjan Raikhy (may as well trust us, it’s a long scroll to find it). Seriously, it’s Levein and SPL players all over again.
We barely had a chance to get excited about speculation we were interested in promising young Manchester City (surprise, surprise) goalkeeper James Trafford before he signed for Burnley. Oh. That’s that then.
With Trafford scratched off the list and Zack Steffen still seemingly claiming never to have heard of us, the next random Manchester City reserve to get a mention was Northern Ireland international midfielder Shea Charles. Southampton are also interested so we can’t mess around.
In the dullest Belgian-to-Turin-club transfer saga since Dennis Praet to Torino, Timothy Castagne to Juventus is hotting up like a Pop Tart in an unplugged toaster. One of them might happen eventually. I’ve lost interest.
Harvey Barnes was pictured in training this week having the best time. So is he actually interested in a big-money move to Champions League Newcastle? Or Europa League West Ham? Or Europa Conference League Aston Villa? Or does he fancy sticking it out and bringing us back to the big time? Stay tuned for Next Week in Leicester where you’ll hear it…err… last - but what do you expect from a weekly round-up?
Thing we learned
Apparently, selling a player for £40million plus add-ons and spending less than half of that on two players makes us the PSG of the Championship according to a load of fans of other clubs on Twitter.
Our own fans are leaning into it…
Anything else?
LCFC TV was relaunched this week as the slightly dubious-sounding Fox Play. In good time, we’ll probably be charged through the nose to watch games as it doesn’t look like we’re being added to the EFL subscription service iFollow.
In the meantime, we’ve got lots of videos of Enzo Maresca shouting “WELL DAN GUYS” at our players as they tap it between themselves and then into an empty net. It’s all very Arsenal Amazon Documentary and I’m absolutely here for it. Although I’m even more excited about the prospect of the goalkeeping coach yelling “WELL DAN GUYS” at Iversen and Ward.
One last thing
You can now Follow the Fosse Way on Threads - Meta’s new rival to Twitter. If that sentence makes any sense to you.