Leicester City are battling for promotion - so shouldn’t I be more excited?
There’s never a dull season as a Leicester City fan. Some would argue we’re owed a quiet year where nothing happens on or off the pitch. That won’t be 2023/24. Where our on-field exploits should be keeping us all busy, other worries are creeping in again.
At the time of writing, Leicester are top of the Championship, though Leeds have the advantage of playing their next league fixture while the Foxes will be on FA Cup duty. We’ve been there since the August bank holiday last year. We have an exciting manager, a pretty likeable squad (hell, I love a number of them) and we are on course to bounce back to the Premier League at the first time of asking. Yet the question I keep asking is, shouldn't I be more excited?
Personally, my downturn in excitement has very little to do with the on pitch performances. Most of the time I can see what Maresca is trying to do even if it isn't always working. Because when we are on top form, it's glorious to watch. Some of the goals we’ve scored and the assists, individually and from a full team move to set them up have been scintillatingly good.
We actually have a team of people who all have good first touches for once. I would argue we have an identity that was so sorely lacking last year on the pitch. Even at our worst this year, I’d rather watch that each week than the naive garbage we were served up last year and told to stop complaining about.
The thing is, I was still pretty excited before January and the transfer window started. Excitement is probably the last word that has sprung to mind since. The signs were there in January and looking back on it now, maybe the ridiculous rumours of us selling Dewsbury-Hall should have been the warning sign. But the club didn’t say anything, so we didn’t need to panic…right?
I was still feeling fairly positive even recently. I was buzzing after the Bournemouth FA Cup win and it’s been a pretty fast deflation as the financial news broke and then grew legs. Since January, all of the off pitch news has been negative and this last week has been a taste of a cruel summer that likely awaits us. Even in my non-financial expert reading of the possible charges and the club’s failings, it’s damned if we do get promoted and royally damned if we don't.
Promotion is the best option (the prospect of fluffing that up for the financial aspect doesn’t really bear thinking about) but if we start it by losing our identity, any of our sellable prospects and being bottom on minus points in what was already going to be a tough season - what exactly is there to be excited about as a fan? Were our worst fears to come to pass, you wouldn’t be surprised if one of the many vacant spots would be the manager’s. It certainly isn’t what Enzo Maresca signed up for.
A lot of Leicester fans' reaction to the financial news this week has been either panic and dread or making a joke out of it, because we'd just be crying otherwise. A large portion of TFW’s WhatsApp group was dedicated to thinking of creative ways to fundraise for the club. I definitely think there’s legs to a sort of player auction where fans can buy a player for the day. Who wouldn’t bid high for a night out with Jamie Vardy or to join Mads Hermansen for a dog walk?
We’re left talking about ridiculous things like this because not many at a fan level know what any of it means. We're not qualified in the legal ramifications or the possible get out of jail free cards that could be deployed. Trying to wrap your head around the various rules and how we’ve possibly breached them seems pretty mind-boggling. There’s some great content out there but it’s all speculative.
I’d rather ignore it and concentrate on football. But that’s pretty tough when it feels like it’s just hanging there and my mind is playing out a scene of Barry Keoghan’s character in the Banshees of Inisherin. Daring to think about us signing Callum Doyle? There goes that dream. Getting to see Mads Hermansen grow and develop as a goalkeeper at Leicester? He’s one of the players we could get decent money for so we can kiss that dream goodbye too. The stadium expansion and development? Presume that’ll be gathering dust now.
What stinks the most is the timing of it all. It’s less than ideal if you’re Maresca or the squad, how much they can just carry on with no worries is unknown, but it must affect some of them. I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy either in the timing, but it all transpiring when we’re already feeling the pressure and need to be focused isn’t ideal. I had also allowed myself to believe that maybe this was going to be a quieter season for us, less off-field moments of insanity.
Fans are quite simple creatures if you boil it down. We might like to bemoan the current style of play or wishing we scored more goals, conceded less ridiculous goals. But ultimately we all just want to enjoy turning up to see our team and hold onto the hopes and dreams of success in whatever format feels expected or achievable. Even if you can switch off from the financial talk and enjoy the nail-biter of the title race we find ourselves in, you’ll have to think about the money side eventually.
We should be looking forward to getting back to the Premier League, about what jigsaw pieces we need to add ahead of the new season. Instead, it’s more like cobbling together some manky looking coins to see if we can crowdfund just hanging onto the ones we’ve got if funds are as dire as they sound. Every other club will know our situation too so we should expect some horrific haggling and low balling offers.
Remember the excitement of a few weeks ago when the club said they were trying to get a headstart on making Abdul Fatawu permanent? It’s all gone a bit quiet; can we even do it now? If June is crunch time, we need to trust in the club to come up with a solution in just months or face a second summer of discontent in a row. Giving trust freely to the same decision makers when it’s not really been fully earned back yet after the shambles of last season is hard.
Even for a club like us the prospect of competing in the Premier League again was going to be a tough ask before all of this came to light. You know the amount of victories you’ll see, and maybe even goals you’ll score will dramatically decrease and there’s the return of not celebrating goals properly because of VAR.
The three promoted clubs are all struggling in their own ways, with less money worries hanging over them (at least publicly anyway). They’re all balancing the tightrope of needing to improve the squad but on a budget to offset the risk of you being relegated straight away, and we’ll be no different. Then you’re entering the yo-yo club territory we’ve been in before or worse, finding yourself down and staying down for a little while.
This isn’t to sound as if ‘woe is us’. Despite the news, we’re likely still in a healthier position than some clubs, it’s just a bit of a reality check. It makes everything feel a little hollow currently and a lot less fun than it should be. Even trying to enjoy the Vardy display at Hull, my mind wandered back to these worries that we have no control over in the stands.
For a lot of us, we still remember the grim days of administration back in 2002. Seeing other teams fans crow about our current position, same as in 2001, is especially a kicker. We aren’t special and if we’re at risk or have already breached rules, we’ll not be the last club. Look at the charges for Everton and Nottingham Forest. There’ll be more and you start to wonder what the point of trying to compete with the big boys is; we pushed for a while and then we risked a bit too much and didn’t manage ourselves well in the fallout. We’re a cautionary tale.
There were moments in 2002 where I sat and contemplated what I’d do if we ceased to exist and while there’s no indication we’re at risk of having to do the same thing now, it brings back those memories.
I want to be excited about our young players, our still new manager and the possibility of where we could be in May, it’s just a bit distracting with all of the unknowns looming. The best we can do is hang onto seeing Vardy and Abdul combine for a well worked goal and hope it all works itself out in the background.
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