Open up and close the empty space between Leicester City’s leaders and followers
It was said to be Aristotle who declared ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. Not a huge number of quality players have come out of Greece, so when a legend speaks you listen. Especially in these parts because we have a vacuum problem and it’s ruining our club.
We have a director of football who seems to think he is a part of MI5. And who thinks that the administrative and financial side of the club is nothing to do with us.
The Premier League website published an article in October last year titled ‘Who are directors of football and what do they do?’
It contained this quote which feels especially pertinent to Leicester City:
“[One] aspect that may require more clarity is communication. With some sporting directors keeping well out of the spotlight, the head coach is often left to respond to media questions touching on transfers and long-term strategy (“the project”).
A better approach would be to share these responsibilities too, with the sporting director taking a more active role in sharing the club’s vision with media and supporters.”
Most fans now identify this as where our current woes originate. The engine room of Top, Rudkin and Whelan are out of form. As the prime influential part of any team they have become ineffective and anonymous.
A lesser number ask: ‘What brought this about?’
Because it was not always a feature of the club. When the club became a section of the King Power business (as opposed to being sponsored by them) their plans and ambitions were widely published.
So why the change? I think there are three interrelated explanations. At some point in the early KP years a ‘model’ of operation was adopted based on savvy player recruitment and profiting from that to strengthen the overall squad. And it worked to the extent that the football world noticed and praised its innovation. Names like Kante, Mahrez, Fofana and Maguire benefited themselves and the club.
It was a policy with risks. Those ‘gems’ had to be discovered and developed into the players needed. Getting it wrong too often was a problem. But it was not the only iron in the club’s fire.
Enter Seagrave, a world class facility which would prove a shrewd investment as a steady flow of talented youngsters would emerge to first team ability.
Again, there was a flaw. Players of genuine potential would be (and have been) lured away by the big clubs, Jeremy Monga the latest being seduced. The twin results of these decisions has led to the recruitment of more honest but average players on generous contracts which make their replacement difficult, leading to brushes with PSR regulation which we have not seen the back of yet.
So life in business is tough. Which leads us to the next issue. The failure of a bolt on a helicopter leading to the sudden promotion of the young heir to the KP crown somewhat earlier than anticipated.
He would probably deny that it was a job too far but it is no disgrace to be catapulted into a job which you are learning. His reliance on his director of football is bound to be stronger than that of his father’s.
Would the sadly missed chairman have handled the current problems better? The feeling is his experience might have been just what was needed. Top has shown examples of some decisive thinking and the FA Cup was won under his stewardship but the sense is of a young man not quite ready for his responsibilities here and in Thailand. When things get tough a leader needs to be seen to have the answers.
And there are the fans and their role in these times. We are witnessing the invasion of the Corporate with its inevitable clash with the Culture. Two alien bedfellows. Fans ‘feel’ their clubs and regard them as icons of their inborn culture. They represent the only way of demonstrating their pride and place. Mess with that and you mess with Leicester.
But this need for loyalty and sense of place is under attack from the corporate world.
To them we are customers. They do not feel our locale or sense of belonging. Their world revolves around financial disciplines, their natural contacts are bankers and lawyers. We are just extras in their spectacle.
This is where the seeds of secrecy and division grow. We are just fans but they wrestle with the ‘realities’ of the balance sheet. There is, of course, some sense in this. But any sort of the trust which Susan Whelan asked for from us has to share its place in our hopes and ambitions in the cheap seats.
Secrecy thrives in this ‘us and them’ division and an elite withdraws into itself. From its bunker it asks for belief that it can sort things out, but we can only rely on the results and consequences visible to us from the vacuum of silence created. Our reactions to club policy cannot be bought by a free bag of crisps as if we are sitting on the steps of our dad’s pub.
Trust, Susan? Other boards keep their supporters in the know. They are not elusive, silent custodians hiding from us. Trust works both ways.
Take the first steps, open up and give an interview somewhere outside of the club website. Each side of the ‘us and them’ division may learn something.
