Project Reset: Why Leicester City fans are taking action
On Saturday 15th February 2025, Leicester City fans will take to the streets to voice their frustrations with the club.
To many outside of the club, Leicester City are exactly where they are expected to be this season – fighting for survival.
The notion that Leicester fans are entitled for expecting better on-field performances entirely misses the point.
Let’s explore five reasons why.
1. Absence of Trust
Trust is the foundation of any successful team, but at Leicester City, trust between fans, players and those running the club has eroded with time. Key to this breakdown is the sustained lack of transparency, come rain or shine – and let’s be honest, it’s been mostly rain in recent years.
The hierarchy operates behind closed doors, seeming to rely on leaked messages to journalists to distribute narratives instead of real, direct communication with supporters.
When the club was succeeding on the pitch, this approach was odd - but tolerated. Some even referenced this as a model for other clubs to follow – seen but not heard, let results on the pitch do the talking.
Fans understood that discretion and stability were a major part of King Power’s leadership philosophy. However, in a period of persistent instability and declining results, this continued silence has become unforgivable as the club appears lacking in direction and vision.
It fuels the perception that fans are, at best, expected to be devoted cheerleaders – regardless of what the grand plan might be. At worst, some fans now feel like they are merely profit centres.
With a lack of clear guidance from the hierarchy, fans are left guessing. Decisions appear reactionary, inconsistent and without reference to any clear guiding principles that fans can buy into.
The same unchecked errors appear to repeat themselves:
Inconsistent managerial appointments and, historically, too much loyalty to failing managers
A player trading strategy that lurches from one extreme to another depending on the manager
A failure to astutely manage player contracts, leading to fringe players on long, lucrative deals while key assets run their contracts down
This frustration is compounded by the fact that Leicester City once had a clear recruitment model that fans could understand - even if it was difficult to accept at times.
The marquee disposal strategy - where the club sold one high-value player per season to fund further reinvestment - was again heralded by some as a successful model for so-called ‘challenger’ clubs. It allowed the club to reinvest sustainably and incrementally, while maintaining competitiveness.
However, its fragility was fully exposed in 2021/22, when the club failed to sell Youri Tielemans for a fee, marking a damaging trend - whereby the club would rather lose assets for nothing than accept a deal deemed below perceived market value. For many, this marked the start of the downfall.
Trust cannot exist in a vacuum. Without transparency, communication and clear direction, trust between club and supporters is impossible.
2. Fear of Conflict
Healthy conflict breeds accountability and better decision-making. But Leicester City’s centralised footballing leadership – the day-to-day overseen by Jon Rudkin with big decisions reportedly requiring approval from Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha - is fragile and highly dependent on their continued sound judgment.
Aiyawatt (Top), still only 39, inherited the responsibility of running the King Power empire after his father’s tragic passing in 2018. This premature and unwanted promotion is also acknowledged as a key turning point for Leicester City.
Put simply, when Leicester lost Vichai, the club lost a hands-on, pragmatic leader with a clear vision and, crucially, the means to ruthlessly pursue that vision.
Vichai was renowned not just for his generosity and loyalty, but also for his tough-minded decision-making - most notably demonstrated through the sacking of Claudio Ranieri just months after winning the Premier League.
His tenure was defined by calculated risk-taking and a rare ability to intervene decisively, even when those decisions appeared ruthless and reckless to the outside world.
Another prime example was his handling of Nigel Pearson. Vichai backed him through promotion and stood by him through the great escape, yet when off-field matters became untenable during pre-season, he acted swiftly and removed him. It’s also easy to forget just how unpopular the decision to hire Ranieri was at the time.
This was the essence of Vichai’s success: an ability to make bold calls and recognise and rectify mistakes quickly - as he did with Paulo Sousa and Sven-Göran Eriksson. Where there was once ruthless pragmatism, there is now hesitation and unchecked loyalty, leading to inaction at critical moments. Jon Rudkin and the Srivaddhanaprabha family were already incredibly close before the tragedy, with Vichai trusting him implicitly.
In the wake of Vichai’s passing, it is understood that this bond strengthened even further – by necessity, with Top becoming increasingly reliant on Jon Rudkin’s long-standing history and association with the club, as the ideal confidant and source of advice.
This deep-seated trust - formed over a decade of close collaboration, may have blurred the lines between professional accountability and personal loyalty, creating an environment where challenging decisions are delayed or avoided altogether.
3. Lack of Commitment
The most successful challenger teams outside the traditional 'Big Six' operate with clear, long-standing principles that govern decision-making. These clubs recognise that success is built over years, as seen with Bournemouth, Brentford, and Aston Villa in recent seasons. Under previous leadership, Leicester understood this.
The appointment of Claude Puel was met with scepticism, but it represented a strategic shift towards a progressive playing style and an acknowledgment that the Premier League-winning squad was ageing and required rejuvenation.
This transition, though unpopular at the time, became the foundation that Brendan Rodgers built upon, constructing a team that challenged for Champions League places over multiple seasons.
However, when that expensively constructed squad was allowed to stagnate, the downward spiral began. Prolonged loyalty to Rodgers, combined with an inability to recognise how a marked decline in mentality was affecting performances, ultimately led to Leicester’s unrelenting slide into relegation.
Since then, Leicester has lost any long-standing semblance of a footballing identity.
Under Dean Smith, we reverted to a hopeful counter-attacking setup.
Under Enzo Maresca, we became a patient, possession-based team.
Under Steve Cooper, nobody - including the players, seemingly - knew what the philosophy was supposed to be.
The transfer strategy has been equally confused. At times, the club has prioritised young, tactically and positionally versatile players. At other times, it has lurched to the opposite end of the spectrum, looking to dish out lengthy contracts to experienced veterans.
This inconsistency has left the squad unbalanced and lacking a clear identity. In January, the club was once again hamstrung by past mistakes, leading to a compromised transfer window that left Leicester weaker than when it started. PSR constraints and poor leadership decisions have forced Leicester to double down on previous missteps, rather than correct them.
These are not the hallmarks of a well-run football club. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that neither Jon Rudkin nor Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha seemingly operate as full-time football executives.
Jon Rudkin holds multiple roles within King Power. Top oversees the entire King Power empire.
Given the complexity of running a professional football club at the highest level, one must ask: How can Leicester expect to compete when its key footballing decision-makers are, by definition, only part-time?
At some point, there must be an acknowledgment that elite football leadership requires full-time, professional expertise - as was reportedly suggested by Enzo Maresca during his time at the club.
4. Avoidance of Accountability
A lack of communication and accountability is at the heart of the growing distrust between Leicester City’s hierarchy and its supporters. Top does not speak outside of refined programme notes on matchdays. Jon Rudkin has never spoken publicly as Director of Football (appointed in 2014), despite having overseen eight managers and over 90 signings in his tenure.
Rudkin has never communicated a long-term footballing vision. That is why empty and lazy calls for unity will fall on deaf ears – fans simply do not know what they are supposed to be uniting behind.
Famously, after Leicester’s humiliating relegation in 2023, the club announced an internal review - but no meaningful findings were ever shared, nor were any visible consequences enacted.
Instead, the club continued along the same path, allowing the same key decision-makers to remain in place, seemingly unchecked. Rather than acknowledging and addressing failure, Leicester's hierarchy leans into secrecy and silence.
The result? A culture of unaccountability, where bad decisions are papered over and allowed to compound with time - problems fester, and those responsible for overseeing the club's footballing strategy operate without apparent scrutiny.
5. Inattention to Results
This is perhaps the most damning of all and certainly the section that requires least explanation.
A run of 8 losses out of the last 9 league games - form that even the most optimistic fans will find hard to defend – leaves Leicester reliant on other teams being worse than them as the only means of survival.
Unlike in 2023, where there was still a sense of quiet confidence and real proven star power in the squad, this time it feels different. There is a feeling of inevitability about our coming relegation.
By and large, fans have already started to turn their attention to next season in the Championship, with the prospect of another rebuild and potential transfer embargos top of mind. The cycle of decline has become predictable, yet with each season of decay and perceived mismanagement, the hierarchy benefits from less and less financial flexibility to change the course of direction.
It is this worrying trend that reinforces the fear that without meaningful change at the top of our football hierarchy, there is little hope for a change in fortunes. The squad is older, the financial situation is more precarious, and the momentum that once propelled Leicester forward is gone.
At some point, the leadership at Leicester City must acknowledge that making the same mistakes and expecting different results, is the height of stupidity. Quite simply, something has to change – and that is why we’re advocating for a footballing reset at Leicester City.
Project Reset is a non-violent protest about the footballing leadership at Leicester City. We will protest on 15th February 2025, meeting outside the Local Hero at 11.30am.
