I’ve written less and less over the years. This isn’t because I’ve nothing to say. Anyone who knows me, knows all too well, I’m a torrent of opinions tapped and untapped. I’m just lazy and complacent. Maybe I’ve taken a leaf out of the LCFC book of club management. Maybe this post will be Championship standard. Maybe it’s always been… Time for the big reset?
Reset
Do I reflect on what’s been? Does anyone want to read a post on what I’ve seen done great and poorly over the last 4 years? Probably not. I’ve read enough entrenched opinions about our manager and players over the last 6 months, to pick at that scab.
Am I happy that we’ve been relegated and are having to strip our assets and wages to cope with our drop? No, but had we managed to scrape safety in the upper tier, would we have to do the same exercise as we’re currently undertaking? Yes, most probably. Only difference is, we might get a few more quid for our players of value.
We came down with the most expensive wage bill in Championship history, and we’re doing our best to chip away at this. Despite quite a chunk of that expense walking away out of contract, we are still lumbered with players who have been on the periphery sapping our resources and delivering sub-standard outputs or none at all.
Will our new manager take some of these players and resurrect them should we not be able to shift them? Anything’s possible. Do some of these players deserve another chance? One or two of them I think do. There’ll be plenty of fans who don’t.
New Ways
Maresca is bringing Pep-ball to Leicester, something that was trialled and a success in the Championship with Burnley under Kompany, doing so on a ‘budget’, though it could be argued he did so with plenty of resource that wasn’t present in most other teams. But nonetheless a ten-point gap and comfortably wont the league.
Did Burnley have the heavy weight of a bloated squad, and players on much higher contracts strangling what the manager could work with? Well not so much, but he’s working with what he’s got, bringing in who he can, and the club is trying to shift players that aren’t going to work well for his game, and of course we’ve had to sell some asset players to accommodate our budget and the cost of the drop.
Sense & Affordability
We’re obligated to cut our costs down, and yet our cloth is still more affordable than the vast majority in the league. We are not exactly poor. However, the balance of reduction needs to foreshadow any possible return to the Premier League. No point in filling the team with players who won’t cut it at a higher level should we manage to ascend. So there are players in the squad who we can’t afford to sit on a bench on hefty and lengthy contracts. If we genuinely don’t need them, we will need to sell, but that’s easier said than done. At this point we’ve sold our most attractive players, and at a relative profit. The others not fitting our squad will be harder to shift as it’s a buyer’s market. Those interested will hold out as long as they can so they can force our hand and buy at our panicked rate. I suspect we’ll see a fair bit of movement in the closing week of the transfer window.
Whilst it would be ideal to get all our own targets in early to get them integrated into the team as soon as possible, we are hostage to the loan market. We want to bring in high standard players, but their clubs are not going to release them unless they’ve got a replacement, or they are surplus to their own needs. This usually means a Championship club needs to sit on their laurels until they are ready.
We are a relatively attractive side to draw players to, as we’ve got resources, and a strong team, who on paper are odds on favorites for promotion, but nothing of course is guaranteed.
Is it dangerous to bring in someone else player, develop them, and still have a significant gap when they return to their own club? Yes, of course, it’s a bullet to bite should we succeed in our goal. But that’s a problem for another day. We’ve started our foray and brought in Callum Doyle, who Maresca has put straight into the squad, and of course we’re rumoured to have a couple of other positions to target.
So, maybe three or four loans without option to buy, will leave a hole in our finances next year, but that’s next year’s problem, as said before. There are those who will wonder why we aren’t spending the money we’ve garnered from the assets we’ve sold, but this drop is costly, and we’ve got to build some sort of nest egg for next year, whilst also reducing our wage bill, which will be vital again, should we go back up. Sustainability is key to our future, as the big reset was always necessary should we have stopped up last season regardless. Our owners can’t continue to write off our debts, our model needed to change one way or another.
The previous model was based on us retaining a higher league position in the Premier League with prospective European trips to supplement our income, but a legacy of a squad bought and contracted for that goal has backfired. We became bloated, expensive, complacent, and lost a cohesive work ethic under a manager who seemingly didn’t have the squad behind him ultimately.
Players happy to play out their contracts, and leave us may be par for the course, and perhaps we struggled to offload them before this, but a mass exodus of players who just didn’t want to be here hurts, but I see optimistically as part of the reset. Sure, it’d have been nice, and perhaps better had we done the reset last season, but teams looked at our situation, and didn’t bite, cos we were either asking for too much, or they could find better elsewhere for less.
I think a hard reset in the Premier League isn’t possible anyways. Unless you’ve got a solid team of youth coming through, deep pockets and income to supplement that. I don’t think we’re anywhere near that yet.
Seagrave
I was going to write a load of sea-based puns, but that’d be childish, so I won’t. But I am sure the intention of investment for our training facility was to help improve our squad, attract players for the first team, and help bring young players to one of the best facilities in the country. The long-term goal to have a line of young players to come through and up into the squad so we can build funnel of players who can reduce the need to constantly spend in the transfer market, and of course, where needed provide us income should we need to. This was never going to happen overnight. A ten-year goal? I’m not in the business, so I don’t know how long the expectation is for this to be a reality, but maybe there was hope of within five years a good steady trickle would be evident.
However, in this reset, I haven’t seen a lot of progress in this department. I’d like to hope that alongside this we’d hope to attract some new coaches this summer (whatever league we were in). And whilst we’ve got a new 1st team manager, that with our new tactical ethos that a reset of our youth setup would be necessary at the very least.
I’d also would like to see us out in the market and bringing in some more faces in the youth squad, and maybe scouting in new markets. If we are going to see ourselves utilising the facilities we’ve invested in, progress in achieving our ultimate goal, from an outside perspective, seems ponderous and slow, though I’m happy to be corrected by those who know better.
Glassic Optimism
I’m going to be optimistic about our Premier League demise. Glass half full. As mentioned, we needed a hard reset, and we need to shake off our excesses. We have a manager, who though isn’t experienced, from my point of view so far has shown that his tactics and ethos has been bought into by the squad so far.
It is early doors and there are going to be hiccups along the way. Individual errors, or teams that will beat us on the day, how we react to these mishaps and challenges will be key to any promotion.
We are every team in this league’s big fish to fry. There will be no room for complacency, and we need to form a tight winning mentality to succeed. No room for passengers anymore, and no more room for moratorium for past success. That is over now, we need to move on from our glories, and take a new path. Rebuild and take the club forward to potential successes and start to our ascent once more to a brighter future unburdened by the weight of our history.
sphericalfox 