Leicester review: We’re going to finish ‘tenth’ forever

Another season looks to be petering out. There was a time when we held so much promise. Our purple patch was in full flow. We had things to compete for and all was looking well. But now we’re here, loss after loss, a skinny limited squad and the ones left standing hobbling around on one leg, pushed past their limit and past their experience.

All the promise of a few months ago, at this stage, looks like it’s heading towards another ‘can we finish above P****e?’ season. Yes, that again. Sadly that’ll be it unless we start to address what our intentions are. 

The definition of madness, you hear people say, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Yes we might finish 6th, we might finish 12th. But wherever we finish, with the system as it is, we’re going to be ‘tenth’ forever. 

The stated intention of the club was to become a ‘top ten Premier League side’ - well done, we’ve all achieved that. But it’s becoming clearer that this is all we’ll amount to unless we shift our perspective of what’s acceptable. Late stage cup ties will be lost, mediocre home games against relegation fodder will end in draws and we’ll be doing the same all again next year. 

Is that what you want? To be also-rans, to sit on The Terrace (Big Dick’s)  and eat your chicken sando and feel grateful because fifteen years ago we were at Withdean? Not for me, I don’t like that and I want this team to be as good as I know they can be. 

Saturday was a let down, a real let down. Even before kick off, looking at the line up at Big Dick’s Blade Runner-esque ‘bamboozle you senseless so you buy more shit’ jumbo screens the team sheet looked disappointing. Why not Cashin? Where’s Wieffer? Square pegs in round holes were picked. The football-ing side of the club clearly doesn’t think our new guys are better than what we have already.

The game was a new milestone in mediocrity. Disinterested, rudderless, exhausted, about as much incision as Carlos Baleda gumming his nightly crayons. A team which looked out of ideas and out of puff for the last twenty minutes all looking around at each other saying ‘who’s going to win this for us?’ The answer was no one, they're all playing for other clubs or sat in the stands.

But this is what we are with the system as is and the players are the first example of why we’ll finish ‘tenth’ forever… 

Good recruitment is evolution. The new guy should be slightly better than the previous, or the really good guy replaced with someone just as good. That’s the way we’ve so successfully done it. It’s taken us from Premier League cannon fodder to a serious prospect. But, it’s hit its ceiling. 

The money has been spent. ‘200m’ I hear you say. That’s a load of money, but it needs to be looked at as a thin spread. Some good players and one or two who’ve made us a bit better (taking up room in the physio room sadly) but the majority seem to be about the same as what we have, some worse, and all certainly not as good or better than who we’ve sold. 

As we know new recruits are often young, ambitious and not-versed in the ebb and flow of a top flight game in England. Most of them are tricky forwards and waifish wingers - with the vibe that a gust of strong wind would blow them into the north stand. 

These kinds of players will falter. They won’t always stand up when needed, they will miss that sitter, they will tail off in the last 20 minutes. They’re not fully baked yet and by the time their bottom is no longer soggy they’re sold.  

‘What about injuries as well though?!’. Yeah we’ve had a tonne and have been unlucky and why we’ve had so many needs a separate deep-dive for another time. But it’s the recruitment policy and the revolving door transfer policy that bumps you in the arse when the injuries pile up. Flogging any player of value means the fit, healthy and good enough replacements have already been sold for profit and the deputy an under cooked deer in the headlights. 

The club’s open, as well as revolving door policy, where players wish to move on and play elsewhere for whatever reason are facilitated, and, so they tell us, the reason we're able to sign them means we’re capped at where we are.

What we’re left with is a crop of TBCs, a few players who are starting to peak and the rest, of no sufficient value to move on for profit. Good, but not great. 

Could we have got another year out of Gross? Should we have let Gilmour go? Why was Undav essentially shown the door? Circumstances and events, yes, but there’s a general trend of shedding those good enough, and replacing them with a TBC. The club’s clamour for profit and maximising value means that the playing squad suffers.

When Bloom fishes in a market of unknown players the genius of his algorithm means he’s able to efficiently identify ‘good’ or the ‘potential to be good’ from the rest. This brilliant strategy has taken us from 17th to ‘tenth’ but it has a ceiling. 

Good we can do but excellent, or significantly better than what we already have, that is proving difficult. Everyone else already knows about the excellent players and to acquire them is going to take a significant change of strategy which is by definition beyond the abilities of an algorithm that is engineered to identify good over average.  

The same applies to managers. There is very little viable argument that our dips in form are the fault of the manager. It’s not for Fab to say whether he was good enough or not. Of course he’d take the job, of course he’d give it his best go. But is he good enough? That’s for someone else to answer, he doesn’t recruit himself and if he’s not up to it, it’s certainly not his fault. Beating him up for a scenario which is not of his making, seems like small fry when you think about why we’re really so incapable of taking the next step. If the club decides this summer that he is not good enough, why were they so convinced he was good enough last summer, or are they hell-bent on us finishing ‘tenth’ forever?

The next step is to evolve this club into a winning machine. A club that doesn’t accept days like saturday lightly, where serious questions are asked and defeats aren’t seen as a ‘chance to learn’. 

A way to do that could be to appoint a manager who comes in and challenges what we’re doing, asks tricky questions, suggests ways we can improve and maybe upsets the system a bit.  Someone who’s allowed to own the technical side, recruit a player or three that suits their system and is allowed to be the subject matter expert of events on the pitch. 

Good CEOs in all sorts of companies want the staff immediately below them to be better than them to push them to be excellent. But managers who have dared before have been shown short shrift for ‘not following the same ideas and vision’. 

But that’s okay, I hear you say, ‘we should be lucky for what we have’. That attitude is holding us back and it might be fine for you but it’s not for me. ‘Look where we came from’ is exactly the kind of anti-ambition that’s stifling us from achieving what we know we can. That’s fine if you’re one of the chunk of fans who’s just there for a nice day out, ‘heading off early to get a good seat at The Terrace’ I overheard someone say on the 85th minute on Saturday. 

I want my club to amount to what I think we’re capable of. This club has been in the Premier League for eight years and our ambition needs to scale up if anyone is at all interested in achieving something more than just the best P&L sheet the Premier League and a nice day out. 

I follow a football club, not an accountancy firm, matters on the pitch are my only concern. The CEO’s profit bonus is of zero interest to me. Fans that hark on about ‘look at the profit’ need to follow the club on Companies House not at Falmer.

“This club achieved great things in the past, but I think sometimes it's not about reputation. The reputation we have is like we are a nice club and we are the nice Brighton & Hove Albion, but if you really want to achieve something, you won't achieve it because you are nice to each other.” The ambitious Hurzeler said recently to Dogma. 

“I think you achieve something when you are demanding of one another… know your history…but now let’s take the next step together…we have to be more ruthless. Don't accept the defeats”. He wants it, do you?

We’re in an amazing position, enjoying our best ever period, playing in a beautiful stadium with sometimes excellent football. But the game is about glory and for a club that has been so relentlessly ambitious to be capped at ‘tenth’ seems at odds with the scale of where it seems Bloom wants us to be. 

So how do we progress? How do we beat those teams in the quarter and semi finals of the cup, or have enough to push past Leicester in the last ten minutes? 

Keep our best, recruit at a level above, demand more of the club, stop saying ‘thank you Mr. Barber’ - CHALLENGE THE FLIPPING ESTABLISHMENT. 

We all need to shift our ambitions and think beyond what’s in front of us; otherwise we’ll be ‘tenth’ forever.