If you could ask Leicester City Football Club one question, what would it be?
There are so many talking points around Leicester City at the moment that it’s hard to narrow in on just one.
But that’s exactly what we’ve tried to do this week - if you only had one question you could ask, what would you want to know from our club’s hierarchy?
David Bevan: Do you really think you have the best people for the jobs?
The thing I find most baffling about the way King Power have let Leicester City decline over the past three or four years is the stubborn refusal to countenance change.
A lot of us will forever be stuck on the lack of consequences from the infamous “internal review” of 2023 until there are fresh faces and ideas at executive level.
I never expected in a million years for that review to be published, but I did have a naive hope that we’d either see better communication with the supporters over the long-term strategy or some kind of high-level reshuffle. Instead, the impression is that personal relationships have been valued over tough decisions.
We are told, through the media, that the club are confused by fans singling out Jon Rudkin for criticism when decisions are made collectively. But there needs to be some kind of accountability for what’s happened in recent years and, like it or not, eventually you have to look at individuals and question whether maybe we could have someone better in these key positions.
A lot of fans also seemingly felt uncomfortable about Rudkin being targeted during last weekend’s protests. This is a very old-fashioned sentiment, given that managers and players are singled out without a moment’s hesitation.
Why should a director of football be any different, particularly when it is arguably the most important role at a modern football club?
Iain Wright: Why did we allow two consecutive enormous losses, two of the biggest in UK sporting history?
For most of the time King Power have been in charge of Leicester City Football Club, we were the example of a well-run club. We even made one of the biggest profits in Premier League history in 2016/17 when we reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
But then, just a few years later, we managed to run up losses of £92.5m in 2022 and £89.7m 2023. Neither of those losses were driven by exuberant spending in the transfer market - they were plain and simply created by paying enormous amounts of wages across the entire squad.
The club have pleaded for sympathy about trying to compete and the 'unfairness' of Profit and Sustainability, which has been swallowed wholeheartedly by members of the fanbase that don't want to believe we could have possibly got it wrong... but we did.
Paying huge salaries to unworthy players has left us in a far worse state than we were in before the losses. The 'plan' was a disaster, yet we seemingly did little to try and rectify it. There have been hardly any sales of players, even at knockdown prices to try and boost the coffers, while we continued to waste money on new players.
We knew what the rules were, but fiddled while things burned.
Why?
James Knight: Asking only one question is for losers.
Fundamentally, what is the Leicester City five year plan?
What is Jon Rudkin's specific job remit and, related, what are the responsibilities of each senior member of the football operations team?
Who has final say on football decisions, such as signings in/out, new contracts, loan deals. Given:
A) Some of these decisions were made in the summer at a time where we didn't have a manager.
B) the long-running difficulties the club has in selling players who are surplus to requirements
C) the fact players are often handed new contracts only to receive little to no playing time (Wanya-Marcal, McAteer, Choudhury, etc)
D) the failure of virtually every loan move the club made in the summer
E) the lack of minutes for young players like Will Alves who were not loaned out in the summer
Who is responsible for the current financial issues and what steps have the club taken to ensure this doesn't happen again in the future?
At what point was each manager (from Rodgers on) given a full picture of the financial situation and the restrictions they would impose on the club?
Has our reduced spending over the last few years solved the PSR issues and if not, how do you aim to solve them?
Are you happy with the progression of academy products to the first team since the move to Seagrave?
Some final bonus questions:
What is going on with the new stadium?
Why is the club so reluctant to provide any sort of communication to fans?
Was anyone held responsible for the club fixing the price of its own shirts in collaboration with JD Sports?
Helen Thompson: What is the plan back to sustainability while also achieving the ambitions the club had/has?
Iain has asked about our losses and why we allowed ourselves to be close enough to the cliff edge of PSR to fall foul of it. That's an answer we would all like but there’s a good follow up question too.
Regardless of whether you believe the rules are ridiculous or if it's mismanagement (or a bit of both), how do we get ourselves out of the cycle while reckoning with our ambitions?
Is the short-term plan to target selling one big player a year again for big profit (Mads this summer)? Is it to be more realistic with the wage budget and the deals we’re handing out? Presumably, the club also hoped Premier League survival would be a possibility to boost the income.
If PSR doesn’t go away, and we can’t increase our revenue, we’ll still be operating on the fringes of the rules for a while. How we could boost our revenue is another deserved question.
Our current predicament on the pitch doesn't make things easy, it's hard to plan too far when you don't know which league you'll be plying your trade in and the budgets that go with that.
The club’s previous ambitions, continuous Premier League football, possibly Europe and the stadium expansion are presumably all still the mid to long term goals. To do this we’ll need to rely on more than just academy products. How do we achieve all of this when money is seemingly so tight without gambling it all again?
