Considered buckin opinion (Season)

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Roofer
Rodgers for all his faults got one thing right, he spotted the squad had got comfortable and needed a reboot, sadly the financial assistance required at the start of the season was not forthcoming so that one is down to the board.

What is down to Rodgers is the fact he threw his hat at it when the money didn't materialize and basically decided to let things slide in a bid to force the board to stump up

That really went well, NOT!

What is down to Top and friends is their failure to buck Buck out the door a lot sooner than they did and to get a replacement who was better not as bad or worse.

A lot of responsibility has to lie with the players some of them are in above their level, Faes, Thomas, KDH, (Although he could yet make it), Kristiansen, (He could make it too), Soumare, Souttar, being prime examples but others who have shown they can perform at PL level, Maddison, Barnes, Ndidi, Tielemans have either given up trying or just been out of form.

Take Maddison for example, last night apart from the fact he took the set pieces I wouldn't have noticed he was playing and this guy is an England international Buck me.

It all adds up to a perfect storm of relegation, we are going down unless the second miracle of Leicester happens and we deserve to.

In order of blame I go as follows.

1; Top and friends for not acting to remove Rodgers in time and even worse having no proper replacement in place. Managers who earn the label as relegation fighters earn it for a reason they have their teams down there in the first buckin place.

2; Rodgers for getting all mardy over the money even though he was correct that it was needed

3; The players especially the ones like Maddison Wilf, Barnes and Youri who we all know can perform much better

If all this has proved anything to me it is just how passionate I am about the City, of course I am not alone in this, but today I can't really think about work, the first thing I thought of this morning was the fact we are bucked and it has influenced how the day will go.

Even SWMBI's best efforts, she cooked me fried bread and fried eggs for breakfast haven't cheered me up and I am seriously considering whether a dozen pints of Guinness might help.

If the miracle happens please ignore all the above

God save Leicester
 
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It all stems back to that Forest game in the cup. We were already struggling especially in defence where they had already lost their mental strength. Many of us feared we’d lose, which we did, largely because of the change in keeper.

Rodgers then basically said afterwards the squad were shite and would be overhauled in the summer. Of course we know that didn’t happen.

Then Rodgers fannied around with the Brentford game to make a point, and the rest is history.

Looking back now, he should have gone after Brentford.
 
DagenhamFox said:
It all stems back to that Forest game in the cup. We were already struggling especially in defence where they had already lost their mental strength. Many of us feared we’d lose, which we did, largely because of the change in keeper.

Rodgers then basically said afterwards the squad were shite and would be overhauled in the summer. Of course we know that didn’t happen.

Then Rodgers fannied around with the Brentford game to make a point, and the rest is history.

Looking back now, he should have gone after Brentford.
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People on Facebook still defending him, under 18s under 21s and First team relegation incoming . Bet there vaccinated too
 
but there is no mention that all the mony had gone because he had spent it on a whole bunch of players that weren't/are not good enough

would be interesting to know who is accountable for recruitment
 
Indeed, the board are absolutely accountable for not removing Rodgers sooner. Regardless of how long ago we as individuals realised he wasn't up to the job (some going back years, others weeks... some I suspect still don't believe it), when Rodgers spotted that the squad had gotten "comfortable and needed a reboot" he was acknowledging that he would be unable to get the required level of performance from the group of players he had available.

At that point one of two things has to happen; you change the players or you make the ones you do have 'uncomfortable' & 'reboot' the manager (or to put it in its more common form "back him or sack him"). The financial stuff has been done to death but given that it meant that the former was not possible then there was only one course of possible action at that moment irrespective of him laughably trying to force the club's hand (he should have been sacked just for that). If delay was due to any potential pay-off pushing us off an FFP cliff edge (but surely no worse than reduced merit payments not to mention the obviously large impact of our now all but certain relegation on turnover in future seasons), the subsequent Fofana sale gave them the opportunity, one they did not take instead opting for make do & mend until January with just the one rushed incoming replacement (of sorts) & with the knowledge that January transfer windows are notoriously difficult to do good business in.

That the denouement didn't eventually happen until after both an International break & the first of 3 crucial games in a week when opportunities for taking training before the next games would be limited for any new incumbent (that hadn't been identified anyway) was shocking.

But none of this executive inaction excuses Rodgers (not that you were). Irrespective of his many failings he was a co-architect of the constraints later placed on him. I know there is a lot of debate about how much of a role he played in transfers but at a minimum he asked for positions to be added to & had a say in who would be in charge of finding the players to fill those positions (personally my reading of his own quotes on recruitment was that he additionally had a "yay" or "nay" input too though I would imagine (would hope) that he would have had no direct say in fees or salaries offered which I imagine lays fairly and squarely at other's doors).
 
Agree with lots here, but for me the main decision which cost us our PL place and which nobody at the club appears to be owning was letting Kasper go. Erratic at times perhaps, but he would have demanded more from his defenders, and would have made enough saves to get us a few more points. We had and have no suitable replacement. Worst of all, it seems he left because nobody really did enough to generate a different outcome. That's unforgiveable ineptitude. You have all the different parts of the club, all the analysts, coaches, scouting department, Directors and so on, yet when it comes down to it nobody able to say, this is dumb, we need to stop it happening.

But nobody took responsibility because they all knew the cost, and that they did nothing to stop it.

Limited but enthusiastic teams have shown they can survive easily in the PL this season. We lost the main player who could have driven those standards.

I'll give Top and all the rest a chance to learn from mistakes, not that we have much choice. First and foremost has to be that you can spend all the millions you like on talent, but you also need the heart.
 
When you've been in charge of a club for 3.5 years, been given a budget of hundreds of millions and brought in the players you wanted resulting in the 7th or 8th highest wages in the league, and you then have the gall to turn to the fans and say "we're not good enough, the board isn't backing me", as if it's none of your fault, you should be fired on the spot.
if you let yr best centre back and a club leader leave with no replacement you should be fired on the spot.
After brentford he should've been fired on the spot.
during the wc break he should've been fired giving time for a new manager search and time to identify targets for jan xfer window.
At the latest he should've been fired in march with a successor in line.
but here we are.
He's a fraud, but top, rudkin and whelan bear a heavy heavy responsibility with their inaction.
 
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I love the logic of saying that the highest level of blame attaches to those who didn’t sort the managerial problem soon enough, rather than the actual source of the problem.
 
Bought most of the wrong players, considering we make our living mostly from buying and selling players for massive profits that's been fatal to the clubs ambitions. Paying way over the odds in wages for mediocre player had also come home to roost.
Since the dad died there has been a distant whiff of apathy around the club , particularly at board level and also centred on the hotel that fronts for a training ground.
((((New everything.)))
 
channys6thswan said:
I love the logic of saying that the highest level of blame attaches to those who didn’t sort the managerial problem soon enough, rather than the actual source of the problem.
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It's the difference between accountability & responsibility init. And responsibility is absolutely clear (and is why the "source" will always attract my opprobrium rather than the board).
 
A subtle change took place on the club's thinking at some point in which we started to think of ourselves as top eight material and stopped being upstarts. Other clubs copied our ways and are now among us, and still hungry. These were our real rivals.
What was symptomatic of this mood change was Seagrave. Staff were beguiled by the plush and felt it was an automatic entitlement.
They began going through the motions, everyone, not just the players.
Rodgers jumped ship convinced the deal with the club model which brought him from Celtic had been betrayed and he lost belief
in them and the players then lost belief in him.
His actions led to a well meaning caretaker team being left to carry the blame.
They in turn tasked the players with saving the ship. Not something it seems they have much appetite to do.
 
I was with you up to the Seagrave point Oadlad. Where I parted company was Rodgers. He wasn’t reacting to a corporate shift in mindset, he was essentially the instigator of it. A key turning point, maybe the key turning point, was when Arsenal came sniffing around, and the end result of that was Rodgers got a meaty big four, rather than an upstart plus, contract. Inevitably, players pushed for similar, and that wage pressure proved hard to resist. The next key break with the old upstart pattern was Congerton. In an overseas market in which we’d sourced special talents below market rates (a skill even Puel had, despite his other shortcomings), we came up badly short in most cases (Fofana being the main exception). Ditto most of our dealings in the domestic market, with the final insult of the acquisition of the Southampton offcuts ultimately breaking the back of the analytics team which had done such sterling work for so long. There were lots of other indicators that ‘upstart’ was no longer the managerial paradigm (Europa Conference League, what’s that?) (no sales to balance purchases in the summer window) (no clear route from the youth system to the Matchday squad) (not taking the Cup game against hated rivals as a ‘must win’), while something went badly wrong with the intensity (playing Pep ball without Pep players) and the fitness programme (the Rennie departure). The point is, and I could go on (and on), it shouldn’t have been Rodgers that was left feeling betrayed. It was us.
 
Some good additional points there, channy.

I really don't think that BR was responsible for the instigation of the corporate 'mindshift' as he was not at board policy level.
Had he been he would have been aware of the financial problems and not made erroneous public statements.

The shift to austerity was the realisation that we were running out of line with FFP due to the board getting the finances out of shape.
And players (their agents) do not generally base their demands on the managers pay. Simply, certain people are not good negotiaters.

As said, BR made a mistake publically discussing his plan to refresh the squad as it was 'stale' and was swiftly corrected by the board.
BR got the hump and crucially and fatally transferred his discontent to the playing staff. His culpability was that he failed to show the leadership necessary in unwelcome circumstances and became a prisoner of his displeasure. He failed to motivate himself
and in turn the players .

The board thought they could tread water for a season financially and they failed, as BR said they would in August. He was
fired/jumped despite being right in that area.

Tempting as it is to single out a scapegoat, the failure has been corporate. We got to big for our boots and paid the price.

PS Seagrave was not the cause of the failure but a symptom and indicator of it.
 
Oadlad said:
As said, BR made a mistake publically discussing his plan to refresh the squad as it was 'stale' and was swiftly corrected by the board.
BR got the hump and crucially and fatally transferred his discontent to the playing staff. His culpability was that he failed to show the leadership necessary in unwelcome circumstances and became a prisoner of his displeasure. He failed to motivate himself
and in turn the players .
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Which is fine if you believe that the corporate mindshift had laid the groundwork & that it was events in the close season 2022/23 that propelled us on our current trajectory (presuming this is what you meant as there was no swift board level correction back in January 2022). I think that you could make a case for this accelerating the process but the salient point is that the process had started before then and that he more than anyone was an architect of it.
 
Fair enough. All this opinion just underlines the vacuum produced by a closed executive.
So we can only speculate which is fun but but little else. I sometimes wonder if such as
Rudkin reads any of this and thinks if only they knew this, that or the other...
Our support can only be based on the 'product' i.e. the football we play... and if it is worth spending our money on.
 
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