When should we be worried?

It’s fair to say that expectations at Leicester haven’t been as high as this in a good few seasons. Paulo Sousa will be expected to get results quickly and the fixtures list does him no favours at all.

City face two home fixtures in August against fellow promotion contenders and trips to two of the relegated Premier League sides in the first four away games. They’ll also have early trips to Coventry and Norwich, places they haven’t won since 2003 and 1995 respectively. Indeed, so long ago was Leicester’s last win at Norwich that it contained Emile Heskey’s first ever senior goal.

Below is a table showing Leicester’s fixtures and the last result in each match* together with a projected league table position based on last season's results. To use a golfing term, this is par for the season. To put it another way, let’s not get too worried if City aren’t in the top 10 at the end of October.



*For the purpose of this exercise I’ve taken the regular season results against Cardiff City from 2009/10.

Note: To see a full version on this spreadsheet click here.

Is the Manager of the Month Award Really Cursed?

Football has many wonderful aphorisms which fans can call upon when poor play besets their team. “You’re always vulnerable when you’ve just scored” and “We always concede late goals” are two of my particular favourites.

In fact to call them aphorisms is a touch misleading, aphorisms are supposed to point towards a general truth. Most matches are not filled with late winners and equalisers, nor are most goals responded to in kind by the opposition in seconds – football is all the more exciting because these occurrences are rare and noteworthy.

The Manager of the Month Award is another facet of the game which has its own received wisdom – winners of the award promptly go on to lose their next match. Leicester fans will be acutely aware if this quirk. Four Leicester managers have won a total of eight Manager of the Month Awards between them since 1996. Martin O'Neil (3), Peter Taylor (1) and Rob Kelly (1) all failed to win their next match. Nigel Pearson won just one match immediately following his three Manager of the Month Awards at the club.

So far the 'curse' theory is looking quite convincing, but a wider canvas gives a rather different picture.

Since the 2004/05 a total of 54 Manager of the Month awards have been made in the Championship. Their recipients have gone on in their next league fixture to win 21, draw 11 and lose 22.

If there is a curse, it doesn't seem to be affecting anyone else too badly. That's just typical of Leicester, isn't it?

Paulo Sousa: What to expect

Despite reaching their highest league position since 1983 Swansea fans had very little to cheer about last season, literally. Paulo Sousa’s side scored just 21 league goals at the Liberty Stadium last term meaning your average Swansea season ticket holder paid approximately £17.86 for each home goal.

Infuriatingly, Swansea fans could have covered the cost of their season ticket by backing boredom. Last season the Swans featured in a yawn inducing 10 goalless draws. Savvy punters, by placing £10 on every Swansea match failing to trouble the scoreboard, could have waked away with a profit of £390 come May.

Is this what we have to look forward to?

The case for the defence is that Sousa had very little in terms of attacking talent. Swansea were definitely left with a Jason Scotland sized hole at the heart of attack, and his replacements never looked like filling the gap. Darren Pratley, a midfielder, was the club’s top scorer with seven league goals.

Further, it wasn’t as if Leicester set the scoring charts alight last season. Away from home the two sides shared almost identical records. The Foxes took two extra points and scored two more than Swansea, Sousa's side conceded two fewer.

What Swansea needed but never got was that little extra killer instinct. Leicester won 14 games by a single goal and drew 13 matches; Swansea won 11 matches by the odd goal and drew 18. The gap between the two teams come the end of the season was seven points. Put simply, four more Swansea goals in the regular season could have seen Leicester playing Forest in the play-offs and Sousa’s side making the short trip to Cardiff.

Financial restraints certainly made it difficult for Sousa to improve his squad’s toothless attack. Indeed in the transfer market it’s hard to make too many concrete judgements about Sousa’s capabilities. The only transfer fee he paid was to Southampton to make Nathan Dyer’s loan move a permanent one. I’m sure there are few Swansea fans who would disagree with the wisdom of that decision, but given that his predecessor had brought Dyer to the club in the first place we can hardly praise the Portuguese boss for Craig Shakespearian scouting.

In the loan market Shefki Kuqi’s goals brought vital wins at Crystal Palace, Watford and Derby, but he didn’t exactly set the Championship alight. Craig Beattie managed 3 goals in a dozen starts and a further 11 substitute appearances. But these are the chances you take with the loan market, sometimes they take off spectacularly (Mark Davis, Jack Hobbs, Martyn Waghorn) and sometimes they don’t (Ryan McGivern, Astrit Ajdarevic).

What we can expect is possession football and lots of it. Swansea had the majority of possession in 32 (70%) of their league matches last season. By contrast Leicester managed this in only 18 (39%) of their Championship games.

So in summary, Foxes fans will see more of the ball, but possibly less of it in the net and would probably do well to hedge bets on a few goalless draws. Let’s get that promotion bandwagon rolling.

Moving On

When Gary Megson departed the Walkers Stadium for Bolton Wanderers a friend remarked that it felt like being “dumped by a fat bird”. Nigel Pearson’s departure gives rise to the same feelings of rejection, but this time it’s like being dumped in favour of a woman out of form and lamenting the depreciation of her best assets. Whatever Nigel Pearson sees in Hull is a mystery to the rest of us, but it’s never worth staying in a relationship if one partner doesn’t have the heart for it.

So let’s remember the good times.

Nigel Pearson has been Leicester best manager in a decade. In terms of victories, his win ratio of 51.4% makes him City’s most successful manager of all time.

Pearson led the Foxes to their first win of any division in 29 years and presided over the clubs longest unbeaten league run of 23 matches. Had penalties at Cardiff played out differently, he might have been the first club manager to lead a side from English football’s third tier to the top flight in successive seasons since Joe Royle.

In his first season, Pearson’s side scored more league goals (84) than any other team in the top 4 divisions. Their march to the title was built on the back of 27 wins, 19 clean sheets and just four defeats.

Last season Leicester became experts in grinding out results when it mattered, wining more matches by a single goal (14) than any other Championship side. The Foxes didn’t lose any of the 24 matches in which the scored first and managed an eight match unbeaten run in the second tier for the first time since 2002/03.

Better still, City got into the habit of scoring late. Under Pearson, City scored 26 league goals in the last 10 minutes, conceding only 14.

The winning mentality was fostered by a group of successful signings. Jack Hobbs, Chris Weale and Bruno Berner are much celebrated but Michael Morrison, Aleksander Tunchev, David Martin and Kerrea Gilbert also deserve a mention. Going forward Lloyd Dyer injected pace into a side sorely lacking it in 2007/08 and loan signings like Martyn Waghorn and Mark Davies proved that Pearson and his backroom staff had an eye for creative talent.

It wasn’t all roses of course. Robbie Neilson and Ryan McGivern remain unconvincing whilst Astrit Ajdarevic managed just 68 minutes of first team action, but these were the exceptions and not the rule.

Best of all, Pearson managed to do what seven previous City manages had failed to do, get the best out of Matty Fryatt. Before Pearson, Fryatt had managed 11 goals in 81 league appearances fro Leicester. Under the guidance of the new man, Fryatt netted 38 times in 75 league games. It has been a remarkable turnaround.

Whatever the reasons for Pearson’s departure there’s no doubt the club is in a far healthier condition thanks to his work. The feelings of disappointment are strong, and they’ll be even harder to digest if rumours about the breakdown of Pearson’s contract negotiations are true. But his record deserves respect, and for that reason I’ll find it difficult to jeer when Hull City visit the Walkers on 16th October.

The End of the Pearson Era?

There are rumours all over the internet regarding the future of Nigel Pearson and a possible move to Hull City.

Throughout the day the reaction has mimicked the Kübler-Ross model; denial (“Hull City are broke!”, “Leicester are a bigger club” etc.), anger (I’ve seen two Judas posts on Twitter already), bargaining (at least, we hope some of this is going on behind the scenes…), depression (“Oh God, John Gregory is going to apply for the job again isn’t he!?”) and finally, acceptance.

Well we’re not quite at acceptance yet, but reading the runes of the days reporting does not look good. Leicester have neither confirmed nor denied the reports, which usually means there is at least a modicum of truth behind the reports.

I’d certainly group myself with other fans who see this as a strange sideways move, if not a step down for Pearson in his managerial career if indeed it does come to pass. But neither City or Hull will have much if any money to spend in the summer, and if personal relations between the Chairman and Nigel Pearson really have broken down, then the move doesn’t seem as strange in that context.

However if anyone wants some straws to grasp at if not exactly clutch, here’s another way today could be panning out. We know Pearson, whose contract is due to expire next year, has been negotiating a new deal for some time. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Nigel is looking at his options elsewhere in order to get an improved deal at the Walkers. Only today the Leicester Mercury published a gushing piece on just how good Steve Walsh, City’s head of recruitment, has been at unearthing new talent in the free transfer and loan markets, the timing of which seems just a little too perfect. If this is a play to get Pearson and his backroom staff an improved deal you’d have to admire the chutzpah – we’re all buying it.

We’ll find out one way or the other soon enough.

Is this Leicester City’s worst ever team?

At a time when City appear to be back on the up it feels like we can look back on hard times and raise a smile at some of the agonies our club has put Foxes fans through.

I’m sure everyone reading this will have their own ideas of their worst Leicester City team, but I’m not interested in cherry picking from different eras, for the purposes of this post the team must have started together.

With this in mind, allow me to present my case for Leicester’s worst ever team. My criteria for this ‘worst team’ follows five rules.

1) It must offer shocking value for money;
2) Any established fan favourites must be passed their best;
3) It should include at least one player who fans have forgotten ever played for the club;
4) Preferably, it should be placed in a setting where failure is almost guaranteed;
5) Few team members, if any, should go on to achieve success elsewhere having played in this side.

The team I have selected featured much of Leicester’s most overpriced talent. Some of my favourites include;

Ade Akinbiyi - £5m
Matt Jones - £3m
Darren Eadie - £3m
Trevor Benjamin - £1.5m

Indeed, the 16 players in the squad that day cost a combined total of £21.75m. To put it in terms of today’s money, that’s nearly 14 DJ Campbell’s.

The line-up included a couple of notable fan favourites. Matt Elliot was the leading light amongst them, but his slide in form was beginning to take shape by the time this match took place whilst Tim Flowers and Andy Impy were not the same players they had been under Martin O’Neil.

The squad’s complete unknown was Kevin Ellison. Ellison played the only six minutes of his Leicester City and indeed Premier League career in this match, coming on as a substitute for Dean Sturridge. Ellison had plucked from the obscurity of Altrincham by Peter Taylor for £50,000. Within nine months he had been shipped to Stockport for a similar fee.

So who did this hopeless collection of expensive underachievers and old boys play? City’s opponents on 17th March 2001 were running away with the league for the second season running. Already 17 points clear, Manchester United’s title surge had been built on an almost impeccable record at Old Trafford.

So how do you break down a side which at that point in the season had conceded just 7 goals at home? Few, I imagine, would respond with Dean Sturridge and Ade Akinbiyi, a pair who between then would furnish City with 17 goals in 69 league starts. The BBC match report finds Ade in good form. Our correspondent notes “for all United's pressure, Leicester should have snatched the lead when Ade Akinbiyi headed over the bar when well-played from a Darren Eadie cross.” Sigh.

Whilst few would pair Sturridge and Akinbiyi as their dream City strikers fewer still would rely on service to the front two coming from a midfield which included Junior Lewis, Matt Jones and Damien Delaney. Jones in particular would prove an albatross around Leicester’s neck. City won just three of their 16 Premier League games in which the Welshman started, Wales at the time fared little better. Junior Lewis’ four wins in 15 Premier League starts for Leicester in 00/01 was equally uninspiring.

At the other end, the United strikers were looking forward to firing shots Simon Royce, who would keep a meagre three clean sheets in 16 starts for Leicester that season. In front of him the defence included former Oxford United man Phil Gilchrist: a centre-back renowned for wearing his collar up like Eric Cantona, but with a first touch more akin to Eric Odhiambo. This would be his final game for the Foxes.

Amazingly the side held out at the Theatre of Dreams for 88 minutes, even surviving the 70th minute introduction of Trevor Benjamin for Akinbiyi for a surprising 17 minutes. Inevitably the torrent of United pressure finally told, and goals from Solskjaer (via a Dwight Yorke deflection) and Silvestre restored sanity to the footballing world.

So did any of this bunch go on to finer things?

Royce and Rowett moved to Charlton, which was at least the Premier League I suppose. Gilchrist too played top flight football with West Brom. Steve Guppy had an injury blighted spell with Celtic and Akinbiyi eventually found himself in the MLS.

In short then, no.

So there you have it, my pick for the worst Leicester team ever. I’d love to know yours.

The lineup in full; Royce, Rowett, Elliott, Gilchrist, Impey, Eadie, Junior Lewis, Jones (Guppy, 89), Delaney, Akinbiyi (Benjamin, 70), Sturridge (Ellison, 84)
Subs not used: Flowers, Oakes.

For those of you who are interested, here’s the BBC match report.

DJ Campbell, a £1.5m man?

The Leicester Mercury is reporting that Leicester City have set an asking price of £1.5m for striker DJ Campbell.

DJ, who has played much more like a Dudley at the Walkers Stadium since signing for £1.6m from Birmingham in 2007, has proved one of the most frustrating players to wear a City shirt in recent years.

Campbell has scored 5 goals in 3 seasons for the Foxes (22 starts, 25 appearances as a sub) but, infuriatingly, has netted 23 goals in 43 starts in loan spells at Blackpool and Derby.

That DJ doesn't enjoy life in Leicester is clear, after all he showed no signs of improvement when Ian Holloway first got his hands on him at Leicester before deciding to bring him to Blackpool. City ought to get as much as they can for the former Brentford man, but is the asking price just a tad on the optimistic side?

In the last few seasons Joe Mattock has left for £1.2m, Ian Hume made his way to Barnsley for the same price. Indeed the last player City sold for more than DJ’s current asking price was David Connelly who signed for Wigan in 2005 at a cost of £2m.

It doesn’t seem like Campbell has much of a future at City, but I’d be shocked if the club gets a seven figure sub for him. Blackpool might have some cash, but £1.5m will buy you a far better striker than DJ.