The Exodus

No sooner had Nigel Pearson placed his feet under the manager’s desk at Leicester City than the club shipped out two of its most talented players. Having already lost Gareth McAuley to Ipswich, the Foxes have now lost the services of Ian Hume and Richard Stearman. This takes exits from the squad this summer to a total of thirteen, one fewer than the total number of signings made by Martin Allen last summer.

The exits of Stearman, Hume and McAuley have been well covered. Somewhat less attention has been given to a number of other players who have also departed. What follows is a review of the talent we won’t be seeing down Filbert Way next season.

Released:
Alan Maybury: 97 Starts (5 Sub) – 3 Goals
Brought to the club from Hearts by then Leicester boss Craig Levin, Maybury had long fallen out of favour with a succession of managers. Maybury played in just one Championship game in the 07/08 season – a 1-1 draw at Burnley in December. That said, he did play in City’s excellent win at Aston Villa in the Carling Cup, and the following 4-3 rollercoaster at Stanford Bridge. Few will miss him.

Rab Douglas: 35 Starts – 6 Clean Sheets
Douglas was another Levin signing who has now reached the end of a 3-year contract. The Scot was sent out on loan on four occasions; to Millwall, Wycombe (twice) and Plymouth. To be fair he did put in a good performance in Plymouth’s win at Bristol City this season. At 36, he seems destined to a role as a journeyman keeper (if such a role exists). No tears here.

Elvis Hammond: 37 Starts (33 Sub) – 10 Goals
Yet another Levin signing, Hammond missed the entirety of last season through injury. With no-one at Leicester recalling any moments of inspiration that might have led to another contract, Elvis left the building. Hammond’s one highlight at the club was poking City back into the game against Spurs in the 2006 FA Cup 3rd Round. He clearly lacked the physical requirements City will need in spades in League One.

Jamie Clapham: 11 Starts – 0 Goals
A free transfer from Wolves, Clapham left many Leicester fans unenthused by his mediocre performances. Clapham was not the fighter City needed. Indeed, City won just three of the games in which he played, losing six. With Joe Mattock likely to take Clapham’s place next season, there really was no place for him.

End of Loan Deals:
Ben Alnwick: 8 Starts – 4 Clean Sheets
The excellent Martin Fullop wooed City fans during his loan spell with City, so much so that Sunderland demanded a price City could not afford for his services. Alnwick, his loan replacement, lacked the presence of the Hungarian but did a reasonable job. Alnwick is still clearly learning his trade and City will be just fine with Ian Henderson next season.

David Bell: 6 Starts – 0 Goals
Bell was one of the few loan signings of the Holloway era who really impressed. Bell was confident enough to run at defenders, intelligent enough to work the ball in useful directions and energetic too. Had City survived he might well have stayed, as it is rumours point to a £400,000 move to Reading. The only certainty is a move away from Luton, already rooted to the bottom of League Two on -10 points. A move back to City is unlikely, but would prove a welcome surprise.

Lee Hendrie: 9 Starts – 1 Goals
The former Aston Villa midfielder seemed exactly the sort of player City should have signed when Rob Kelly was in charge. Then, as now, the team lacked real leadership and Hendrie could often be seen rallying his teammates in his short spell at the Walkers. An excellent finish against Colchester proved his eye for goal whilst only a wonder save stopped him winning all three points in the home game with Bristol City. League One is probably a step down too far for him.

Kelvin Etuhu: 2 Starts (2 Sub) – 0 Goals
Missed an absolute sitter against Bristol City on his debut and never seemed to recover. Disappointing.

Gabor Bori: 4 Starts (2 Sub) – 0 Goals
Zsolt Laczko: 5 Starts (4 Sub) – 0 goals
The second and third Hungarians to play for City last season, Bori and Laczko were signed together from MTK Budapest with the possibility of a permanent deal dangled in front of them. A decent start against Coventry was never bettered and as the season wore on, it became abundantly apparent the pair had no future at the club.

Perhaps what this list demonstrates is how unpredictable the performances of players from the loan market can be. We can only hope City need not delve into it too much next season.

These players all departed before the arrival of Nigel Pearson - expect many more to join the list. Sergio Hellings is probably the most likely candidate to be shown the door first.

Points Of View

Earlier this summer E4 introduced to the world to Will McKenzie. Will had been kicked out of a private school his mother could no longer afford and was forced to deal with life in the heretofore-uncharted waters of a comprehensive. Will sticks out like a sore thumb; he wears a blazer and tie whilst his classmates sport bright blue jumpers, he takes a briefcase to school whilst his friends carry rucksacks, he treats fellow students like adults and is in turn treated like an adult by the students - with utter contempt.

Will McKenzie, for the purposes of this analogy, is Leicester City. Dumped into an unfamiliar division, Leicester too feel out of place. The Walkers Stadium dresses the club in clobber unbefitting of their current status, it was not built for League One football. The players too will see themselves as cut from finer cloth than their competitors. They will have to adapt to a new ‘style’ of play. One Sheffield Wednesday fan recently recalled his club’s stint in League One to me;

“The standard of football is...well, it's absolutely dreadful. Massive lumps of men with no skill flourish in this league as they can batter their way through defences for goals, and centre halves just bully everyone that comes near them. Ref's are used to it, so you'll come away with a ton of injuries, and finding yourselves having to play like everyone else to get any decent results.”

Leicester will need to get physical, fast. In ‘The Inbetweeners’, Will survives by integrating. City will need to do the same.

One change that will become apparent is the structure of League One itself. Unlike the Championship where managers can legitimately claim their side can beat any other, League One is more stratified. Teams who win the division tend to win it well. Luton, Scunthorpe and Swansea have run away with the title in the last four seasons. The trap door too League Two is often filled quickly too. In recent years Stockport, Peterborough, Brentford, Rotherham, Luton and Port Vale have all had their seasons effectively ended in early April. (Stockport and Peterborough have, of course, since returned.)

In this new climate, what sort of points tally should City be aiming for? The last four champions of League One have won with points totals of 98, 82, 91 & 92 points, though this is not an indicator of the number of points they needed. In each season, the title could have been won with totals of 87, 80, 86 & 92* points, an average of 86.25 points. If you fancy City will beat that total, the bookmakers will currently give you odds of 11/2 for the championship.

Perhaps more realistically, City should have their eyes on the 2nd automatic promotion place. To attain this in the last four campaigns clubs have needed 80, 77, 84 & 81 points. That’s an average of 80.5 points, or rounding up the total to 81, 1.76 points per game.

To secure a play-off place, clubs in each of the last four seasons have needed 71, 70, 73 & 70 points. The mean here is 71, or 1.54 points per game.

To satisfy the curiosity of gloom merchants (who might well recall that Sheffield Wednesday almost suffered the embarrassment of successive relegations at this level) the average survival total is 50 points (1.09 per game).

City fans will do well to realise that whilst they may feel uncomfortable in their new surroundings, escaping them will not be easy.

*Removing Leeds Utd’s 15 point deduction would leave them in 2nd on 91 points.

Nigel Pearson - The Right Man?

To call the appointment of Nigel Pearson at Leicester City a new dawn would be something of a misnomer, for most Foxes fans the outlook of the League One landscape remains unremittingly bleak. For City’s first away game the majority of the travelling support will be housed in a stand with no roof, at their second, fans will remark that even that failed British pole-vaulter from the Olympics would have been able to clear the shelter with room to spare. The future, at least the immediate future wholly lacking in quality or TV coverage let alone quality TV coverage, does not look bright. Perhaps this explains the muted nature of City fans’ greeting of Nigel Pearson. Some have counted their blessings, not so secretly pleased at having been spared the agony of John Gregory. Others lament that the club could not have pulled in a bigger name, still deluding themselves to City’s desperate fall from grace. The rest of us have seen it all before; Milan convinced that this time he has found “the right man”, the manager keen to take on the challenge at such a ‘big club’, the press secretly starting an office pool as to how long the new guy might last, the motions are all too familiar.

Much of the reaction to Pearson’s appointment has been directed to the concern that he is still very much an unknown quantity. He has a bare bones managerial record at best, coupled with experience working under two of the worst Newcastle mangers in recent times. What positives, if any, did he take from his time with Roeder and Allardyce? And in reality, was his achievement at Southampton really all that miraculous? A closer look at his time at St. Mary’s would suggest otherwise.

On 31st January 2008, Southampton found themselves 14th in the Coca-Cola Championship. Pearson officially took over on 18th February, and by the end of the month, the Saints had dropped to 19th. Just one win in March saw the club slip into 21st place and by the end of April a further solitary win saw the Saints going into the final day on the verge of relegation. It was only a 3-2 victory at home to Sheffield United that saved Southampton at the expense of Leicester. Pearson’s record of three wins, seven draws and four defeats suggests that such a performance was the exception and not the rule. Southampton under Pearson were a sinking ship, only some last minute buoyancy (and of course, the failure of others) kept them afloat.

Still, his time at Southampton at least appears to have given Pearson confidence in his managerial ability, something he'll need in spades to deal with his first duty as Leicester boss, sorting the wheat from the chaff in the playing squad. Once that mammoth task is complete he’ll need to add personnel of his own. We can do a breif history here. Restricted to loan transfers at Southampton, Pearson opted for the following loan signings;

Richard Wright – Played 7 games, kept 2 clean sheets
Ian Pearce - Played in a 1-1 draw at Scunthorpe, never seen again.
Vincent Pericard – Striker who started once and appeared as a sub on four occasions. No goals.
Chris Lucketti – Sheffield Utd defender who played four times and only missed the last game due to the terms of his loan deal.
Chris Perry – Six starts, Southampton conceded six goals during those games.

Perhaps understandably, it appears Pearson is a better judge of defenders than he is forwards but the loan market is a dubious place from which to determine a manager’s eye for talent – you only get to choose from rejects. In short, if Milan allows Pearson to flash some cash, there’s no telling how successful or otherwise his purchases will prove to be.

One facet Pearson will have install in his new squad will be something that has over the last five years been sorely lacking at Leicester, team spirit. In this area, fans can find some encouragement. Southampton finally managed to perform when it really mattered on the final day, coming from behind to do so. The Saints also managed to salvage points from losing positions at Scunthorpe, Wolves and Blackpool during Pearson’s short reign. Compare that with Leicester’s one win and five draws from losing positions in the entire season, and already we can see potential for improvement.

What might concern fans the most however, is that in picking a manager who spent his entire career playing as a defender and spent much of his coaching life under defensively minded managers, Pearson might fail to solve Leicester’s most fundamental problem, their inability to score. Southampton weren’t exactly prolific in front of goal under Pearson, netting just 14 times in 13 games. It was never Leicester’s back line that was the problem and Pearson will have to learn how to improve City’s potency in front of goal if he hopes to make the Foxes’ stay in League One as short as possible.

We will wait and see.