FOX Franks
Well-Known Member
Probably worth noting that if we feel like this after a couple of nearly-there seasons, imagine what it’s like being a Spurs fan ...
But they can be grumbled at when the team has been in the top for for almost the entire season. Expectations change as situations change. It is okay for a fan of “little old Leicester” to be disappointed at finishing 5th when for almost the entire season they were in 3rd place in the table.He's a bottler and our tactics are boring as ****. Still got to accept 2 top 6 finishes can't be grumbled at.
Rodgers really would be perfect for them then.Probably worth noting that if we feel like this after a couple of nearly-there seasons, imagine what it’s like being a Spurs fan ...
But they can be grumbled at when the team has been in the top for for almost the entire season. Expectations change as situations change. It is okay for a fan of “little old Leicester” to be disappointed at finishing 5th when for almost the entire season they were in 3rd place in the table.
in 2016 with 3 games to go I would have grumbled if you told me we would finish 2nd or 3rd. I wouldn’t have lifelong happy memories of that season we flirted with winning the Premier League. And having gotten us into the position where we should have won it and to fail I would have had every right to grumble.
I’m sick of this shit where fans of clubs like ours have to accept anything. Chelsea fans would have the right to be pissed of if they finish 5th. Utd fans can be upset at being 2nd. Even Arsenal fans are allowed to grumble at their club being outside the top four. But we just have to accept what happened last season and what looks like is happening again and be happy with what we get.
Reality check.
BR has the best win rate of any City manager ever. He's also the only manager we've had to have a win rate over 50%.
He's better than NP when we won League 1. Better than Ranieri, O'Neill, Bloomfield, Gillies or anyone else you care to name. And BR has done it all at the top end of the top league.
Yes, he makes mistakes and there are flaws to his approach. But we are Leicester City and we absolutely cannot do better.
This, this, a million times this.
I would much rather be in this position and potentially balls up again than be 10th or lower or fighting relegation.
Let's just keep improving the squad to the point where we don't have this pressure on the final few games and then Brendan is great.
‘Mauricio Pochettino worked because he focused on scoring more goals than the opposition’
**** me the level of insight is incredible, whoever farted that article out should be working for The Athletic.
Michael Owen's a journalist now?‘Mauricio Pochettino worked because he focused on scoring more goals than the opposition’
**** me the level of insight is incredible, whoever farted that article out should be working for The Athletic.
Does it?while speculation grows surrounding Brendan Rodgers’ future at the King Power.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts of him. However crap you think Scottish football is, you don't get an invincible team as a bottler. Or his achievements with Swansea and Reading.This article seems really appropriate for this thread:
Brendan Rodgers needs Leicester City to win the FA Cup and provide a blueprint for all British coaches
The Leicester boss says trophies will never change him, but a first in England would change his reputation and provide a rare victory for a homegrown coach
By Daniel Storey
May 14, 2021 12:08 pm(Updated 12:09 pm)
An interview with Brendan Rodgers in the Sunday Times last weekend opened with an apparently incidental anecdote. Speaking about his first days at Leicester City’s training ground in February 2019, Rodgers remembered a conversation with a group of cleaners.
“Your role is vital at this football club, for it is you who look after the environment we work in,” Rodgers said. “If you could find some way to move these boxes it would be incredible.”
This is pure, unadulterated Brendan Rodgers, or at least our perceived wisdom of him. He’s part football manager, part Instagram non-celebrity telling you that you can aim for the moon from some soulless pool in Dubai.
Ask a dozen followers of the Premier League which manager had given that quote anonymously and at least 10 would pick him; six of them would probably share the image on social media to much merriment. “There goes Brendan Rodgers,” we can imagine one cleaner saying to another after passing him in the corridor. “I must remember to thank him.”
But here’s the kicker: people do react positively to a human touch. Those cleaners probably did appreciate being made to feel important, because we all do: employees, friends, family, footballers.
And, for all the mockery, Rodgers is very good at it. When asked who the best man manager he had worked under was, Steven Gerrard did not pick Keegan, Dalglish, Evans, Houllier or Benitez, but a manager for whom he never reached a cup final and never won a trophy. He picked Rodgers.
Rodgers is the best British manager by almost every measure. He took Swansea City into the Premier League at the age of 38 in his first full season having spent less than £1m on new players and consolidated them in the top flight with a courageous dedication to possession football. He took Liverpool closer to their maiden Premier League title than anyone had before him.
He won all seven domestic trophies available to him as Celtic manager, made them the first Scottish Invincibles for 118 years and broke the record for the longest unbeaten domestic run in British football history. He took Leicester City from 12th in the Premier League to fifth in 15 months and may well go one step further this season.
But we cannot ignore the falls: Liverpool 2013-14, Leicester 2019-20. Because of who we believe Rodgers to be as a personality, not only do those late-season stumbles threaten to overshadow his successes but they are sold as an unshakeable element of his character. He is the moral tale of The Man Who Believed His Own Hype, Icarus insisting to Daedalus that the weakness of the wax could be dealt with by the power of positive thinking.
That’s not really fair. Liverpool began 2013-14 as 33-1 sixth favourites for the Premier League title. Leicester City were joint-eighth favourites to finish in the top four.
If Rodgers was guilty of anything, it was an inability to sustain emphatic over-achievement in circumstances that were, in financial terms, weighted against him. Liverpool signed one player for more than £10m in 2013/14 (Mamadou Sakho); Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City signed 11 for combined fees of £270m.
That makes Rodgers a product of modern football discourse, through which everyone but the winner becomes a victim of their own success. At Leicester City, you compete with a wage bill that is roughly 40 percent of the richest clubs in the country. You use your man management, tactical nous and the club’s scouting networks to punch above your weight. And then, when that eventually becomes unsustainable, you are labelled as a bottler. Progress is judged not by the journey but by the end result taken out of context of everything that came before it.
Rodgers has won trophies but never in England; that matters because of the Scottish tax that we impose upon success north of the border, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. The last decade of his career has been a sandwich of contrasting fortunes: his time in Scotland spent winning things but wondering if his reputation was improving, his time in England either side of it spent improving his reputation but wondering if he needed to win anything.
This remark may seem controversial, but it shouldn’t: British coaching needs Rodgers to succeed.
The last British manager to win one of the big three domestic trophies is still Alex Ferguson; no current serving British manager has won the domestic title, FA Cup or League Cup – Ferguson, Harry Redknapp, Graeme Souness, Steve McClaren, Kenny Dalglish and Alex McLeish have all weakened, waned or walked off into the sunset.
Rodgers barely had a playing career, began coaching immediately, travelled Spain as part of his studies, worked as a youth coach and assistant manager and then took a managerial role outside the top tier. If the English coaching system has a blueprint, Rodgers is it.
Rodgers has always insisted that trophies would never change him, reflecting upon the lives of his parents who worked for decades without trinkets or medals. But he is no fool; he knows that winning the FA Cup on Saturday would provide a definitive answer to an uncomfortable, unfair question.
British coaching would finally have an achievement on which to hang its hat. And it may spur Leicester City, those great overachievers, onto a Champions League gatecrash that the supposedly bigger clubs around them are so desperate to stamp out. For that alone, we should wish him well.
I didn’t disagree with the first two bits, but what achievement with Reading?Pretty much sums up my thoughts of him. However crap you think Scottish football is, you don't get an invincible team as a bottler. Or his achievements with Swansea and Reading.
P | Pld | Pts | |
1 | Liverpool | 11 | 28 |
2 | Manchester C | 11 | 23 |
3 | Chelsea | 11 | 19 |
4 | Arsenal | 11 | 19 |
5 | Nottm F | 11 | 19 |
6 | Brighton | 11 | 19 |
7 | Fulham | 11 | 18 |
8 | Newcastle | 11 | 18 |
9 | Aston Villa | 11 | 18 |
10 | Tottenham | 11 | 16 |
11 | Brentford | 11 | 16 |
12 | Bournemouth | 11 | 15 |
13 | Manchester U | 11 | 15 |
14 | West Ham | 11 | 12 |
15 | Leicester | 11 | 10 |
16 | Everton | 11 | 10 |
17 | Ipswich | 11 | 8 |
18 | Palace | 11 | 7 |
19 | Wolves | 11 | 6 |
20 | Southampton | 11 | 4 |