Ruud van Nistelrooy is walking into an old-fashioned club at Leicester – it will not be easy
Two men have almost complete control over the club and a remarkably close relationship with the playing squad
Sam Wallace Chief Football Writer
From the stand at Brentford on Saturday, Ruud Van Nistelrooy will get the first view of his Leicester City – the players, the fans, and the scale of the challenge keeping a newly promoted club with an eventful recent history in the Premier League.
The new Leicester manager will start work next week and he will encounter an unusual club, run by two men who rarely speak in public. An owner who delivered
a face-to-face dressing down to the players this week – even telling them that sacking Van Nistelrooy’s predecessor Steve Cooper would not help with the club’s finances. A director of football who has been at the club since the early 1990s and now has a huge remit – including the owner’s horse-racing stable. In addition, a squad of players, many of whom have a direct line to the owner and the director of football, which could be construed as dangerous for any manager.
Cooper
lasted just 12 games. Now it is Van Nistelrooy’s turn to try to manage a club run by that pair. They are the owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, 39, known as Top, the Thai billionaire scion of the King Power dynasty created by his late father Vichai. The other is Jon Rudkin, 56, who first joined Leicester as a volunteer coach for the youth teams and now runs the football operation single-handedly. He served Vichai until the patriarch’s death in the helicopter crash of 2018 and now does the same for his son.
The pair are close. So close that through managerial sackings, the relegation to the Championship in 2023, and the club’s enormous losses – and attendant financial sanctions – Top’s support for Rudkin has been unwavering. When Top is in Britain and at the training ground, Rudkin is usually by his side. Other than Top, no one interferes with the running of the club under Rudkin, not even Susan Whelan, nominally the club’s chief executive. A long-term King Power employee, she attends Premier League shareholder meetings but is not involved in the key concerns of the football operation, such as player trading and managerial appointments.
The decision
to appoint Van Nistelrooy over
other candidates such as Graham Potter and the former Bayern Munich manager Niko Kovac, would have been taken by Top and Rudkin. As well as Leicester, Rudkin is a key figure in the King Power racing stable. The club say it is chiefly managed by Alastair Donald, of bloodstock agents, SackvilleDonald.
When Top addressed the squad at the training ground this week, he is understood to have told them how disappointed he was with their performances under Cooper and with the trip to Copenhagen for the traditional fancy-dress Christmas party. He is also understood to have mentioned the club’s finances. Paying off another manager will put a strain on the club’s already difficult financial situation and its compliance with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).
The question Van Nistelrooy will have to confront in private is what power the squad wield. Jannik Vestergaard, for instance, was frozen out by Brendan Rodgers in the 2022-2023 season when the Denmark international was not even permitted to train with the first team. He was brought back in by Enzo Maresca and then in June was given a new three-year contract, overseen by Rudkin, after the Italian had left for Chelsea.
It is understood that having considered the player’s contribution, Cooper also saw fit to leave Vestergaard out of first-team activities. He did so after the September international break, at the same time the player also picked up an ankle injury. Yet while the three managers have all moved on, Vestergaard is still at the club.
Some at Leicester point out that the closeness between the players and the owner, as well as Rudkin, is something that has been celebrated in the past – especially after Vichai’s death in 2018. Yet for a new manager, with a huge reputation but relative inexperience as a coach – Van Nistelrooy has 55 senior games at United and PSV Eindhoven – it may also be an issue to keep an eye on.
Among the senior players who did go to Copenhagen on a night out organised by the squad’s leadership group were Conor Coady, Vestergaard, Hamza Choudhury and Harry Winks. The travelling players left on a private jet on Saturday evening, hours after the Chelsea game. Winks had come off after 11 minutes with a groin problem. The usual advice with an injury of that kind would be to avoid air travel.
There will also be some players aggrieved by the pictures of the squad in Copenhagen. Among those who did not go on the trip were captain Jamie Vardy as well as Wilfred Ndidi, Jordan Ayew, Facundo Buonanotte, Patson Daka, Wout Faes, Ricardo Pereira and Abdul Fatawu. The latter two have recently had surgery on injuries that will require significant time out of action.
Van Nistelrooy inherits a club who have 10 points from their first 12 games and are not in the relegation zone. In the summer, with a potential points deduction hanging over Leicester, the club spent less than the two other promoted sides but have managed to stay just ahead of them so far. Van Nistelrooy may well have asked himself why that cost Cooper his job. Van Nistelrooy’s one task, like that of his predecessor, will be surviving relegation and, for all the hostility of Leicester fans towards Cooper, he was on course to do so.
At the end of this month, Leicester will be obliged by the scale of their recent losses to submit forecast results for the latest financial year to the Premier League. It will be those projections upon which the Premier League will decide whether another PSR breach might be likely and give them time to start a process that would conclude by the end of the season. Cumulative losses totalling £182 million over the previous two years put Leicester well in breach of the £105 million permitted losses over a three-year period.
There is little room for manoeuvre for the Premier League’s newest managerial appointment. Van Nistelrooy might wonder if he has time for club politics in the midst of a relegation battle – but the two in this case feel inextricably linked.
Leicester declined to comment.
