King Power have made errors throughout their time as owners. Paolo Sousa anyone?
That isn't the issue because as long as you make more good decisions than bad overall, it doesn't really matter. The other factor with King Power is that they've been incredibly lucky. Claudio Ranieri was about 15th choice.
The argument about the hundreds of millions they've 'put in' just doesn't stack up. They bought the club with the expressed desire to promote their brand. They have done this and then some. It has paid off better than any of them could have imagined and is worth huge sums in their home country. The value of King Power has mushroomed since they took over as has their credibility in a country where fortunes can be wiped in a moment. Also, don't forget that LCFC is an asset and the resale value of the club is beyond every single penny they've put in. Therefore, they're very much 'in the black' with their investment.
The problem is not any of this. The problem is that they've lost the plot. All the things they did well in those initial years to build a relationship with Leicester have gone to shit. The structure they built is now the structure that holds us back. The world of football has moved on and we've gone backwards. The problem is that you have to adapt to thrive. Despite internal reviews and scratching of heads, it is quite obvious that they don't recognise the problem.
Sticking as we are will mean that we continue to slide back to what we used to be until their investment in us does actually put them out of pocket. It's fine to look at it all and say that the ride was worthwhile, of course that's true. But when they're long gone, and they will be at some point, we're left with whatever remains.
So trusting them no matter what is not where I am. In fact, those that are doing so are harming their club. Sometimes the supporters of a football club have to give their owners a slap round the face. I think history will show that that time was a couple of years ago.
Everyone makes errors. That’s why they put rubbers on pencils. Paolo Sousa was 14 years ago.
Every team also has an element of fortune, but you can’t label all success as luck and all failure as ineptitude. You don’t luckily win league 1, the championship twice, the premier league, the FA Cup and the community shield with several top half finishes and a quarter final of the worlds biggest club competition. That isn’t all luck.
Similarly, failure isn’t down to doing nothing, being inept, or being stupid. There’s one enormous issue that wasn’t addressed and it was that Rodgers twerp. I was very critical he wasn’t removed a year and a half before it finally happened. There’s no question that what he spent landed us here. There’s no question the club put an enormous amount of misplaced faith in him. That is a failing. No doubt. It doesn’t undo all the good things we have done. It sets us back a long way, but not insurmountable if we are patient.
The argument about hundreds of millions of loans they put in but wrote off is documented in our filed accounts. It stacks up. It’s there in black and white. They didn’t have to write off a penny. Not one.
They also didn’t have to build a training ground or plan to develop the rest of our infrastructure. They didn’t have to reinvest transfer funds back into the team while we were in the shit. It’s their company, they could sit on it or declare a nice dividend. They could’ve taken the Sheffield Wednesday approach and said that nothing more was going in, that wages wouldn’t be paid, that if fans thought it was their club so much they should pay the liabilities. They aren’t that kind of owner though.
The value of King Power went from 8 billion to around 1.5 billion because of Covid. They still put money in. At the height of their worst time they wrote off our debt. The company is now worth around 3.5 billion. It’s not double its size. It’s half its size (not even that currently).
We haven’t gone backwards. We were nothing when they came in. Scratching around the half a million transfer fee bracket and declining year on year. I’ll happily take the rain while we try to right what went wrong.
I don’t have blind faith. I acknowledge the mistakes. I think they know about them too, but I don’t see an ownership that has closed shop and turned off the tap.
Hound them out guys. See whether the next one is better, but don’t cry about it when 1) the replacement isn’t what you’d hoped; and 2) our current owners are doing great somewhere else.
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