Similarities to 2000/2001 season

Great post and I thought this exact thing last night. But there is one big difference we should be comfortable about:

Under Peter Taylor, I had no idea how we kept winning. Things looked wrong, we were lucky, the players looked unhappy. Under Ranieri we deserve our victories, the spirit is so strong we keep delivering dramatic comebacks and all I here from within is how good the owners are and everything behind the scenes.

Massive difference. It feels it as well.

Now, football is precarious and Ranieri's number one job is to protect the squad ethic we have. Two bad signings could quite quickly disrupt everything and send us on that doom spiral.

What I like is that he looks as bought in to this as the players. There's something special going on at our club right now that people want to be part of.

I'm just pinching myself and enjoying it.

Eh up foxy great post although Taylor was well Taylor his toughest job was tell the drinking club their days where number Walsh in particular did not like that Lennon leaving was the biggest factor for me he was our Ian Wilson, Cambiaso and Kante. As a team you lose such a key player then its over and who was Izzet going to go to the pub with?

"One final point - I keep seeing managers and pundits like Pulis and Lawrenson saying that NP deserves the credit for this season. It's true that this is mostly NP's side and it was the run at the end of last season which has allowed this season to happen. But for me that doesn't give Ranieri the credit he deserves. It would have been so easy for Ranieri to change everything and bring in his own men but he hasn't - he's just improved what was already here. If we were bottom, Ranieri would be getting 100% of the blame, so it's only fair he takes most of the credit for our start."

Good post Foxello!

I think this point has been covered though, CR has taken the credit for not changing things but it's also been pointed out that it's very rare to inherit such a well run Club with everything on the up and in place.

It's that Taylor issue where people will start to really give him the plaudits, when we have a tough time and he pulls us through it and when he changes the team, squad, playing methods to his on ways more and whether that works.

The results have already protected him from going 4 at the back with a squad that showed it wasn't really up to that last season, had we been near the bottom then I'm sure many for fans would be crying out for 352.

TB you want this three at the back but it was a last ditch attempt to save our season. It limits attacking options and you cant change formation easily.

It’s an interesting analogy made by the OP of our current situation to the era of transition from MON to Taylor. There are quite a few similarities, but hopefully enough differences to suggest that history won’t repeat itself in the same way. We’ve discussed the Peter Taylor era before and many of us recall that we thought the writing was on the wall long before that cup loss to Wycombe - even if that was the point when results collapsed.

Personally I think that the transition we’ve made during Pearson’s two reigns from a struggling Championship club to a Premier League club is probably the most remarkable in my (nearly) 30 years of watching Leicester. Whether you put that success down to Pearson, the owners, the backroom staff, the players, the fans, or a combination of these it was still achieved during the Pearson era. However, I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to reflect too much on that when assessing the performance of Ranieri. I get a bit fed up with reading statements like: “we wouldn’t have got that result with Pearson…” etc. Pearson is no longer here and how we would have performed under him this season is, at best, speculation. The important thing now is where we are going under Ranieri.

I keep reading that Ranieri hasn’t changed very much, but he’s made the bold decision to revert to a back four despite our success at the end of last season with a three. I seem to remember Peter Taylor doing something similar and failed to make best use of his existing players and recruited badly in trying to evolve our style of play. Lots of us were saying earlier in the season (including me) that three was the right way to go, but the results keep on coming with four. You could argue that the defence is still poor and that the form of the forward players is getting CR off the hook, but the only real measure is results and CR is getting them.

What has been the most encouraging thing for me is that the players are, without doubt, responding to the current management regime. You wouldn’t be able to maintain that spirit and enthusiasm if you had an unhappy camp. One of the big fears when going from Pearson to Ranieri is that NP’s signings wouldn’t play for the new guy. If you look at the form of Vardy, Mahrez, Albrighton, Schlupp, Drinkwater etc. then the form has actually improved. My own personal opinion is that what American’s would call “game management” is also better under CR.

I agree with Foxello that credit for our start should be given to Ranieri. You could argue that he is building on a very solid base, but you could equally argue that the Leicester of ¾ of last season could have easily resurfaced. In giving CR due credit, however, it would be with the caveat that this is only an end of first term report. The real test for CR will be how he keeps our best players happy, how he assimilates new players into the squad and where we go as he establishes more and more of his own signings. Any manager can have short runs of good form, but a great one can keep recycling the team and doing it over and over again. It’s a truly great start, but still only a start. Those of us who still have nightmares about the Peter Taylor era will probably be more cautious about getting carried away too quickly.

comment by Nevsaysagoal2city (U5194)
posted 37 minutes ago
TB you want this three at the back but it was a last ditch attempt to save our season. It limits attacking options and you cant change formation easily.


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The evidence suggests otherwise

I also agree that this season looks less and less like the 00/01 season as it goes on. Some of last seasons players have really come on, and our stats are looking better each match: I've noticed that our possession stats have started to increase as compared to earlier in the season. This is a great positive in my view as it means we can start controlling games and enacting different plans. If we can keep the spirit and great comebacks at the same time then we look a real force to be reckoned with.

I still maintain that the biggest thing that Taylor got wrong (despite Nev's objections) was signings - bringing in players who were well below the standard required, and that in this Ranieri hasn't really been tested yet. The only one who might be a full Ranieri signing is Inler, but everyone else was at least scouted before his arrival. Will Ranieri succeed in this? Well, he's built some pretty decent teams in the past so one would hope he would, particularly if he's happy to continue working closely with the excellent Steve Walsh and the backroom team. But this is simply something we don't yet know.

Anyway, with regard to who takes credit for all this, I think the answer is both of them - and indeed the owners. They have created a great and positive club; they've done things their own way, by their own model, and it's really coming up trumps. I believe they were fortunate that Pearson wanted to return and that he was a good fit for this club - someone who could build a team from the Championship without spending millions, while helping to build the kind of positive feeling that the owners wanted. I can see now that some of the negativity of the likes of Ostrich-gate might have concerned them to this regard and ultimately contributed to his removal, but he left the club in a terrific state for the next manager. That manager, Ranieri, has taken what he's found and run with it: He has been able to add to the team rather than feeling the need to change everything; this demonstrates good judgement on his part. And if he achieves a top-half finish then I think he will have essentially overachieved and take credit for that. So credit all round!

Its very difficult to directly compare the transition from MON to Taylor to this one, although some of the parallels are obvious.

The biggest difference for me is the transfer policy. Taylor had a much bigger influence over transfers as many managers did then - before the days of transfer committees, DoF's etc. Taylor quickly set about dismantling the team and more importantly its spirit. City were lucky in 2000/2001 with their opening fixtures and never looked convincing.

Taylor personally oversaw a nightmare recruitment policy, recruiting the likes of Junior Lewis and Ade Akinbiyi and the wheels were beginning to fall off long before we played Wycombe as Muzzy Izzet recently revealed.

Whats encouraging here is that its becoming ever more obvious that the clubs transfer policy is actually exclusive of the manager. Walsh has confirmed in interviews that he scouted Mahrez AND he convinced him to join Leicester - not Pearson.

Thats not to detract from the work Pearson has done, but Kante, Inler, Benalouane were irons in the fire long before Pearson had left and the club were working to bring them in regardless of who was in charge. What Ranieri added was the pulling power to get Kante and Inler over the line, there was some doubt as to whether either of them would join for a period of time.

So the cogs in the wheel have continued to turn just as effectively without Nigel Pearson and will do so after Ranieri. Thats how you become a Swansea, a Southampton, an Everton - thats the difference.

Some good points BS regarding the importance of an ongoing transfer machine regardless of manager. I hadn't really thought of it in those terms.

Yeah transfers are key to our continued success and we don't concerns in that respect.