The mistakes since relegation..(long read!)

It's often touted by supporters of Top and the KP group that our fortunes are the result of a serious mistake in the 2021 season, compounded by the club sticking with Rodgers for too long.

Since that happened, while the club is paying financially for the previous mistakes, they argue that Top and Rudkin have learned their lessons and actually showed signs of getting the big decisions right since then - starting with the Maresca hire. But is that the case? Or have their continued decisions served to compound the situation?

Here are some of the key decisions the KP group have taken since relegation and a view of the hits and misses from my perspective;

- Keeping Jon Rudkin

The first and most important decision Top needed to make was whether to replace the DoF who allowed a personal relationship with Rodgers to cloud his judgment resulting in keeping Rodgers for way too long. Top also had to assess how the player contracts had been managed, with £180m of talent leaving Leicester for nothing at the end of the season

Remarkably Top decides that not only should Rudkin stay, he's also the right man to lead the investigation into what went wrong.

This is the biggest evidence we have that Top hasn't got decisions right since the relegation - it's the first big call he had to make after relegation, the most important one. He got it badly wrong

- Hiring Enzo Maresca

In hindsight, given we got promoted from the championship at the first time of asking, you'd have to say it was the right call. But I think we need to dive deeper into this hire to really understand if this was actually the start of where things started to unravel once again.

It's clear that Top and Rudkin were not entirely honest with Maresca about the clubs financial plight when they hired him. We know that because of subsequent very public comments from Maresca to this effect.

Maresca was already eyeing up his options before Chelsea came in, Sevilla was a very strong possibility and its clear the clubs decision to hide certain aspects of the financial difficulties was a part of his decision to move on.

That approach turned out to be a fatal mistake. Not being honest with Maresca meant backing a rebuild under a manager that would surely want to move on once it became clear the club couldn't execute the vision he had. It's what led to our disastrous summer....

- Style of Play

The Enzo Maresca direction was hugely ambitious but flawed. Irrespective of how it turned out in the end, Burnley was the perfect example of why playing that style of football in the PL with our limited finances would have resulted in us being battered. I suspect that became clear to Maresca as well who would have been hoping for quality re-enforcements to build on his philosophy.

A far more sensible approach would have been to take stock of our situation much earlier, re-build in the championship with a much more pragmatic manager (Corberan for example) and of course to be honest about the limited finances we had.

- Complying with FFP.

Everything the club has done since the charge for a PSR breach in 22-23 has further aggravated the situation. Rather than being open, compliant and honest about their appalling financial mismanagement, the club chose to be stubborn, indignant, arrogant and avoid tackling the problem.

For example - the club had interest in more players than Barnes and Maddison, but refused to sell - knowing full well it would likely put them into a second breach during the championship season. KDH should have been sold, but wasn't. If he and others had been, we could have invested in up and coming replacements, embedded during the championship season and hopefully ready for this season.

Instead the club effectively chose to cheat the system, hang on to players they couldn't afford to in order to secure promotion and THEN sell for below market value to try and meet FFP at the last gasp. It doesn't sound like they've been able to do that....

The problem with that, other than risking not being compliant, is that it's terrible preparation for the following season. You're now losing one of your key goal contributors the moment you get promoted and you have limited time and now even less funds to bring anyone in.