At Leicester City, it’s time for leadership changes.

The women’s team was once again embroiled in scandal last week, while the men’s team was on the verge of financial collapse. It’s an indication that, despite the shock of being relegated last summer, Leicester has not changed.

Following our May relegation, Leicester supporters held out great hope that the team would suddenly become vibrant again through a precipitous decline. The idea was that perhaps being demoted would actually be a benefit since it would free us from the players whose poor choices had led to our downgrade, allow us to rebuild our roster, and create a new route back to the top.

Nearly all of this hope was wishful thinking. Nobody at the club ever presented a new vision, indicated they had learned anything from the experience, or provided an explanation for how or why Leicester had ended up in the Championship and, more importantly, with a squad that cost more than any other non-big six team in the Premier League.

Actually, nobody from the club communicated at all until the chairman promised to “reflect on the processes and decisions that have brought us to this point” in a statement that was ghostwritten. Notably, this ambiguous pledge resulted in no alterations at the top leadership tier.

The depth of the decay at the club’s heart has been made clear to everyone in recent days. Leicester has suspended their women’s team manager while an investigation into his relationship with a player is ongoing, meaning they could lose a lot of points regardless of the league they play in next season. They are also facing a desperate talent fire sale in the summer.

The club has released two statements during this entire ordeal. One to declare victory over the Football League on a moot point, and another to the Guardian feigning that Willie Kirk is “assisting the club in an internal matter,” as though he were a devoted research assistant assisting his boss with Google searches rather than the actual manager of the first team under criminal investigation.

This embarrassing attempt to bury their heads in the sand along with everyone else’s reveals a culture of incompetence and a lack of accountability at the core of the club.

Problems with trust

Determining who is really in charge at Leicester has never been easy. Even though Top is the official leader, it is clear that he does not participate in daily operations. A management team with job titles that resemble a scene from The Life of Brian sits beneath him. The “Director of Football,” the “Director of Football Operations,” and the “Operations Director” come after the CEO.

Who is actually making decisions is unknown to any of us. Who is in charge of the club’s culture, who decides on finances, and who communicates with the owner and manager? What is certain is that the club has put itself in a horrible situation over the last few years, and their long-standing errors are finally coming to light.

Every single one of those individuals needs to leave. It is now evident that they oversaw a colossal failure that saw Leicester transform from a championship club facing financial ruin to a team of unmatched strength on the verge of the Champions League.

In his statement at the conclusion of the previous season, Top essentially begged for the fans’ faith. to have faith that he would try to correct the mistakes and that he recognised their existence. to have faith that a prosperous ownership group may occasionally make mistakes, but he would move swiftly to correct the course.

This was all talk, as is evident now. The summer brought about no change at all; in fact, things got worse.

For some time now, there have been indications of rank incompetence, or worse, at the core of the club. We were penalised by the Competition & Markets Authority just a few months ago for our collusion with JD Sports to set the price of our equipment. Additionally, we signed up a dubious betting sponsor who employed paid actors to pose as the company’s directors.

A few days after receiving a fine for a major DUI offence, one of our players received the captain’s armband. Two of the club’s previous three women’s team managers have implausibly been accused of having a relationship with a player.

These are not the behaviours of a club with capable leaders or one with a strong culture. These indicate a serious issue: the club is being run by people who are, at best, inexperienced due to a lack of oversight and accountability.

not picking up any lessons

And that’s before we even discuss the football aspect. Due to a total breakdown in financial management, the club is currently facing a points deduction. Something that it has ostensibly managed to avoid exposing to succeeding managers, who are then compelled to appear before the media to respond to inquiries concerning matters beyond their jurisdiction because those in positions of authority are too cowardly to handle it themselves.

Despite his self-serving rhetoric, Brendan Rodgers was clearly taken aback by the abrupt financial constraints placed on him just when he was prepared to rotate the team. Then, this season, the team treated Enzo Maresca in precisely the same way.

These budgetary constraints were a direct result of years of poor decision-making, going over budget, signing players the manager wouldn’t play, and giving enormous contracts to players who didn’t deserve them.

Leicester’s actions once more demonstrate that we have not grown from these mistakes. The hens are coming home to roost because we have chosen empty words over deeds. Top claimed he was making “difficult short-term decisions that protect the club’s long-term interests” when he first put spending on hold last summer.

A few months later, Rodgers was given permission to spend thirty million pounds on players before being fired shortly after—possibly at great expense. A year later, just one of those new recruits is still with the team, and he doesn’t interact with the group in any way. Subsequently, the team made significant financial commitments in the summer to acquire Harry Winks, Conor Coady, and Abdul Fatawu, before applying the brakes once more in January.

Beyond the fact that our decisions are consistently poor ones, there is no consistency to our decision-making. The same individuals who made all of these errors are still in leadership positions and continue to shirk accountability for the situation we find ourselves in.

Time for responses

You can only hold a nation’s troubles responsible for so long when it comes to its courtiers. As the saying goes, “leadership comes from the top,” and we have less and less reason to believe that our chief executive is capable of handling situations.

There’s no reason to believe that the people in charge now have a strategy to get us out of this mess. They have consistently demonstrated that they are not capable of taking on the challenge. Rather than confronting the issues head-on, they have been preoccupied in recent days with making legalese-sounding statements in an attempt to hide the issues they have allowed to fester.

They haven’t tried to engage in frank conversation with the fans about our issues and their plans to address them. They have completely undermined our chances of keeping the manager past this season—possibly the only person at the team who inspires hope—and exposed him.

It’s time for the club to take responsibility. In addition to a thorough purge of senior management, we also require information regarding the actual scope of the financial issues and what lies ahead. We must comprehend how the club permitted a culture to develop in which several managers were (allegedly) able to take advantage of their authority to establish a rapport with the players on their team.

Above all, we require a total cultural makeover. To bring us together and give us hope for the future of Leicester City, we require new leadership and a fresh vision. All we have at the moment are unsolved mysteries and a pervasive feeling of impending doom.

GET MORE RELATED CONTENT HERE