Rudkin

[Les-TA-Jon]

8 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

No idea how anyone expected any different. Same inept people. Same inept outcomes.

 

Whatever reasons about FFP and amortisation are given on here, I just cannot believe it can be this much harder for us to make sales than Everton, than Wolves, than Southampton. 

Which highly sellable assets are we failing to shift then? 

 

Iversen - Out on Loan

Smithies - who's desperately after a 4th choice keeper?

Ward - who's desperately after a terrible keeper? 

 

Souttar - International CB, mostly only played at Championship level, we had to over pay as were desperate in Jan window during relegation fight. Who can match our valuation / his wages?

Thomas - just about good enough for a Championship, just come back from a bad loan move. Is anyone clamouring for him? (He's probably our 'easiest' sell since he'd be all profit on the books as an academy product. But the player has to want the move too...)

 

Ndidi - injured and out of contract soon. No chance of a move

Praet - sicknote, barely played for several years. No real market value. Who would want him?

Albrighton - over the hill, no market value

 

Iheanacho - injured and out of contract soon. At AFCON too. No chance of a move

Daka - At AFCON making a move hard. With Nacho's problems and Vardy's injuries, we probably need to keep him 

 

So where are these players that we should be easily selling but aren't? 

[Stadt]

12 hours ago, Wymsey said:

Surely the guy does some good, considering the club hasn't binned off yet plus his extensive club knowledge?..

He's been here since 2003, a lot of people owe their current roles to him so there won't be many rocking the boat. Not-losing-face and loyalty are seemingly core tenets of KP's leadership, hence why nobody gets sacked aside from the manager - even then it's slow.

 

He's:

Leicester City Director of Football

Leicester City Academy Director

OH Leuven Director

Head of Ops (or similar) for King Power Racing

 

He's either excellent at his job or he's overworked, it's not the former. 

 

New appointments with solid track records like Paul McGuinness, Dmitri Hajalko, Inigo Idiakez, Mladen Sormaz and Eduarrdo Maia didn't stick around for very long. There could be all sorts of reasons but it's not encouraging. The Sam Wallace article before relegation says, 

 

"No-one from the Leicester hierarchy talks publicly. The club is run by two executives who have access to the ultimate decision maker, Vichai’s son Top and the new king of owners King Power. Susan Whelan runs the commercial side of the club as chief executive but does not touch football decisions. Rudkin reports directly to Top, as he did Vichai, and is his boss’ chief advisory voice on all matters from signings to managerial sackings and appointments."

 

[volpeazzurro]

7 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Which highly sellable assets are we failing to shift then? 

 

Iversen - Out on Loan

Smithies - who's desperately after a 4th choice keeper?

Ward - who's desperately after a terrible keeper? 

 

Souttar - International CB, mostly only played at Championship level, we had to over pay as were desperate in Jan window during relegation fight. Who can match our valuation / his wages?

Thomas - just about good enough for a Championship, just come back from a bad loan move. Is anyone clamouring for him? (He's probably our 'easiest' sell since he'd be all profit on the books as an academy product. But the player has to want the move too...)

 

Ndidi - injured and out of contract soon. No chance of a move

Praet - sicknote, barely played for several years. No real market value. Who would want him?

Albrighton - over the hill, no market value

 

Iheanacho - injured and out of contract soon. At AFCON too. No chance of a move

Daka - At AFCON making a move hard. With Nacho's problems and Vardy's injuries, we probably need to keep him 

 

So where are these players that we should be easily selling but aren't? 

Absolutely. Not nearly as easy as some seem to think. Because of the wages they're on, or length of contract awaiting a potential more financially viable free transfer, how many of those players (or their agents) would leap at the chance of a move even if a club wanted them? 

[Stadt]

We blew CL qualification twice and didn't strengthen in January either time, we're in pole position to go up now but it's not unassailable.

 

Just a little bit more dynamism in shifting players out, a few permanents, few loans gives us the headroom to get us the 6/8 option we sorely lack. Instead we're hamstrung by previous clangers, transfer ghosts (Praet, Ward, Smithies, Soumare etc). Rudkin can't kick things on because he's forever shooting himself in the feet.

[volpeazzurro]

4 minutes ago, Stadt said:

We blew CL qualification twice and didn't strengthen in January either time, we're in pole position to go up now but it's not unassailable.

 

Just a little bit more dynamism in shifting players out, a few permanents, few loans gives us the headroom to get us the 6/8 option we sorely lack. Instead we're hamstrung by previous clangers, transfer ghosts (Praet, Ward, Smithies, Soumare etc). Rudkin can't kick things on because he's forever shooting himself in the feet.

So, if you were in charge, of those seemingly immovable players, how are you actually going to achieve it? You can't sell what nobody wants to buy and you can't sell anyone who refuses to be sold. It doesn't matter whether your name is Stadt or Rudkin, the problem remains. 

[Stadt]

8 minutes ago, volpeazzurro said:

So, if you were in charge, of those seemingly immovable players, how are you actually going to achieve it? You can't sell what nobody wants to buy and you can't sell anyone who refuses to be sold. It doesn't matter whether your name is Stadt or Rudkin, the problem remains. 

Get on the phone to directors, owners, agents, chief scouts, heads of recruitment - offer loan deals, offer favourable deal structures whatever. He'll be doing some of this already obviously but he's not good at it. It's also his (partially or largely) it's fault they're on silly deals too.

 

Some clubs shift deadwood better than others. 

 

Torino were interested in Praet, ok they might have lowballed us but has it been better paying his wages and barely playing, or should we have cut our losses?

 

 

 

We don't move players on well, club aren't blank slates with binary 'player will sell Y or N' options, DoFs have agency.

Everton

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-everton/alletransfers/verein/29

 

Southampton 

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/alletransfers/verein/180

[Babylon]

On 17/01/2024 at 11:20, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Rejected a bid £2m short for one player and then let Barnes and Maddison go for god knows how much less than market value. That's on Rudkin, but no doubt you'll defend it anyway because "we don't know for sure". 

"That's on Rudkin", I'm sorry, but it's such a pathetically myopic way of looking at things. Like other clubs aren't acrtually involved in the process. If only Spurs are bidding and that's the maximum they bid, what do you suggest? Would you be happy if we still had him at the club running out his contract and we had no signings? 

[Dan LCFC]

2 hours ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Which highly sellable assets are we failing to shift then? 

 

Iversen - Out on Loan

Smithies - who's desperately after a 4th choice keeper?

Ward - who's desperately after a terrible keeper? 

 

Souttar - International CB, mostly only played at Championship level, we had to over pay as were desperate in Jan window during relegation fight. Who can match our valuation / his wages?

Thomas - just about good enough for a Championship, just come back from a bad loan move. Is anyone clamouring for him? (He's probably our 'easiest' sell since he'd be all profit on the books as an academy product. But the player has to want the move too...)

 

Ndidi - injured and out of contract soon. No chance of a move

Praet - sicknote, barely played for several years. No real market value. Who would want him?

Albrighton - over the hill, no market value

 

Iheanacho - injured and out of contract soon. At AFCON too. No chance of a move

Daka - At AFCON making a move hard. With Nacho's problems and Vardy's injuries, we probably need to keep him 

 

So where are these players that we should be easily selling but aren't? 

The majority of them. You're just accustomed to us being unable to get it done. Look at the lists provided of the Everton and Southampton players and tell me which world beaters they were flogging.

 

What's indisputable is that our hand has gotten substantially weaker than it was a few years ago and that all happened on his watch. So even if everything you said was true, how is he blameless? 

Edited 19 January by Dan LCFC

[bmt]

2 hours ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Which highly sellable assets are we failing to shift then? 

 

Iversen - Out on Loan

Smithies - who's desperately after a 4th choice keeper?

Ward - who's desperately after a terrible keeper? 

 

Souttar - International CB, mostly only played at Championship level, we had to over pay as were desperate in Jan window during relegation fight. Who can match our valuation / his wages?

Thomas - just about good enough for a Championship, just come back from a bad loan move. Is anyone clamouring for him? (He's probably our 'easiest' sell since he'd be all profit on the books as an academy product. But the player has to want the move too...)

 

Ndidi - injured and out of contract soon. No chance of a move

Praet - sicknote, barely played for several years. No real market value. Who would want him?

Albrighton - over the hill, no market value

 

Iheanacho - injured and out of contract soon. At AFCON too. No chance of a move

Daka - At AFCON making a move hard. With Nacho's problems and Vardy's injuries, we probably need to keep him 

 

So where are these players that we should be easily selling but aren't? 

Add to this literally nobody is signing players...

[Les-TA-Jon]

16 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

The majority of them. You're just accustomed to us being unable to get it done. Look at the lists provided of the Everton and Southampton players and tell me which world beaters they were flogging.

Sorry, so you do think it should be easy to sell and make money out of that list of players? I can only really see Souttar and Thomas in that list. I forgot about Soumare to be fair, because I was just looking at our current squad. 

 

But even Soumare, how do we do it then? Looks like we might have signed him for £17m on a 5 year deal in 2021. Let's say £40,000 a week or £2m per year. So the amortisation is £5.4m per year. 

 

He's currently half way through that deal. So his 'book value' is £13.5m. If we sell him for anything less, it goes in our loss column. So we need a buyer willing to pay £14m+ and match his wages. 

 

Who's that then? 

 

Or let's look at Souttar. Signed on a 5.5 year deal in Jan 2023. £15m. £40,000 a week, £2m per year. So his 'book value' is something like £21m right now...who should bid that much for him right now, so it doesn't go in our loss column? Hmm? 

 

I'm not saying previous mistakes (i.e signing players like Soumare, Souttar, Kristiansen etc who ended up being overpriced, not good enough and not in our current manager's plans!) are to be ignored. And clearly they are a massive cause of our current situation. But it's just that you specifically said 'it should be easy to make some sales' and it's just demonstrably...not...

Edited 19 January by Les-TA-Jon

[Lambert09]

I think from tops view, the club has gone through its most successful period with rudkin in this role. He’s probably a little too close to everything which makes it harder to objectively analyze what’s going wrong and particularly when all fingers will be pointed in other directions. 

 

I doubt Top is even thinking about anything negative whilst we’re sat at the top of the table. If anything this will be securing rudkins position further, no matter what mess we are getting ourselves in, behind the scenes 

Edited 19 January by Lambert09

[Dan LCFC]

17 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Sorry, so you do think it should be easy to sell and make money out of that list of players? I can only really see Souttar and Thomas in that list. I forgot about Soumare to be fair, because I was just looking at our current squad. 

 

But even Soumare, how do we do it then? Looks like we might have signed him for £17m on a 5 year deal in 2021. Let's say £40,000 a week or £2m per year. So the amortisation is £5.4m per year. 

 

He's currently half way through that deal. So his 'book value' is £13.5m. If we sell him for anything less, it goes in our loss column. So we need a buyer willing to pay £14m+ and match his wages. 

 

Who's that then? 

 

Or let's look at Souttar. Signed on a 5.5 year deal in Jan 2023. £15m. £40,000 a week, £2m per year. So his 'book value' is something like £21m right now...who should bid that much for him right now, so it doesn't go in our loss column? Hmm? 

Add Iversen to that list too, so that's four players including the two you named and Soumare, which makes quite a difference already. I'm not claiming there's a load of clubs lining up for players like Albrighton who obviously hold very little value, but like I said, get the Everton and Southampton lists for comparison and we are clearly underperforming in this regard. Wolves as well, 17 players sold to our 5. We can seriously do no better than that?

 

Is it beneficial to us to keep a player depreciating in value that we won't use anyway rather than cutting our losses? So we gradually let Souttar depreciate and don't use him at all. Can we just never ever cut our losses now on anybody?

 

The other point here, presented there in plain sight, is Souttar was signed under a year ago. So that is by extension another big error made under Rudkin. It's yet another black mark that we have sanctioned money like that on a player who had nine starts under Rodgers before being consigned to the scrapheap. That's another error, indisputable when presented with those figures. Book value of £21mil and hasn't seen 100 minutes all season. I'd say there's an increasingly good chance Coady is going to be another of this ilk as well - another generous fee and wages that's offering minimal on the pitch even in this league, let alone if we go up.

 

Like I said elsewhere, even if all of these drawbacks and restrictions were true, who did they happen under?

Edited 19 January by Dan LCFC

[Les-TA-Jon]

3 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

Add Iversen to that list too, so that's four players including the two you named and Soumare, which makes quite a difference already. I'm not claiming there's a load of clubs lining up for players like Albrighton who obviously hold very little value, but like I said, get the Everton and Southampton lists for comparison and we are clearly underperforming in this regard. Wolves as well, 17 players sold to our 5. We can seriously do no better than that?

 

Is it beneficial to us to keep a player depreciating in value that we won't use anyway rather than cutting our losses? So we gradually let Souttar depreciate and don't use him at all. Can we just never ever cut our losses now on anybody?

 

The other point here, presented there in plain sight, is Souttar was signed under a year ago. So that is by extension another big error made under Rudkin. It's yet another black mark that we have sanctioned money like that on a player who had nine starts under Rodgers before being consigned to the scrapheap. That's another error, indisputable when presented with those figures. Book value of £21mil and hasn't seen 100 minutes all season. I'd say there's an increasingly good chance Coady is going to be another of this ilk as well - another generous fee and wages that's offering minimal on the pitch even in this league, let alone if we go up.

 

Like I said elsewhere, even if all of these drawbacks and restrictions were true, who did they happen under?

Sure. But as I said, that's a separate issue to 'why can't we simply sell some players?' 

 

I'd hoped I'd already demonstrated why we can't simply sell some players. Their book values + the new PL PSR rules (nevermind EFL rules we have to abide to in the meantime) make it very difficult. There's simply very little wiggle room on losses. 

 

And given that we're specifically in a situation of 'we need to sell before we can buy' it's odd that you're explicitly advocating for us to cut our losses and sell players at a loss...to achieve what exactly? It wouldn't let us sign anyone in this window would it? 

[Dan LCFC]

2 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Sure. But as I said, that's a separate issue to 'why can't we simply sell some players?' 

 

I'd hoped I'd already demonstrated why we can't simply sell some players. Their book values + the new PL PSR rules (nevermind EFL rules we have to abide to in the meantime) make it very difficult. There's simply very little wiggle room on losses. 

 

And given that we're specifically in a situation of 'we need to sell before we can buy' it's odd that you're explicitly advocating for us to cut our losses and sell players at a loss...to achieve what exactly? It wouldn't let us sign anyone in this window would it? 

Well we've lost regardless on Souttar haven't we? So what do we now do with Souttar, loan him out for the next five years praying that somebody makes a big bid for him? That is now with these rules genuinely the best route for us to take? If that is the case that is utterly remarkable.

 

And the main reason I'd advocate for selling is wages.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

2 hours ago, Babylon said:

"That's on Rudkin", I'm sorry, but it's such a pathetically myopic way of looking at things. Like other clubs aren't acrtually involved in the process. If only Spurs are bidding and that's the maximum they bid, what do you suggest? Would you be happy if we still had him at the club running out his contract and we had no signings? 

It's all intertwined though. We got relegated in part because we snookered ourselves with players running down their contract, losing interest and losing commitment. Then we didn't sack the manager quickly enough because *someone* behind the scenes thought he could turn it around. Then we didn't have anyone lined up even though it was obvious he was going and we went two crucial games with a goalkeeping coach in charge. So then we get relegated and we're over a barrel selling Barnes and Maddison for rock bottom prices.

 

So yes I would say that the fees that we got for those players was influenced by our glorious DoF. 

 

If you think someone else is at fault, our senior management is listed here: https://www.lcfc.com/club/senior-management?lang=en, suggestions welcome!

[HarryDee8]

Does the club have to sell or can it simply loan out a player to bring another in? 

 

[Ric Flair]

Regardless of whether Rudkin is at fault for the inability to move unwanted players on or not, the fact is we struggle to and there seems to be no emerging change to suggest we won't continue to.

 

Something has to then change in our strategy. We can't continue to purchase players and should a chunk of them not be good enough, that we can't move them on. If we have to suspend all purchases above a certain amount, look for free transfers more (we seldom ever utilise this market), go for more loans with options to buy etc then we have to do it.

 

You'd have thought we'd have attempted to learn our lesson from the summer of 2022, but then in January 2023 we've seemingly paid way over the odds for a player from Denmark for a club record fee and a Championship defender who'd only just recovered from an ACL and approaching his mid 20's.

 

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

[Dan LCFC]

10 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Regardless of whether Rudkin is at fault for the inability to move unwanted players on or not, the fact is we struggle to and there seems to be no emerging change to suggest we won't continue to.

 

Something has to then change in our strategy. We can't continue to purchase players and should a chunk of them not be good enough, that we can't move them on. If we have to suspend all purchases above a certain amount, look for free transfers more (we seldom ever utilise this market), go for more loans with options to buy etc then we have to do it.

 

You'd have thought we'd have attempted to learn our lesson from the summer of 2022, but then in January 2023 we've seemingly paid way over the odds for a player from Denmark for a club record fee and a Championship defender who'd only just recovered from an ACL and approaching his mid 20's.

 

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

It's why I thought the signing of Coady was a poor one, plenty at the time having a go at these pointing out the faults in it (and this was before we knew how good Vestergaard was going to turn out this season). Can we really afford that sort of luxury?

 

Whether selling players is as hard as made out in this thread cannot be proven but I find it peculiar that not only do other clubs sell players more than us, but how many measures we still seem to take to make things harder for ourselves. If what Jon said about Souttar is correct then how the hell did we sanction that move while Soyuncu was wasting away? It's just bonkers.

[Ric Flair]

2 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

It's why I thought the signing of Coady was a poor one, plenty at the time having a go at these pointing out the faults in it (and this was before we knew how good Vestergaard was going to turn out this season). Can we really afford that sort of luxury?

 

Whether selling players is as hard as made out in this thread cannot be proven but I find it peculiar that not only do other clubs sell players more than us, but how many measures we still seem to take to make things harder for ourselves. If what Jon said about Souttar is correct then how the hell did we sanction that move while Soyuncu was wasting away? It's just bonkers.

I said the same mate, although I was more using Winks as an example than Coady when in reality it was always like to be Coady that was poor business at his age for the price than Winks. Either way it shows the risk and I accept its not easy getting this right. Its why the strategy must retain some flexibility to account for flops and it not then hinder us.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

2 hours ago, bmt said:

Add to this literally nobody is signing players...

Quite, it’s been very quiet, even in the Prem.

 

Think it’s only Spurs that have made a transfer involving a fee.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

22 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I said the same mate, although I was more using Winks as an example than Coady when in reality it was always like to be Coady that was poor business at his age for the price than Winks. Either way it shows the risk and I accept its not easy getting this right. Its why the strategy must retain some flexibility to account for flops and it not then hinder us.

Coady was quite clearly signed to be someone to set the mentality at the club - to be a leader.

 

And at that time in the summer, that felt like the right thing to do.

 

I also imagine we felt Faes might go, meaning a centre-half would definitely have been needed.

 

Obviously his injury came at a cruel time - had he been able to start the first game, who knows how things would have played out until this far. 

[CosbehFox]

1 hour ago, Ric Flair said:

Regardless of whether Rudkin is at fault for the inability to move unwanted players on or not, the fact is we struggle to and there seems to be no emerging change to suggest we won't continue to.

 

Something has to then change in our strategy. We can't continue to purchase players and should a chunk of them not be good enough, that we can't move them on. If we have to suspend all purchases above a certain amount, look for free transfers more (we seldom ever utilise this market), go for more loans with options to buy etc then we have to do it.

 

You'd have thought we'd have attempted to learn our lesson from the summer of 2022, but then in January 2023 we've seemingly paid way over the odds for a player from Denmark for a club record fee and a Championship defender who'd only just recovered from an ACL and approaching his mid 20's.

 

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

This is it - you can cite situations all day long. But the strategy must be consistent and must be carried out. If it's not his job to do wages, signings etc, it should be his job to quality control the advice received by scouting team and management team. We've had repeated failures in those sort of areas with different managers and different heads of scouting. 

 

Come on surely Rudkin could have turned around to the signings of Molla Wague and Ryan Bennett and said no. Every bit of evidence said they weren't worth the money. 

[Lillehamring]

7 hours ago, Dan LCFC said:

The majority of them. You're just accustomed to us being unable to get it done. Look at the lists provided of the Everton and Southampton players and tell me which world beaters they were flogging.

 

What's indisputable is that our hand has gotten substantially weaker than it was a few years ago and that all happened on his watch. So even if everything you said was true, how is he blameless? 

He's been here for the most successful period of our history, too - on his watch, as you say - this is a business and sometimes in a business you are less successful than others.  To continue this obsession that our entire situation right now is one man's fault is absurd - yes our position is weaker now,  because we're in the championship after banking on being in europe - and the reasons why we're in the championship is not as simple as 'one man being to blame' - it is for reasons complex and exhaustive.

[Lillehamring]

7 hours ago, Lambert09 said:

I think from tops view, the club has gone through its most successful period with rudkin in this role. He’s probably a little too close to everything which makes it harder to objectively analyze what’s going wrong and particularly when all fingers will be pointed in other directions. 

 

I doubt Top is even thinking about anything negative whilst we’re sat at the top of the table. If anything this will be securing rudkins position further, no matter what mess we are getting ourselves in, behind the scenes 

Evidence seems to suggest that we've learnt from previous lack of care - and with everton and forest now getting pulled up - there's no way we'll end up in a mess in the future, we've been lucky to come out of the last slump stronger, i can't see them risking it all again, especially with the law now seeming to be upheld.

[Lillehamring]

7 hours ago, Dan LCFC said:

Add Iversen to that list too, so that's four players including the two you named and Soumare, which makes quite a difference already. I'm not claiming there's a load of clubs lining up for players like Albrighton who obviously hold very little value, but like I said, get the Everton and Southampton lists for comparison and we are clearly underperforming in this regard. Wolves as well, 17 players sold to our 5. We can seriously do no better than that?

 

Is it beneficial to us to keep a player depreciating in value that we won't use anyway rather than cutting our losses? So we gradually let Souttar depreciate and don't use him at all. Can we just never ever cut our losses now on anybody?

 

The other point here, presented there in plain sight, is Souttar was signed under a year ago. So that is by extension another big error made under Rudkin. It's yet another black mark that we have sanctioned money like that on a player who had nine starts under Rodgers before being consigned to the scrapheap. That's another error, indisputable when presented with those figures. Book value of £21mil and hasn't seen 100 minutes all season. I'd say there's an increasingly good chance Coady is going to be another of this ilk as well - another generous fee and wages that's offering minimal on the pitch even in this league, let alone if we go up.

 

Like I said elsewhere, even if all of these drawbacks and restrictions were true, who did they happen under?

But he was bought for a different manager and actually started 11 games under him.  Hardly fair to class it as an error, same with VK - bought for rodgers but surplus to requirements undo enzo.  These aren't mistakes just the ebb and flow of squad building. And certainly not something that can be used to criticise Rudkin - one has to assume that the scouting committee all agreed to these players being the players that they wanted, rudkin simply signed off on it?