Rudkin

[Lillehamring]

6 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

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.

To be fair that's on the players not on the club

Then we didn't sack the manager quickly enough because *someone* behind the scenes thought he could turn it around.

Given the squad we had it was still a reasonable gamble - had we not had to fork out his compensation we'd have that money to spend on players

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.

Or we had Maresca lined up, and needed a pawn prepared to get relegated until that time

So then we get relegated and we're over a barrel selling Barnes and Maddison for rock bottom prices.

Mentioned many times elsewhere that we got the market rate given our relegation and their contracts and with the urgency we had to rebuild

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!

Why does it have to be that one person is singularly responsible for everything? - what you are doing is just using him as a scapegoat to explain the unpredictable indefinable machinations of a wildly complicated billion pound industry

 

[Dan LCFC]

1 hour ago, Lillehamring said:

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.

I don't put it down to one man. It's a collective effort. I put it down to the one above him more than I do him frankly.

 

I would say overall we've spent more years going backwards than going forwards under him - it would be very generous to pin 2015/16 down to him at all.

 

 

1 hour ago, Lillehamring said:

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?

It's totally fair to class it as an error. It's a perfect sign of the lack of long-term and joined up thinking that's been at the heart of our decline. I actually don't even mind Souttar as a player, I think he's a very effective defender in a team playing a low-block system and he'd be fantastic for someone like Everton. But he's been ill-fitted for us from the start and it isn't his fault.

 

If having a player signed who has made 12 league appearances for the club, is now on the screapheap and apparently we've now got to keep him and loan him out for five years as we're probably not going to get anyone to cough up £21mil to sign him isn't an error from the club I genuinely don't know what is. It's an error and it happened on Rudkin's watch.

 

For a shortened version I blame Rodgers for his disgraceful conduct in the final 18 months of his tenure, Rudkin for digging his heels in and not acting upon it (these are Tanner's words) and Top for allowing all of this to fester. They're the main three culprits. Rudkin has too many black marks for me. Too much smoke without fire.

[Aus Fox]

1 hour ago, Lillehamring said:

 

On the first point, one or two players is down to the players themselves, to be in a position where it was 8 or 9 players is 100% on the club - and at the end of the day, whoever is responsible Rudkin oversees the football side of the club and will rightly take the flack.

Point 2, and this is the one that really gets me in the whole situation and why I bone Rudkin the most for our relegation. Rodgers came out and stated the players he had were not good enough and he needed new players or we would struggle - now at this point, Rudkin as the person in charge of football operations had 2 choices: 1) agree with Rodgers and back him in the transfer market - maybe take a loss on one or two players and bring in some fresh faces or 2) tell him he’s full of shit and sack him and bring someone on who could have got a tune out of the players we had available. He chose neither, he buried his head in the sand and didn’t act until it was almost too late.

Point 3, given we went by 2 points on the last day of the season and could easily have gained those points - there is no way a pawn was brought in to get us relegated - this was worst case scenario for the club from a business point of view.

Agree regarding the fees for Madison and Barnes - that business just had to get done early to set up for the new season.

Finally, one scapegoat is the man at the top of the chain who is ultimately paid handsomely to be responsible for all of these decisions, he signs off on everything at the end of the day is ultimately responsible for everything football side of the business. 
The fact he never speaks to the media or answers questions makes things far worse in my opinion.

 

[volpeazzurro]

12 hours ago, Stadt said:

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

Very nieve really. Torino may have made an offer to the club, even at cut price, BUT, that doesn't mean the player wants to go there for a variety of reasons! 

First and foremost money! Does the player want to go there or would he be better off waiting until the summer, think about it! What's he on now compared to what Torino are offering now (if it's even true).

Has he got family?  Do they want to go? 

What do you do for a living, have you got family?  Would you move for less money just to kick a ball around?  It's just a job!

[MattFox]

Every other organisation would have sacked him after last season 

[Stadt]

24 minutes ago, MattFox said:

Every other organisation would have sacked him after last season 

It’s only ever managers who get sacked at Leicester and were slow to do that. It’s only Shakespeare who got the boot early. Rodgers, Puel & Ranieri were given lots of time.

[Lillehamring]

20 hours ago, Aus Fox said:

On the first point, one or two players is down to the players themselves, to be in a position where it was 8 or 9 players is 100% on the club - and at the end of the day, whoever is responsible Rudkin oversees the football side of the club and will rightly take the flack.

Point 2, and this is the one that really gets me in the whole situation and why I bone Rudkin the most for our relegation. Rodgers came out and stated the players he had were not good enough and he needed new players or we would struggle - now at this point, Rudkin as the person in charge of football operations had 2 choices: 1) agree with Rodgers and back him in the transfer market - maybe take a loss on one or two players and bring in some fresh faces or 2) tell him he’s full of shit and sack him and bring someone on who could have got a tune out of the players we had available. He chose neither, he buried his head in the sand and didn’t act until it was almost too late.

Point 3, given we went by 2 points on the last day of the season and could easily have gained those points - there is no way a pawn was brought in to get us relegated - this was worst case scenario for the club from a business point of view.

Agree regarding the fees for Madison and Barnes - that business just had to get done early to set up for the new season.

Finally, one scapegoat is the man at the top of the chain who is ultimately paid handsomely to be responsible for all of these decisions, he signs off on everything at the end of the day is ultimately responsible for everything football side of the business. 
The fact he never speaks to the media or answers questions makes things far worse in my opinion.

 

1. What difference does it make how many players ran out their contracts? - whether it's 1 or 8 we can't force players to sign deals, and certainly if the situation is any one's fault, it's BR not Rudkin - there was a reason why none of these players wanted to sign new deals, and a reason why most of them were unwanted by other clubs - the amount of players is purely coincidental, we have a similar contract situation now whilst being in a completely different footballing situation - it's just the nature of the business, the problem just stands out because it happened to be a wave of players rather than just a few.

2. Rudkin couldn't do either of these things - ostensibly for the same reason: FFP and Money - we couldn't back him because we'd be in breach of FFP and sacking him would probably have sent us over too, given how high his compensation was.  I firmly believe the club felt there was enough of a chance we'd stay up and then we'd probably be able to offload BR to another club or at least pay less comp.  To say Rudkin buried his head in the sand is an easy way of looking at things, we simply don't know what options he had, but i suspect they were all very bad ones.

3. I didn't say he was a pawn to get us relegated, i said he was a pawn to be in that position for a few games until we brought in our real managerial target. He was never going to get the job full time, very few managers would have took that job, as i say above, i believe the club wanted to see the year out with BR but fan pressure left them no choice.

4. At the end of the day a scapegoat, by definition, is seldom the person who is actually responsible, that's why he's a scapegoat.... If you blame rudkin or top for this whole mess, you're destined to be mistaken because the problem was at every level from top down to the fans.

[Dahnsouff]

To be honest @Lillehamring isn’t it unlikely a single person is at fault whatever their name?

[oz was my hero]

How much of our recruitment  is down to him ? After speaking to an ex scout of ours last season it seems quite a lot. Ryan Bennett was definitely on him and scouts had identified  a young player that is now playing champions league football. Perez was apparently  another Rudkin signing that scouts didn't identify. Even if that's not 100% of truth since he became Dof these players have arrived. 

 

 Schwarzer

Kramaric

Huth

Fuchs

Okazaki

Kante

Benalouane

Inler 

Gray

Amartey

Iverson

Zieler

Hernandez

Musa

Kapustka

Slimani

Mendy

Ndidi 

Maguire

Iborra

Jakipovic

Iheanacho

Silva

Diabate 

Evans

Maddison

Pereira 

Ward

ghezzal

benkovic

Soyuncu

Justin

Perez 

Hirst

Tielemans

Praet

Castagne

Fofana

Daka

Soumare

Bertrand

Vestergaard

Faes

Kristiansen

Souttar

Winks

Coady

Hermansen

Mavidididi

Cannon

That's not including players for the academy and loans. Some turnover since December 14. 

Some good signings, but christ there is some shit in there.

Would say there's 15  terrible ones in that list. 5 that just didn't suit us. Out of 50. others have not made an impact.  

7 walked out the door for nothing. 

Not good business  which ever way you look at it.

 

 

 

Edited 21 January by oz was my hero

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

On 19/01/2024 at 23:39, Dan LCFC said:

Rudkin for digging his heels in and not acting upon it (these are Tanner's words)

How do you mean exactly? 

[Dan LCFC]

6 minutes ago, Wasyls Pec Deck said:

How do you mean exactly? 

Tanner in the Athletic back in May;

 

 

 

There were hints on here that there was somebody digging in their heels on getting Rodgers out the door and an assumption that it was Top. Turned out it was Rudkin all along.

[Dan LCFC]

9 hours ago, oz was my hero said:

How much of our recruitment  is down to him ? After speaking to an ex scout of ours last season it seems quite a lot. Ryan Bennett was definitely on him and scouts had identified  a young player that is now playing champions league football. Pereira was apparently  another Rudkin signing that scouts didn't identify. Even if that's not 100% of truth since he became Dof these players have arrived. 

 

 Schwarzer

Kramaric

Huth

Fuchs

Okazaki

Kante

Benalouane

Inler 

Gray

Amartey

Iverson

Zieler

Hernandez

Musa

Kapustka

Slimani

Mendy

Ndidi 

Maguire

Iborra

Jakipovic

Iheanacho

Silva

Diabate 

Evans

Maddison

Pereira 

Ward

ghezzal

benkovic

Soyuncu

Justin

Perez 

Hirst

Tielemans

Praet

Castagne

Fofana

Daka

Soumare

Bertrand

Vestergaard

Faes

Kristiansen

Souttar

Winks

Coady

Hermansen

Mavidididi

Cannon

That's not including players for the academy and loans. Some turnover since December 14. 

Some good signings, but christ there is some shit in there.

Would say there's 15  terrible ones in that list. 5 that just didn't suit us. Out of 50. others have not made an impact.  

7 walked out the door for nothing. 

Not good business  which ever way you look at it.

 

 

 

 have heard the exact same story. We had both him and a winger lined up and Rodgers / Congerton just wanted to do their own thing as they knew best.

[Happy Fox]

Rudkin had no involvement in the hiring of Enzo, so that is likely to create some tension if things between them become heated due to transfers.

 

Honestly I think it’s going to require a change in ownership for him to get the boot.

[Dan LCFC]

5 minutes ago, Happy Fox said:

Rudkin had no involvement in the hiring of Enzo, so that is likely to create some tension if things between them become heated due to transfers.

 

Honestly I think it’s going to require a change in ownership for him to get the boot.

For certain. If he can survive last season he can survive anything. He's essentially vice-owner.

[Sly]

Ultimately in many companies, the lines of responsibilities are blurred. Unless anyone can whip out an organisation chart, I think it’s all just hearsay.

 

Whichever way you cut it, we had a great decade whilst Rudkin at the club, so you’ve got to give him some support. 
 

We proved, you don’t need millions to win the league. The sooner people realise that money isn’t the answer to success, the better football will be. Most of the time until spend money as a last result as you don’t have anyone that’s ready and capable. 
 

We’ve invested heavily in long term progression, scouting, recruitment and facilities. That doesn’t produce overnight results and may take years to bear fruit. If we can produce a production line of players that are capable of stepping into the team, then we will have succeeded. 

 

Maybe, just maybe, we’re just taking that step backward right now, so we can take two steps forward. 

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

16 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

Tanner in the Athletic back in May;

 

 

 

There were hints on here that there was somebody digging in their heels on getting Rodgers out the door and an assumption that it was Top. Turned out it was Rudkin all along.

You mean Rudkin digging their heels in to keep Rodgers at the club? 

[Dan LCFC]

3 minutes ago, Wasyls Pec Deck said:

You mean Rudkin digging their heels in to keep Rodgers at the club? 

@Sambiasso frequently hinted on here that the majority at the club wanted Rodgers out and knew it was over yet one person was stopping it happening. Top was the one we all assumed it was. But this tallies up with the bits of info we were getting on here and it was actually Rudkin all along.

The fact Rudkin could stop it alone proves how bulletproof he is. He is as good as co-owner.

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

4 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

@Sambiasso frequently hinted on here that the majority at the club wanted Rodgers out and knew it was over yet one person was stopping it happening. Top was the one we all assumed it was. But this tallies up with the bits of info we were getting on here and it was actually Rudkin all along.

The fact Rudkin could stop it alone proves how bulletproof he is. He is as good as co-owner.

There’s no other explanation really as to why Rodgers was able to last for as long as he did. Sounds like we had someone who had given up, but was able to manipulate and bend Rudkin around his little finger. If true, speaks volumes about his integrity.
 

You do definitely get the vibe that Top is a little more detached from things at the club when compared to his father. Also we forget he’s still a relatively young man, and I’m willing to bet is able to be influenced by the likes of Rudkin. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

30 minutes ago, Happy Fox said:

Rudkin had no involvement in the hiring of Enzo, so that is likely to create some tension if things between them become heated due to transfers.

 

Honestly I think it’s going to require a change in ownership for him to get the boot.

Yep. He's in too deep with too many king power assets. 

[CosbehFox]

1 hour ago, Sly said:

Ultimately in many companies, the lines of responsibilities are blurred. Unless anyone can whip out an organisation chart, I think it’s all just hearsay.

 

Whichever way you cut it, we had a great decade whilst Rudkin at the club, so you’ve got to give him some support. 
 

We proved, you don’t need millions to win the league. The sooner people realise that money isn’t the answer to success, the better football will be. Most of the time until spend money as a last result as you don’t have anyone that’s ready and capable. 
 

We’ve invested heavily in long term progression, scouting, recruitment and facilities. That doesn’t produce overnight results and may take years to bear fruit. If we can produce a production line of players that are capable of stepping into the team, then we will have succeeded. 

 

Maybe, just maybe, we’re just taking that step backward right now, so we can take two steps forward. 

We did largely thanks to Steve Walsh et al. 
 

Not a surprise he left when the DoF was up for grabs and he didn’t get it. 
 

Post Champions, we had no head of recruitment and relied on past targets plus Ranieri asking for certain players. Utter disaster zone there.

Edited 21 January by CosbehFox

[oz was my hero]

1 hour ago, Dan LCFC said:

 have heard the exact same story. We had both him and a winger lined up and Rodgers / Congerton just wanted to do their own thing as they knew best.

That should have said perez not pereira  in the first  bit. 🙄 

[oz was my hero]

1 hour ago, Dan LCFC said:

 have heard the exact same story. We had both him and a winger lined up and Rodgers / Congerton just wanted to do their own thing as they knew best.

The guy also told me macia left because he could no longer work for rudkin and this guy left when Rogers and congerton became impossible,  he moved to a Portuguese team. Seemed to have really annoyed him as he was not only a scout but city fan. Was his dream job when he got it.

[Poznan34]

2 hours ago, Happy Fox said:

Rudkin had no involvement in the hiring of Enzo

What? Really? Our DoF didn't hire our manager? Who made that decision, then?

[Sol thewall Bamba]

1 hour ago, oz was my hero said:

The guy also told me macia left because he could no longer work for rudkin and this guy left when Rogers and congerton became impossible,  he moved to a Portuguese team. Seemed to have really annoyed him as he was not only a scout but city fan. Was his dream job when he got it.

I know none of these stories are confirmed but there really is no smoke without fire, especially when a relatively large number of people get told similar things.

 

We don't know FOR SURE though so we shouldn't speculate.

[Claudio Fannieri]

Surely Rudkin didnt hold sufficient power over the owner and Susan Whelan that he could effectively block the sacking of Rodgers, if that is true then that is absolute madness and on which case the relegation is pretty much on him, which you would have thought would have led to him losing his job. 
 

although it does make you wonder just how much accountability and responsibility he has taken within the club’s heirarchy for last seasons utter shit show and maybe as a consequence Top stepped in to oversee the appointment of Enzo, which does suggest Rudkin has lost some support and credibility.
 

My only hope is if he is as complicit in our demise last season and some of the other things being bandied out about him have even a modicum of truth, that he has been given one final opportunity to clear up his own mess or better still he is serving a pre-agreed exit from his role which has a severance package linked to outgoing performance in readiness for a new sporting director to come in from next season. 
 

His lack of involvement in the recruitment of Enzo demonstrates that Top has lost some trust in the man.