Ten years before they lifted the Premier League title in 2016, Leicester finished 16th in the Championship. A decade after that never-to-be-forgotten moment, it feels horribly like the fall could be even steeper than the rise.
After being deducted six points for breaking spending rules, Leicester are above the relegation zone on goal difference alone and could drop into the bottom three this weekend if they lose at Birmingham, and West Brom avoid defeat against Stoke.
This is a crisis that has developed over about five years and is a result of mistakes made by many, though two men above all others are blamed by supporters: chairman Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha and his beleaguered director of football, Jon Rudkin.
At one stage, Leicester feared they may be docked 20 points for their breaches, although the Premier League stress this was never the case. Either way, Top and Rudkin are lucky that governing bodies cannot issue penalties for the under-performance of senior figures. If they could, Leicester would probably be in non-league by now.
You name it, Top and Rudkin have done it. Bad squad planning? Tick. Poor financial management? Tick. Indulging average players for too long? Tick. The list goes on.
Let us look at Rudkin first. He has the complete trust of Top, which the Leicester owner reiterated in a rare series of interviews last month. While loyalty is admirable, allowing staff to continue regardless of performance is certainly not.
Leicester have been deducted six points for breaking the Premier League’s financial rules
Andy King is in interim charge after the club sacked Marti Cifuentes last month
A series of managers, from Brendan Rodgers to Enzo Maresca and Steve Cooper, believed that – at different times – Leicester had not been entirely clear with them about the club’s financial picture. If the manager is unhappy, disharmony usually follows. Rudkin may dispute that but as he has so far been reluctant to speak in public, we cannot know.
Strong executives empower their managers. Instead, over several years, Leicester players have felt able to go over the manager’s head and take grievances directly to Rudkin. That breeds dysfunction. It breeds situations where at least one senior player was known to stroll defiantly around the pitch during training sessions, infuriating team-mates who were giving 100 per cent.
During the first Premier League relegation season in 2022-23, players described Leicester’s sumptuous £100million training ground as ‘a holiday camp’.
Late in 2024, players flew to Denmark for a Christmas party on the eve of Cooper’s sacking, appearing to taunt their former boss by standing near a sign praising Maresca, whose Chelsea team had won at Leicester hours earlier. Others feel they can flat-out refuse requests to stay overnight in the hotel-style rooms at the training ground.
Rudkin is not directly responsible for this, of course, but a more alert executive would create a culture where such actions are not even contemplated. Yet he did have a say over the lucrative contracts handed to players with little market interest – Jannik Vestergaard, Harry Winks, Conor Coady, Jordan Ayew, Oliver Skipp and Bobby De Cordova-Reid.
He is responsible for the transfer market haggling that costs Leicester valuable time and seems to offer little benefit. There are many examples but one will suffice. At the start of the January 2025 window Sheffield United wanted Hamza Choudhury on loan with an option to buy.
Leicester would agree only to a loan with an obligation – for a player on a hefty contract who was unwanted by then-manager Ruud van Nistelrooy. With the deadline approaching, Leicester agreed to a loan with option after all. Valuable time lost over a single issue, in a month when speed and flexibility are vital.
Maresca wanted to appoint his own sporting director and would often grow frustrated when he could not reach Rudkin to discuss recruitment or contracts. Yes, Rudkin was there when Leicester won the title. But has he really been subjected to the sort of scrutiny from ownership that he should have been? Even if Leicester appoint a technical director, as they insist they will, that person will likely report to Rudkin. Fans are understandably sceptical about whether anything will change.
Leicester have struggled this season and are above the relegation zone on goal difference
Fans blame director of football Jon Rudkin (left) and chairman Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha for their problems
This summer marks a decade since the greatest day in the club’s history – they may now ‘celebrate’ it by being in the third tier
Along with many things, the treatment of Rudkin falls on Top. His father, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, was killed in a helicopter crash in October 2018. Top wanted to honour Vichai’s legacy and for the first part of his reign, it seemed he would do so. His commitment to the club has never been in question.
Yet is Top the high-class leader an ambitious football club needs? The kindest thing to say is that the jury is out. Top was far too late to sack Rodgers in 2023 and was perhaps too quick to dismiss Cooper 18 months later. Leicester would deny it, but when they appointed Van Nistelrooy to succeed Cooper, it appeared as though they did so primarily because the Dutchman had led Manchester United to two wins over the Foxes as interim manager.
They appointed Cifuentes but because of the financial situation, he was not given the chance to sideline certain senior players and stamp his mark on the club. Indeed, the appointment was odd in the first place. A promising young coach, Cifuentes was not the man for a squad that has proved so difficult to handle. Why not hire Chris Wilder, who was interviewed for the role and had vowed to shake things up?
The Covid-19 pandemic made a huge impact on Leicester’s parent company King Power and Top needed to lead their recovery from the front. It may have damaged his ability to keep on top of things at Leicester, though.
It’s also only five years since Leicester lifted the FA Cup for the first time at Wembley against Chelsea
The recent interviews were a welcome attempt to grip an alarming situation yet for too long, he has appeared distant. Indeed, some at Leicester even wonder whether he has a clear grasp of how each department works. Top would insist the contrary. Now is the time to prove it.
When Leicester face dropping into the relegation zone, it feels glib to mention positives. Empty seats will dominate the backdrop for the next home game, against Southampton on Tuesday, which will also see protests against the club’s leaders.
Yet the club’s academy is in excellent shape. Jeremy Monga is a jewel and the Foxes did very well to hang on to him, amid interest from Manchester City, Chelsea and other elite clubs across the continent. He is the emblem of a system that is actually working. There are also smart, diligent people working at the club who, given the opportunity to shine, can help revive it.
That revival cannot come soon enough – but for as long as Top and Rudkin are running the show, a significant number of supporters doubt whether it ever will.
