Ruud van Nistelrooy’s departure from Leicester City was no surprise – other than the fact that it took quite so long for the club to pull the trigger.
The Dutchman was unable to inspire a turnaround in the club’s fortunes after taking over from Steve Cooper last November, winning just five of his 27 games in charge and losing 19.
That continuation of Leicester’s abysmal form saw them drop back into the Championship just a year on from winning promotion up to the Premier League.
So what’s going on at Leicester City now Ruud van Nistelrooy has been dismissed?
Leicester’s decision to stall on announcing Van Nistelrooy’s exit has attracted criticism. We knew he was leaving. You knew he was leaving. It was not even really the wrong decision to get rid. Yet they have waited until three days before pre-season training to actually announce the decision.
The Foxes may well feel that they are in no worse a position than many other clubs. This month has been an unusually busy month for managerial ins and outs up and down the country, after all, with 12 clubs appointing a new manager in June, compared with just seven last year.
It is also possible that the club have known for some time that Van Nistelrooy would be departing, and merely held fire on sharing those plans for reasons of their own. It could be that they wanted to see if they could get a successor lined up for an immediate announcement, and that the impending commencement of pre-season on Monday meant the clock had finally run out to do so.
That is speculation, however, and may be extending Leicester far too much of the benefit of the doubt.
The ever-reliable John Percy of the Telegraph reports that Van Nistelrooy himself has spent the past few weeks ‘growing increasingly frustrated over a lack of clarity over his position’. If they knew they were going to get rid, then Leicester have done him a massive discourtesy to say the least.
Whatever the case, the optics are not good for Leicester, making their handling of Van Nistelrooy the latest in a long line of bad looks for the club board.
Fans have long protested about the direction and decisions King Power have taken since Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s tragic death in 2018.
Leicester have been relegated twice since their unexpected Premier League title triumph in 2016, and their failure to capitalise on the wealth and high profile of that 5,000/1 upset – the notable exception of 2021’s FA Cup win aside – would be enough on its own to leave supporters upset.
But that isn’t the end of the story. Leicester have twice been charged with breaching Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), last year getting off on a contractual technicality but now facing three new charges that may prove more difficult to get out of. A points deduction in the Championship could well be the result.
Player recruitment has been so underwhelming enough that long-serving director of football Jon Rudkin has been the subject of repeated protests. Fans have also been upset for years about the fees Leicester have been able to command for their star players; N’Golo Kante’s departure to Chelsea for a mere £32m in 2016 still rankles almost a decade on.
Worst of all, reports suggest that King Power itself is in ‘serious trouble’ as a business, which naturally could have severe knock-on consequences for a club that reported nearly £200m of debt in their most recent accounts – of which £124m was converted to equity and effectively transferred to King Power in January.
If King Power are unable to continue bankrolling the club to that extent, it really will look bleak for Leicester.
When things start to add up like that, even the little things can send fans into a rage – Jannik Vestergaard bringing his dog to the club training ground, for instance, sparked a sardonic reaction from fans who unveiled a banner reading ‘From dogs of war to doggy daycare’ in March.
Those kinds of things go completely unregarded when times are good, and realistically, accusations that it suggests a lack of care and professionalism feels like a bit of a stretch… or would on its own merits, anyway, had there not been reports that Van Nistelrooy was astonished by his squad’s apathy towards his attempts to improve their fitness after taking the reins.
A relatively late managerial appointment need not necessarily be disastrous, and an earlier one would not have guaranteed success. Leicester themselves won promotion under Enzo Maresca, appointed in mid-June 2023. Cooper arrived at a similar kind of time last year, and lasted just five months. Burnley won automatic promotion from the Championship under Scott Parker last term; he only arrived at Turf Moor last July 5, despite his predecessor, Vincent Kompany, departing at the end of May.
But when you’ve already had 999 cuts, the thousandth can be deadly. Things might work out just fine for them, but it’s understandable that Leicester fans would be short on faith that it will all be OK in the end. The last thing they needed was for the uncertainty in the dugout to be dragged out as long as it has already. Misery loves to take residence in a vacuum.
And it is against all this background that Leicester must now find their new gaffer. Sheffield Wednesday boss Danny Rohl has been tipped as the favourite, with the South Yorkshire club currently in an even bigger mess under another Thai owner, Dejphon Chansiri.
Even if Leicester were able to bring someone in pronto – over the weekend, say – it would leave the new gaffer needing to hit the ground running at full pace ahead of a new Championship season in which only promotion will be good enough for Leicester.
Leicester fans will be desperately hoping Leicester have used their long decision-making period not just to mull over van Nistelrooy’s position, but to strongly consider who they want to take the post next.
