I am beginning to think we should have kept Puel. I thought it was fairlyarshsacking in the first place, but understood the reasons as the matches were boring and we were not scoring. Well the football is still boring, still not scoring and add to that it doesn’t seem as though the youth are getting any chances. At least Puel showed willingness to give academy players game time.
I don't think the football would have been any better under Puel this season. People talk about managing fixture congestion well but after the cup final when we were playing just once a week and picking our best team we were terrible! We also got knocked out of our Europa League group due to negative tactics vs Beer Sheva at home and being rubbish away (I accept we played well vs Inter). I can't see him lasting more than a year at Leicester. His playing style is keep the ball until the opposition fall asleep, hope to score, keep the ball... it's boring. What's worrying about the current team is that Romeu said that the players decided vs Brighton to sit back and protect a lead and weren't told to do so by the management. I think this is something that has been brought forward from last year and MP seems to be as exasperated as the fans watching the team. It's like they need to unlearn the style of play from last year. I have a slight worry that the coaching team isn't that different to last year with Watson and Black still around so are they able to adapt their training methods? Forster is going backwards and the team is still uninspiring so I would say not so far. Is MP the man to change it, I'm not sure but there has definitely been a bit more intent to attack recently. The big mistake for me was the club missing out on Rudi Garcia.
After the cup final we had **** all to play for. Every year you see examples of teams where the players put their flip flops on from about March and are just going through the motions until the end of the season. I accept that Puel got it wrong in Europe, but by going through in the League Cup he added even more games and got us to the final so I would say that countered the European disappointment. Overall I think he did a decent job and said at the back end of last season I would've given him the summer to sign his players and re-assess at Xmas. The way it is looking now we ****ed the summer up by not signing any attacking players (who knows if Puel would've demanded some more attacking players or not) and the replacement we brought in could quite feasibly be gone by Xmas.
We played our best football of the season around February-March time when the fixtures were eased up ... then we went into a manic April/May and back to the games every 3 days and football turned sour (even more so) again.
Think it is one of the problems, but a better manager would get more out of them. I still think that we would have done better under Puel than under MP2, but Puel was never the final answer.
I wonder whether the media will castergate Leicester and say they deserve to get relegated if they sack him despite a top ten finish like they have done us?
The answer is yes they are! On BT PL Review programme Hoddle and Sutton critise get Leicester and saying they need to look at us to see what happens when a little mid table teams fans have exaggerated expectations. Good grief
Sutton is an arrogant sod who thinks highly of himself and would never go back on something he said previously as it may damage his pride.
I meant more about mid table/relegation fodder like everyone outside the top 6 and Everton shouldn't really be sacking managers who finish 8th. Like you I don't think Puel was the right man for us long term, but do think he should have been given longer.
A high turnover of managers, while constantly selling all your best players, and also changing owners, creates pretty much the perfect ****-storm I'd say.
