Fall guy Cifuentes sacked but architect of Leicester crisis remains

The air at King Power Stadium has turned totally toxic. Fans openly and widely called for manager Marti Cifuentes to be sacked as the Leicester City squad scrapped with their Oxford United opponents after inexplicably losing. The head coach was duly gone by Sunday afternoon. As the dust settled on a 'mutinous' weekend on Filbert Way, we discovered who will be in the dugout for the match against Charlton Athletic next weekend: club legend Andy King.

"Andy King will take interim charge for Charlton match"

The Guardian

Anyway, a report via John Percy (a journalist City supporters should follow) confirmed a high-level board meeting occurred at KPS to decide the Catalonia's fate. The prevailing sense from the King Power powers-that-be is seemingly one of calculated hesitation and smokescreen. While Jon Rudkin, the target of fan frustration, remains.

Leicester City chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha's (Khun Top) press relations manoeuvre

The Leicester hierarchy, led by Khun Top, appear to frame the team boss as the root cause of the club crisis; subsequently using him as a convenient shield against three far more infernal fires currently engulfing the organisation as a whole.

Cop-out

The first, and perhaps most volatile, is a clearly 'rotten' roster, along with an unwanted player-power culture that Cifuentes himself laid bare in candid interviews when implying Wout Faes' and Harry Winks' negative respective influences.

By admitting that life will only become "easier" once wantaway players are excised, the former manager effectively aligned himself with the board's desire to purge a fractured dressing room. With Faes already shipped to AS Monaco and Winks frozen out, sacking the manager now obviously risks resetting this purge or side-cleansing process the outfit has already committed to.

Cifuentes inherited one of the worst jobs in the sport right now. Nevertheless, the Catalonian arguably earned the boot for many of his own mistakes and shortcomings regardless (motivation, organisation for two examples). Few managers could get a tune out of this LCFC XI.

​Secondly, the looming shadow of Profit and Sustainability was the Foxes' greatest deterrent in dismissing the gaffer. As Percy wisely notes, the financial tightrope is so frayed that a significant managerial payout coupled with the cost of a replacement (and potential compensation packages) could and would likely cripple what remains of a non-existent January budget or balance sheet. Therefore City fans cannot expect a high profile replacement. It was also revealed that City can only complete loan signings again this winter.

Finally, there is the long-promised structural overhaul. The 'appeasement' currently being offered in hollow Khun Top interviews to a restless fan base concerns a hopeful and desired appointment of a first-ever technical director to finally move Jon Rudkin 'upstairs'. For a board desperate to avoid a repeat of the 2023 relegation spiral and further punishments, it appears Cifuentes was merely the lightning rod.

The King Power lightning rod

Khun Top pulled an almost unprecedented move for a chairman in broadcasting the 'fact' that he was 'considering' relieving the 43-year-old of duty. Owners seldom (or never) do that: they sack, back or stay mute. This is another pantomime to disguise a kind of 'Nightmare on Filbert Street'.

Think Tony Soprano allowing Uncle 'Junior' to take the 'family's' FBI heat as the pseudo head of their fictional organised crime group. The same method is applied here at a 'legitimate' football club in the form of deflecting fan sentiment and outrage. Meanwhile Top and Rudkin say 'crisis, what crisis?!'.