The greatest concern surrounding Van Nistelrooy’s limited managerial career is his ability to organise a defence while instilling his attacking principles
You can organise current Premier League clubs into three vague categories. For one, there’s the Big Six, your hyper-rich mega clubs. Then there’s the data-driven upstart generation, Brighton and Brentford and Bournemouth, with Fulham and Nottingham Forest also increasingly at home here.
Then there’s The Rest; neither exceptionally wealthy nor particularly well-run. They will make some good decisions, and life will improve for a bit. Then they make some bad decisions, and the inevitable decline sets in.
This broadly presents itself in two ways. The first is gradual decline disguised as perpetual mediocrity – see Crystal Palace, Everton and Wolves. The second is more extreme – top-half finishes followed by relegations, promotions followed by more relegations. Leicester City are the prime exemplar for this.
Since their 2022-23 defenestration, they have made some good decisions, enough to re-secure Premier League status, albeit with one of the strongest Championship squads ever.
Hiring Enzo Maresca, signing Mads Hermansen, Stephy Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu, loaning Facundo Buonanotte, adding Bilal El Khannouss. Even replacing Maresca with Steve Cooper, given the Profitability and Sustainability Rules-tinted circumstances in which he was hired, was inconsistent, rather than inherently wrong.
And yet almost everything else has been. This is, by any metric, a badly-run football club which has failed to properly modernise in recruitment and coaching.
The lack of long-term planning created by the threat of relegation infects everything, as do the self-inflicted financial concerns triggered by a heady cocktail of large-scale contract mismanagement and dire transfer business.
Their wage bill – traditionally among the most reliable indicators of on-pitch performance – is within a few million of Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham and Wolves, comfortably above Brentford, Southampton and Ipswich.
But unlike any of their rivals, they use that money to pay Danny Ward and Wout Faes, to loan Odsonne Edouard last-minute and hand him 26 Premier League minutes, to pay £20m for Oliver Skipp, a midfielder of no discernible qualities.
Attempts to provide adequate support for, or even replace, Jamie Vardy, are now reaching a decade of failure and hoping Kelechi Iheanacho or Patson Daka will take that next step.
This is the worst squad in the Premier League being paid like a mid-table side.
LEICESTER, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 23: Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City looks on from the stands during the Premier League match between Leicester City FC and Chelsea FC at The King Power Stadium on November 23, 2024 in Leicester, England. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City, watches from the stands (Photo: Getty)
Then there’s the defence. 37 goals conceded is second in the Premier League, 305 shots faced third-highest.
This was already unworkable under Cooper, but the figures have only worsened under Ruud van Nistelrooy – 82 shots conceded in four matches of middling-to-low difficulty.
Conceding 31 shots to Julen Lopetegui’s West Ham, even in a 3-1 win, should have led to some sort of automatic points deduction, or public flogging.
You can point to a lack of help from midfield – especially without Wilfried Ndidi – a lack of coherent organisation, ever-changing personnel, but here’s the secret: Leicester are bad defensively because they have sub-par defenders who are being psychologically damaged by their collective underperformance and incompetence.
The cataclysmic display against Wolves, who were not remotely impressive or coherent, epitomised that. The visitors had only ever won a top-flight away match by three goals twice in their history before heading to the East Midlands.
Dropping Faes and Caleb Okoli is pointless when they are replaced by Conor Coady and Jannik Vestergaard.
Booed off at the weekend, James Justin needs a month in the Maldives and some long hours with a good therapist he’s not going to get while Ricardo Pereira is injured.
There’s a fair argument that any Premier League manager starting Ward in goal in 2024 deserves whatever follows.
But his six goals conceded in 135 minutes against Newcastle and Wolves were a reminder of just how much Hermansen contributes towards maintaining an air of respectability and hope at the King Power.
And the greatest concern surrounding Van Nistelrooy’s limited managerial career is his ability to organise a defence while instilling his attacking principles.
Club officials were reportedly impressed by his playing career, reputation and “aura”, not least during the two games Leicester visited Old Trafford during his interim stint. His record of developing youth was another bonus.
But finding a defensively capable manager – David Moyes was and is available – or allowing Van Nistelrooy to bring in his own staff would have been the priority for a serious football club. Thanks to director of football Jon Rudkin, Leicester stopped being that some time ago.
Owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, or Top, trusts Rudkin, as his late father did.
The fans have long seen past that, with chants of “We want Rudkin out” increasingly common. He is the lesser-spotted face behind this managed decline, his influence so wide-ranging it includes Top’s racing yard.
Not even Rudkin’s resignation would be enough to save Leicester from another relegation at this point, even as they perch two points above the danger zone. At least two significant defensive signings are needed in January, more realistically three.
And even then, there’s little proof Van Nistelrooy would have the time or know-how to turn them into a defensive unit while also finding ways to score goals with a limited and aging attacking corps.
Aura will not make Faes concentrate for 90 minutes at a time, nor will his penchant for youth development take root before the end of this season.
Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Fulham and Tottenham are the next five league opponents. Having taken four points from his first two games, it’s hard to predict anything but seven consecutive losses by the end of that run.
If and when Leicester return to the second tier, there will be the wrath of the financial regulators to deal with once again, which could spell a points deduction. With an ever-worsening squad and Vardy out of contract at the end of the season, this could be the catalyst for a prolonged stay outside the league they won eight years ago.
And it will be impossible to say it has not been almost entirely self-inflicted. It will not be Cooper’s fault, nor Van Nistelrooy’s, nor Ward or Faes or Edouard’s.
Blame should lie almost solely with Rudkin, and to a lesser extent Top, architects of the destruction of a club which won the FA Cup just over three years ago.
Prior success is meaningless when the future is so bleak. This has been a long time coming, and the effects will be felt for even longer.