Over this summer, you'd be forgiven for thinking that my club, Leicester City, has undergone a name change. We're not just Leicester City any more. We're Big Spending Leicester City.
After a fairly quiet start to their reign, our new owners, the Thai-based King Power Group, have started flexing their financial muscle. Suddenly, we're throwing money around like it's going out of fashion. At the last count, we'd brought in eleven new players since May. A lot of these were for undisclosed fees, but the word on the street is that we have spent upwards of £10 million.
Of course, everything's relative. Getting eleven players for ten million quid seems like pretty sensible business when you compare it to the sort of transfer fees the Manchester clubs and Liverpool have been paying this summer. Even the supposedly frugal Arsenal have just splashed out £12 million for an untested 17 year old. But for Leicester City, and for the Championship, £10 million is serious money.
The thing about spending big though, is that people expect immediate results. And that's the tricky part. We started the season well enough. A 1-0 win at Coventry on the opening day, despite having Darius Vassell sent off for a rash two-footed challenge ten minutes in, and a comfortable 4-1 Carling Cup victory at Rotherham. But on Saturday, Reading came to town.
I don't know what it is about Reading, but we never seem to be able to beat them. In fact we don't seem to be able to get so much as a draw very often. For the fourth successive time, Reading ended the game with all three points.
All of a sudden, the pressure is on. Was the Reading result just a blip, a one-off, or have we got problems? Have we tried to change too much too soon? Will all the new players be able to gel together as a team, or will we end up as an expensive jumble of individuals?
These are all tricky questions, and the man in charge of putting people's minds at rest is our manager Sven Goran Eriksson. True to form, Sven's playing it cool. It's just the sort of wake-up call we needed, he thinks. We've got another home game against Bristol City on Wednesday night. The perfect opportunity to get back in the groove.
I hope he's right. Because if we don't do the business on Wednesday, our next match is away at local rivals Notts Forest - never a happy hunting ground. And if we lose there...well, people are going to start panicking.
Football. Don't you just love it?
www.dantunstall.com
No comments:
Post a Comment