When Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died in 2018, the death was empty. fans at former manager Brendan Rodgers and football director John Rudkin. A loss to Liverpool on Monday would see them move closer to the last two games of the season in the bottom three. The demotion will not be the end of the story, but it will complete an amazing story of ups and downs.
For many years they have been rightfully regarded as a model club, and they still may be the most poignant example, even more so than Southampton, of how a few misjudgments can send an entire ship out of control.
Seven players whose contracts expired this summer, including captain Youri Tielemans, naturally suggest that the team is not heading in the same direction. An ambitious transfer window in 2021 and a lack of major sales fell flat and led to a worrying lack of activity last summer ahead of an attempt to catch up in January. The golden touch in the market eluded Lester. The price was high.
Yuri Tielemans is one of several players whose contract will end this summer. : CameraSport/Rob Newell
No one in Leicester's hierarchy speaks in public. The club is run by two executives who have access to the final decision maker, Wichai's son Top, and the new king of owners, King Power. Susan Whelan runs the commercial side of the club as chief executive but is not involved in football decisions. Radkin reports directly to Top, like Wichai, and is his boss's chief adviser on everything from signing contracts to managerial layoffs and appointments.
Rudkin was hand-picked by Wichai for a meteoric rise. The late owner was very much like an employer who looked for people he liked and valued and trusted.
It is fair to say that Rudkin was there during the years of glory under Wichai. Rudkin's status has grown to the point where he is also the head boss of the Srivaddhanaprabha family in their other major British sports company: King Power Racing (KPR).
At this point it would also be correct to say that the club is playing down the role Rudkin in the KPR. He is said to be more of a liaison between breeding stock manager Alastair Donald, various trainers and owners, formerly Vichai and now Top.
Others see it differently and believe that Rudkin plays a key role in decisions about acquiring horses and which trainers to assign them to. KPR has about 100 horses with different trainers and has at times been ranked in the top 10 racecourses in the UK, and possibly even more.
Indeed, a week after the Premier League season concludes next month, QPR may very well have a Derby runner, the highly ranked Foxes. Depending on how the last three games of the season play out, this may be cold consolation for fans of the other foxes.
In any case, the big decisions that Vichai once made – firing Nigel Pearson, appointing Claudio Ranieri, the sacking of Ranieri as Leicester faced a drastic fall at the end of 2016 is not a typical feature of the club. Rogers was clearly on his toes. The club should have gotten rid of Tielemans a long time ago. By last summer, there were no applicants for the Belgian.
The staleness of the detachment was evident to those who watched carefully. The Athletic reporter Rob Tanner, who has covered the club for years, made some sensible speculation in a relegation warning article in March that midfielder James Maddison tweeted as “nonsense”. Now, the arrogance of this response hardly needs to be pointed out.
Maddison and Tielemans were captains in a pivotal season, at the end of which it was long since clear that both were leaving. It's the kind of confusing mindset that could have been dealt with when Leicester were a more established club.
The Srivaddhanaprabha family has stoically put up with some huge losses of £92.5 million in March for the previous financial year. Covid has hit duty-free empire King Power hard and the club has borrowed money against future payments on the sale of Fofana.
Despite this, the legacy of the family is undeniable. The man who made it all possible is gone, and those he left behind to run the show are discovering that football – and the Premier League in particular – is the place to make quick decisions. Wichai shocked the game with some of his layoffs, and yet he was right. Calls that no one sees are often like this.
Lester has always had a duty to box smart, even when a billionaire is in charge. They were selling high and buying low and when they took over English football in 2016 it was interesting to watch. Looking back, that season still seems like a miracle. This is what follows and the expectations that come with it are so hard to meet year after year.
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