On November 24 last year, Leicester City decided to sack new manager Steve Cooper after just 12 games of their league season.
Cooper was dismissed after a 2-1 home defeat against Chelsea which left the club two points above relegation zone. Promoted Leicester were on a five-game winless run in all competitions (four of them losses) and were 16th in the Premier League.
There were multiple factors in why it didn’t work out for Cooper but above all the club’s hierarchy didn’t like the direction of travel they were seeing and wanted to move quickly to change course, leading to the hiring of Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Seventeen games later, that direction of travel has turned out to be right off a cliff. After their 3-0 home defeat against Manchester United on Sunday, Leicester only have seven points more than they had when Cooper departed and are nine points off the safety of 17th place with nine games to go.
It is hypothetical to say they wouldn’t be in the relegation zone today had Cooper stayed, but it isn’t a huge leap to suggest he couldn’t have done much worse because Leicester are now setting a swathe of unwanted records.
- They have become the first team in English top-flight history to lose seven home games in succession, all without scoring.
- Thirteen of their past 14 games have ended in defeat, conceding 35 goals and scoring just four in the process.
- Leicester have now conceded 1,001 goals across their 679 Premier League games. While 11 other clubs have let in that many in the competition, they have taken the fewest matches to reach four figures among the sides to have done so.
- Van Nistelrooy has seven points from a possible 48 in his 16 league games as Leicester manager. Only Russell Martin with Southampton (five), Sunderland’s Mick McCarthy and Paul Jewell of Derby County (both four) have earned fewer in their first 16 Premier League matches.
It is a lamentable record, especially at their King Power Stadium, where Leicester fans haven’t seen a home league goal since December 8, when Jamie Vardy and Bobby De Cordova-Reid were on target to salvage a draw against Brighton in Van Nistelrooy’s second game in charge.
The last time Leicester fans got to celebrate a goal at home, Newcastle still hadn’t won a major domestic trophy in 70 years and Liverpool were still eyeing up a possible quadruple and Joe Biden was also still the U.S. President.
These facts and stats make for sorry reading, yet the most poignant of all is one which may not be reached. Vardy, now 38, remains two goals short of 200 in his Leicester career. For everything he has achieved in his 13 seasons with the club it would leave a sour taste if they played so poorly over the final two months of his contract that he didn’t achieve that landmark.
Jamie Vardy is two short of 200 goals at Leicester (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet time is running out and, right now, it is difficult to predict where those two goals will come from. Or indeed Leicester’s next points.
Defender Conor Coady described the dressing room as a tough place to be because confidence has been battered, and it is clear to see on the pitch with Leicester’s passive defending and nervy attacking delivering another rinse-and-repeat showcase of errors on Sunday evening. They may have created more chances against United than in previous games, with an xG of 1.17, 23 touches in the opposition box, 11 attempts on goal and three of them on target, but those statistics still flattered them.
“We feel that we’re in a momentum that we are creating chances today and it’s not falling our way,” Van Nistelrooy said. “If you stop believing, you can be sure it won’t fall your way. When you believe in your work and doing your jobs and believe that things will change, then it can change.”
It certainly needs to change because although it is highly unlikely now Leicester will survive in the Premier League, carrying this level of negative momentum into the Championship next season, with the rising toxicity among a section of the supporters, could potentially be disastrous.
“I’ll stay myself, I’m not changing as a person or as a coach,” Van Nistelrooy added. “The approach that we are trying to achieve with the players on the training pitch and in the approach of games is the road that we’re on. Of course, we are adjusting and we’re trying everything possible to change results around. That’s my job and I will continue to do so.”
Facundo Buonanotte (second left) has not been a regular at Leicester City (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Van Nistelrooy obviously has a poor record since taking over from Cooper, yet the damage to this season may have been done as early as the summer, with their disrupted pre-season and disastrous recruitment.
Only one of their summer signings, Bilal El Khannouss, started on Sunday. Five other recruits from that window – Caleb Okoli, Jordan Ayew, Facundo Buonanotte and De Cordova-Reid – and their only January one, Wojo Coulibaly, were on the bench. Two more summer arrivals, Oliver Skipp and Odsonne Edouard, were not even in the 20-man matchday squad.
Those transfer mistakes cannot be blamed on Van Nistelrooy, but he is not making a strong case to be considered the man to lead Leicester on the road towards recovery next season in the second tier.
The Dutchman has nine games left in this one.
Top-flight survival may well be beyond his team now, especially with Manchester City (fifth), Newcastle (sixth), Brighton (seventh) and Liverpool (first) as the next four opponents.
But for Van Nistelrooy, after only one previous season in senior football, his reputation as a manager is on the line, too.
(Top photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
