Fosse Friday 056 - 6 June 2025: Hotshot Hamza and vegan haggis
This week's update is agog we've found 7 good things this week
The good
“No news is better than evil news”.
King James I may or may not have been thinking of ye olde Leicester Fosse when he uttered those words, but perhaps they are a mantra for us to live by in these trying times.
Two weeks since the troops left the field against Bournemouth and there is no news on the managerial front. Ruud van Nistelrooy is still in situ, and the whole club appears to be on holiday.
It’s true that the interminable wait for communication is tough to live with, but it’s also true that lots of other clubs are in hibernation too. Middlesbrough only sacked Michael Carrick a couple of days ago (managerial freebie, anyone?), while Spurs and Normal Club Sheffield Wednesday are in a similar managerial purgatory to us.
Perhaps one salve for the Blue Army is the news that Russell Martin has fled north to take the Rangers job. Whether he was a legitimate contender to replace RVN and took flight once he heard the chants, the PSR charges, and noticed that we’re a complete basket case, or if the club hadn’t roused itself to look at his LinkedIn application yet, we may never know.
Either way, this sets the scene for some hot Brendan on Brussell crime next season. Someone fetch the Spiderman meme!
That same Blue Army has excelled itself by selling out season tickets for next season.
Given the level of uncertainty around the club, this is an impressive effort. The detail offers up some interesting nuggets - renewals, unsurprisingly, down a bit on the last few seasons, but there are more younger season ticket holders and just over 2,000 season tickets sold in safe standing areas.
Whether this boosts the atmosphere probably depends on how long it takes the team to reach positive points next season. Even so, the fans deserve credit for continuing to cough up time and money in support of a team that doesn’t exactly excel itself on the engagement front.
On this note, some words from Kasey McAteer after speaking to The Athletic’s Rob Tanner before the final day of the season.
In the absence of any meaningful communication from the club’s hierarchy or clarity about the managerial situation, this at least strikes the right tone in difficult circumstances:
“I can understand people that are passionate about this football club being annoyed at how things have gone. They pay their hard-earned money and come and support us and watch it, so they have a right to voice their opinion, and we accept that.
“They want to see a team that’s out there fighting; I remember Leicester City teams that, in the past, haven’t been as gifted as other teams, but there’s no doubt they would run through a brick wall for each other and they’d fight for 95 minutes, or whatever it would be. That is what we need to get back and I think the fans will then start to appreciate what we are trying to do — to get straight back into the Premier League.
“It has been tough. It has been, at times, very, very draining getting beaten every week and not scoring any goals. I can imagine it has been tough for the fans as well, but we can only look forward now.”
A reminder that the annual Union FS summer tournament is fast approaching…
Saturday 21st June (11.15 to 4pm at Kirby Muxloe FC) is the date for your diary.
Here’s Hamza Choudhury scoring his first ever goal for Bangladesh.
And here’s a public service for you…
Championship key dates 2025/26
Fixture release
Thursday 26 June 2025 at midday
Opening matchday weekend
Friday 8 August – Sunday 10 August
Final matchday weekend
Weekend of 2/3 May 2026
Play-off final date
Saturday 23 May 2026
Carabao Cup
Round One Draw – Thursday 26 June 2025
Round One – w/c 11 August 2025
Final (yeah, right) – Sunday 22 March 2026
The bad
The FA’s investigation into Maddy Cusack’s death, and Jonathan Morgan’s role in it, has begun. The various witness statements heard in the initial hearing, as reported by The Athletic, don’t reflect well on the regime that formerly ran LCFC Women with an iron grip.
There are various testimonies that deal directly with Morgan’s time as LCFC manager.
The hearing was also told about a written statement from Callum Davidson, formerly a sports therapist for Leicester, who alleged that Morgan “would treat players so badly they would leave without (the club) having to pay up their contracts.”
New signings would be regarded as the manager’s “favourites,” according to Davidson, but as soon as he no longer wanted them his attitude would change and he would tell staff, for example, that a player was “cancerous and no good for the club.”
Despite staying out of the spotlight this season, there are still plenty of questions for the club to answer about the culture of the Women’s team under Morgan and, subsequently, Willie Kirk.
Leicester City Women midfielder Ruby Mace made her England debut last December in a 1-0 win over Switzerland.
Yesterday, England coach Sarina Wiegman announced her 23-player squad for Euro 2025. Three from US-based clubs, one from Bayern Munich and the remaining 19 all from the established big four of the WSL: Arsenal (6), Chelsea (6), Manchester City (4) and Manchester United (3).
Had Mace not sustained a season-ending injury in the defeat at Chelsea back in early March, she might have been not only Leicester’s first Lioness at a major tournament but the sole representative of a group of clubs trying desperately to bridge a widening gap.
Philipe Auclair has penned a piece for the Guardian on the demise of TGP Europe, a front company that allowed football clubs to strike massive sponsorship deals with shady Asian gambling firms that would otherwise be unable to advertise in the UK.
As you might expect, these boys are no bueno:
At least two Asian-facing betting partners of English clubs – BK8, formerly associated with Aston Villa and Burnley, and 8XBet, partners of Manchester City, Chelsea, Bournemouth, Leicester and Ipswich – have been accused of running their operations from compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar, countries where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that at least 200,000 people have been trafficked and enslaved to service the gambling and scamming industries.
Leicester have, on this occasion, done nothing wrong (officially at least). But aside from the ethical implications, the hard reality is that this is now a revenue stream that may be closed off completely.
It is not just that sports betting brands, especially Asian-facing ones, pay a premium of 20-40% above the usual rate for their partnerships, the fear within football is that an entire income stream which cannot be replaced may have gone.
The ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsors comes into effect the season after next, and longer term, clubs like us are going to have to find a way to meet the shortfall from the loss of all this easy, shady money.
The daft
Spare a thought for the member of TFW Towers who is tasked with sending in a LCFC 2025/26 season preview for an established football magazine by a deadline of… next Tuesday.
We have a pre-season friendly! King Power’s Belgian fancy OH Leuven have announced they’re coming over for a week-long training camp in July and will be playing against Leicester on 12th July.
Obviously, nothing from Leicester about this - presumably it’ll be behind closed doors as it was last time they visited.
Upon triple-checking that Brussell had indeed pitched up north of the border, we stumbled across this massive money-saver in the Rangers club shop sale:
You could put that £0 saving towards some vegan haggis.
Hot goss
International goalscoring sensation Hamza Choudhury is apparently of interest to Olympiakos. You can try to read more about this if you like, but it’s all Greek to us.
Part 5,983 of the decline, in which we move from thinking we’re above signing Jordan Ayew to Jordan Ayew leaving us hanging on whether he’s too good for us.
“I have one more year left on my contract, and I need to go on holiday and see what is going to happen.
When you get to this kind of level, you can’t decide too early because staying is an option and leaving also is an option, but I am happy there (at Leicester City).”
Time to hear from Ricardo Pereira’s agent Abdi Sofiane:
“Ricardo still has one year left on his contract with Leicester City, but the idea is to look at a more attractive project”
On the plus side, we’ll still be able to catch him on the days Leicester home games don’t clash with Anstey Nomads.
And on the really plus side…
Belgian news outlet Het Nieuwsblad reported:
“Wout Faes is facing an inevitable departure from Leicester.”
It sounds so nice, we’ll say it twice.
“Wout Faes is facing an inevitable departure from Leicester.”
Hell, it’s been a quiet week. Once more for luck.
“Wout Faes is facing an inevitable departure from Leicester.”
Thing we learned
Long-serving kit manager Paul McAndrew was the subject of an article on the club’s official website this week after appearing on the ‘Leicester’s the Place’ podcast.
And we quite like that he hugged Eden Hazard after the Belgian’s famous goal that levelled a game for Chelsea and won a title for Leicester.
Although… let’s have it right. We would have won it anyway. #TenPointsClear
One last thing…
Daniel Storey eloquently summed up the club’s wide-ranging issues in the iPaper this week.
You can read the full article for free on PressReader.
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