08Feb

Inconsistency cost Leicester promotion

by Ian Cockerill

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It hasn’t quite gone to plan. This was the season when Leicester City finally shot back into the big time. It was all there; the rich owners, big name signings and a big name manager. What was needed to follow it up hasn’t materialised.

Thus, five months after our opening salvo away at Coventry, we lie mid-table and meandering to another season of mediocrity. Sven has gone and we welcomed back our most successful manager since Martin O’Neill.

Whether or not Eriksson should have been sacked is a moot point now. Our fans were split into two distinctive camps after his dismissal. Ultimately, we had a manager whose lack of experience in the Championship shone through at times, but would have been the perfect man for the job if we’d been promoted.

Pearson’s succession of Eriksson was supposed to herald promotion. He was meant to lead our expensive, talented squad up the table to where both the fans and ambitious Thai owners are desperate to be. So far, after a promising start, that plan hasn’t quite gone to script either.

The defeat by Barnsley in mid-January was a low point for the 2011/12 season. The players were booed off, and there were even some fans knee-jerk enough to call into question the manager’s position. If only they’d remember the last merry-go-round of managers we had, leading to our relegation in 2008.

Victory over Forest in the cup seemed like it was going to be one of the classic ‘turning points’ in the season, where the confidence shoots up and the club goes on a run. A terrible refereeing decision and last gasp defeat at Brighton last Saturday brought that momentum to a shuddering halt.

Nigel has now managed the same number of league games this season as Sven-Göran Eriksson had. Both have four defeats, but Pearson has one less win, four to Sven’s five. One word sums up both records; inconsistent.

We’re only seven points off the play-offs, and history has shown us all that in this division seven points is nothing with twenty games still left to play. We could storm up the table and finish in the play-offs: nothing would please the club and the fans more to achieve that.

But ultimately it’s the inconsistency that will cost Leicester this time. Unless we can pull off a stunning run and ‘do a Reading’ we’ll be in the bracket that have nothing to play for at either end of the table, come the end of the season.

Next year is our year; but we’ve heard that one before.

Posted by Leicester fan Ian Cockerill

Follow Ian on Twitter @IGC1989