Leicester and Burnley

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CPB

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Sadly now we are back down in the Championship we have to try and firstly get back up to the Premier League for starters and that isn't by any way a foregone conclusion. It's a new era and we have no idea of how it will definitely pan out.

However this thread is about the model/target of clubs of stature like ourselves and clubs in the Premier League who are becoming established or at the very least enjoying a prolonged spell in the top flight.

Burnley are the usual mooted club who manage to keep themselves up there. Are able under the fine leadership of Dyche to be able to make shrewd signings and they are also improving their infrastructure. They're new training ground is a big part of this and with some more ambitious owners they could potentially give Dyche the opportunity to do a bit more with the playing team.
They're are also early plans to develop Turf Moor too.
It's worth noting that part of Burnley's journey also was a relegation too with an immediate bounce back up under Dyche.

Amongst other clubs are the likes of Palace and Southampton who are keeping themselves up for a number of years but I wouldn't be surprised to see Palace down in that bottom area in the coming seasons. Wolves have done well with Nuno, but they have spent a good figure especially in the Championship. Remains to be seen how they will cope under their new management but they are only in their 4th season now in the top flight.

Leicester are of course the dream target, and seeing their news this morning is what got me thinking.
Leicester's achievements and now actually their stature is one that is not really attainable but not so long ago this was a club with ambitions very similar to us. (Championship team/newly promoted into PL).
However they struck lucky/gold when they built that side and that mentality that won them the PL title. Since then they have pretty much made themselves a current top 6 team and been able to invest and attract talent to the team. Their training ground is absolutely 1st class and they've now announced big plans for the stadium which will increase capacity to 40,000.
Now I'm not saying we can achieve anything like this, winning the PL title sadly isn't gonna happen for us certainly with the way football is now in this day and age.
But to aim to improve the club in the way they have, perhaps making strong finishes in the PL one day maybe even cups or finals is surely the goal and one that isn't entirely out of our reach.

Please don't think I'm getting ahead of myself before a ball is even kicked after our relegation! But in terms of models, targets, aims this is surely what the Prince/Club should be going for.
I have to admit after our first season in the PL I wondered if we might be able to kick on establish ourselves and maybe start achieving these things. But being a blade means that the footballing gods threw a pandemic at us and injured our best defender too along with other issues too.

So we start again, but with hopefully a strong basis to build on.... and to perhaps to dream of one day.
 

The mistakes clubs make, I think, is trying to copy the example of another team instead of coming up with a way which works for them. Sure, borrow bits from different clubs but imitation is destined for failure.

We have an Academy with a good record - Invest in it and make a real pipeline for youth talent to come through
We are part of United World - Use contacts and scouting in those areas to our benefit
We have a good stadium in a big city - Use the 'stature' of the club to our benefit in transfer dealings
We are a set of fans who appreciate hard work - Base our style around that
 
robbiez666 said:
The mistakes clubs make, I think, is trying to copy the example of another team instead of coming up with a way which works for them. Sure, borrow bits from different clubs but imitation is destined for failure.

We have an Academy with a good record - Invest in it and make a real pipeline for youth talent to come through
We are part of United World - Use contacts and scouting in those areas to our benefit
We have a good stadium in a big city - Use the 'stature' of the club to our benefit in transfer dealings
We are a set of fans who appreciate hard work - Base our style around that
Click to expand...
Oh totally, not suggesting we should copy other clubs. Although Burnley's model doesn't seem to put the club at any financial risk per-se.
Leicester have gambled too with spending quite a bit at times and I'm no huge fan of that either.

But in terms of targets of what other clubs have achieved and investment in the club these aren't bad targets to have. Our training facility is v.poor compared to most Championship sides let alone PL. And our ground has alot of potential and even now is still beautiful ;)
 
CPB said:
Oh totally, not suggesting we should copy other clubs. Although Burnley's model doesn't seem to put the club at any financial risk per-se.
Leicester have gambled too with spending quite a bit at times and I'm no huge fan of that either.

But in terms of targets of what other clubs have achieved and investment in the club these aren't bad targets to have. Our training facility is v.poor compared to most Championship sides let alone PL. And our ground has alot of potential and even now is still beautiful ;)
Click to expand...
New owners at Burnley and didn't they put them in debt by buying them?
 
CPB said:
Oh totally, not suggesting we should copy other clubs. Although Burnley's model doesn't seem to put the club at any financial risk per-se.
Leicester have gambled too with spending quite a bit at times and I'm no huge fan of that either.

But in terms of targets of what other clubs have achieved and investment in the club these aren't bad targets to have. Our training facility is v.poor compared to most Championship sides let alone PL. And our ground has alot of potential and even now is still beautiful ;)
Click to expand...
How are you making the judgement that our training facility is v poor compared to most Championship sides?
 
CPB said:
Sadly now we are back down in the Championship we have to try and firstly get back up to the Premier League for starters and that isn't by any way a foregone conclusion. It's a new era and we have no idea of how it will definitely pan out.

However this thread is about the model/target of clubs of stature like ourselves and clubs in the Premier League who are becoming established or at the very least enjoying a prolonged spell in the top flight.

Burnley are the usual mooted club who manage to keep themselves up there. Are able under the fine leadership of Dyche to be able to make shrewd signings and they are also improving their infrastructure. They're new training ground is a big part of this and with some more ambitious owners they could potentially give Dyche the opportunity to do a bit more with the playing team.
They're are also early plans to develop Turf Moor too.
It's worth noting that part of Burnley's journey also was a relegation too with an immediate bounce back up under Dyche.

Amongst other clubs are the likes of Palace and Southampton who are keeping themselves up for a number of years but I wouldn't be surprised to see Palace down in that bottom area in the coming seasons. Wolves have done well with Nuno, but they have spent a good figure especially in the Championship. Remains to be seen how they will cope under their new management but they are only in their 4th season now in the top flight.

Leicester are of course the dream target, and seeing their news this morning is what got me thinking.
Leicester's achievements and now actually their stature is one that is not really attainable but not so long ago this was a club with ambitions very similar to us. (Championship team/newly promoted into PL).
However they struck lucky/gold when they built that side and that mentality that won them the PL title. Since then they have pretty much made themselves a current top 6 team and been able to invest and attract talent to the team. Their training ground is absolutely 1st class and they've now announced big plans for the stadium which will increase capacity to 40,000.
Now I'm not saying we can achieve anything like this, winning the PL title sadly isn't gonna happen for us certainly with the way football is now in this day and age.
But to aim to improve the club in the way they have, perhaps making strong finishes in the PL one day maybe even cups or finals is surely the goal and one that isn't entirely out of our reach.

Please don't think I'm getting ahead of myself before a ball is even kicked after our relegation! But in terms of models, targets, aims this is surely what the Prince/Club should be going for.
I have to admit after our first season in the PL I wondered if we might be able to kick on establish ourselves and maybe start achieving these things. But being a blade means that the footballing gods threw a pandemic at us and injured our best defender too along with other issues too.

So we start again, but with hopefully a strong basis to build on.... and to perhaps to dream of one day.
Click to expand...
I don’t think our owner is in the same financial category as the family owning LFC
 
To become established at prem level as a side without significant outside investment you have to be exceptional at acquiring players whether that be through transfers or producing those players. I would argue we have a history of being good at both but not exceptional.

Our transfers are solid but not fantastic so we don’t recoup the incredibly high fees which allow us to reinvest although ramsdale and berge may book this trend. we are also very limited in our scope in terms of players acquisitions and this limits us.

We produce excellent international caliber players but we haven’t held onto them long enough to benefit on the pitch. In addition to this we’ve had to sell from a position of weakness often getting criminally low value allowing us to survive not progress. Finally our academy produces in fits and starts as opposed to a consistent production line of players to challenge for first team spots. All of this means it’s very rare we can replace from within.

In this context it’s disappointing not to see additional scouting staff brought in to help Mitchell because whilst he can spot a player he can’t scout abroad and his higher value players have been middling so it would suggest he’ll need help to establish us in the prem.

On the academy side these are the first few crops lester has brought through and the early signs are promising so let’s see where we stand in a couple of years. However in the medium term we will need to secure category A status to stop us losing our most promising players from the younger age groups and perhaps start poaching other academies youngsters aswell this should drive up the baseline standard of academy player and help is to produce players to challenge for the first team more consistently.
 
Leicester are a very good example of what can be done.
Have to have a trawl through Mandaric's 'involvement'. Did he get them out of jail then turn himself a profit?
Do like seeing them doing well though. A bit like us early 70's. Good players, decent footy.
 
robbiez666 said:
The mistakes clubs make, I think, is trying to copy the example of another team instead of coming up with a way which works for them. Sure, borrow bits from different clubs but imitation is destined for failure.

We have an Academy with a good record - Invest in it and make a real pipeline for youth talent to come through
We are part of United World - Use contacts and scouting in those areas to our benefit
We have a good stadium in a big city - Use the 'stature' of the club to our benefit in transfer dealings
We are a set of fans who appreciate hard work - Base our style around that
Click to expand...

This
We are not like other clubs,
Traditionally we are better supported than Leicester, and up to a few years ago had won more honours too.

But many clubs like Leicester, Norwich, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Sunderland, Southampton, the Nottingham clubs have almost an entire County or at least a very large region at their disposal with very little competition. There are six traditionally good clubs within a 30 minute drive of Bramall Lane, and three of four gigantic clubs within an hour. In spite of this we have been better supported than most of the above, traditionally, with Newcastle and Sunderland being the exceptions, and they are basically in an area a million miles from anybody.

In spite of this, whatever Leicester can achieve, so can we.
I don't get the views of some that after watching other middle of the road clubs achieve success, that it's not possible for us to do it.

Holding out for the right money for Berge and Ramsdale, and not caving in and using the "Can't stop him" "Unhappy player" "When the big boys come calling" bollox, I hope is the first step along the way of seeing a different Sheffield United.

Sell massive, buy very big, then you become interesting, get people talking, gather momentum in the local area, gather more momentum further afield, then sell even bigger, buy even bigger, become known as a club that means business, even if it doesn't work we should always have a team of players where somebody can be sold that puts us back on track again.

In the past it's been like the end of the world when we've sold our best player because he was our "only good player" he'd have been undersold and impossible to replace with the same money. But when you have a squad full of good players an inevitable sale is more acceptable and becomes less of a tragedy when there is faith that the player will be adequately replaced with good money.

This is one thing Leicester have done well, they've spent big yes, but since winning the title people forget they've dragged in over £350 million in player sales on top of the prize money, TV money and European money, but it all started with having some balls in the first place and not underselling themselves.
 
JJBlade said:
This
We are not like other clubs,
Traditionally we are better supported than Leicester, and up to a few years ago had won more honours too.

But many clubs like Leicester, Norwich, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Sunderland, Southampton, the Nottingham clubs have almost an entire County or at least a very large region at their disposal with very little competition. There are six traditionally good clubs within a 30 minute drive of Bramall Lane, and three of four gigantic clubs within an hour. In spite of this we have been better supported than most of the above, traditionally, with Newcastle and Sunderland being the exceptions, and they are basically in an area a million miles from anybody.

In spite of this, whatever Leicester can achieve, so can we.
I don't get the views of some that after watching other middle of the road clubs achieve success, that it's not possible for us to do it.

Holding out for the right money for Berge and Ramsdale, and not caving in and using the "Can't stop him" "Unhappy player" "When the big boys come calling" bollox, I hope is the first step along the way of seeing a different Sheffield United.

Sell massive, buy very big, then you become interesting, get people talking, gather momentum in the local area, gather more momentum further afield, then sell even bigger, buy even bigger, become known as a club that means business, even if it doesn't work we should always have a team of players where somebody can be sold that puts us back on track again.

In the past it's been like the end of the world when we've sold our best player because he was our "only good player" he'd have been undersold and impossible to replace with the same money. But when you have a squad full of good players an inevitable sale is more acceptable and becomes less of a tragedy when there is faith that the player will be adequately replaced with good money.

This is one thing Leicester have done well, they've spent big yes, but since winning the title people forget they've dragged in over £350 million in player sales on top of the prize money, TV money and European money, but it all started with having some balls in the first place and not underselling themselves.
Click to expand...
This is kind of what I'm getting at in the first place. These clubs were not bigger than us in fact arguably not as big as us few years ago (Very Wednesday esque comment there!) But that's not to say we should be expecting it, they've done well to stay there.

I do think though that what Leicester has achieved is out of our range. We ain't gonna stand a chance of winning the PL title without Jeff Bezos deciding he wants to buy us. Not with the way footy is nowadays. Perhaps if the money shifts to being more balanced than many clubs have an outside chance but it's not happening yet.
I also agree with some of the other posts that Leicester had admin first to deal with, which is obv dodgy but in general a decade ago or so we were in the same division and both hoping to one day be promoted again to the PL.


That said what I'm getting at is, it is attainable given good investment and success on the pitch of becoming a club that perhaps achieves the odd top 7 finish, perhaps the odd cup success or run and with that the benefits are potentially big improvements all round.
 
Copying another team is not the way to do it, as others have already said. We need to find our own way of doing it.

However, what we should learn from the likes of Leicester, Burnley, Palace, Southampton and Wolves is that it is possible to break in and be strong in the Premier League. There are many similarities between United and all five of those clubs. There are ways that an “unfashionable” smaller club can upset the odds and get into Europe and be strong in the Premier League. Some of them require financial investment (Wolves, Leicester), some require a strong academy (Saints, Palace), some need a different sort of transfer policy (Burnley, Saints) and all need a bit of luck at some point. But it can be done, we should be aiming to find a way to emulate these teams and if this isn’t our aim, we should give it up now.
 

I have a feeling that Burnley's luck might run out this year, they have been treading water for a while and look like being a couple of injuries away from being in the shit.

Last year they got away with it because ourselves, West Brom and Fulham were so poor but if they did go down, they've been prudent enough to have accumulated some money to deal with the shortfall.
 
Leicester ?

Any club that needs'clappers' to create an atmosphere is not a club I wish us to aspire to.
 
SouthEssexBlade said:
It all started by being better than the Rusties at circumnavigating the rules, getting away with it and then attracting a very good owner with substantial funds to invest.
Click to expand...

People still go on about this......it was 20 years ago, they were also second division club when it happened who pipped us to the automatic promotion places. If they'd been punished properly it would have been us that went up a couple of years earlier than we did. It wouldn't have effected us any differently anyway, we'd have still got relegated again.

They also got relegated again, and spent another 10 years in the Championship before going back up again, so avoiding proper punishment didn't do them much good either, and certainly didn't set them up for life as a top six club or attract a billionaire investor.
 
Sounds easy this ‘being an established Premier League club’ malarkey.

I’m surprised everyone isn’t at it and that they’ve not had to expand the PL to double its size to accommodate all co

With benevolent billionaires just sat on the end of a phone waiting for football clubs like us to call them I don’t see what we’re pissing about at.

Who needs a 4th rate Saudi royal whose primary focus is balancing the books?!
 
I have wife’s family with strong Leicester City connections, going back a long way to 1950s through past players of the club in their family. You can only admire how the club feels as one all the way through from the board downwards and there is genuine love for the owners ( to be expected after a PL title, european football and fa cup). It however still manages to retain the feeling of a true caring family club, where the fans are valued and treated with more respect than most. Simple goodwill gestures such as a mince pie and a beer, to all fans at Xmas outside the ground, scarves and flags on seats, small token gifts sent during lockdown, which although some maybe cynical of, goes along way. Can you imagine the Blades doing anything like that? Added to the fact that preseason friendlies are free to watch on YouTube (£5 to watch the Blades, I ask you, really!)
But I’m glad to say that watching them I feel no ties or emotion like watching the blades, unfortunately what they really miss is having any true local rivalries, Leicester still is a one club city with poor E midlands rivals.
Looking back to where they come from and their history, including their despicable administration, they have won a lot less in their history than us but just a lot more recently.
I was at Leicester on May 5th 1990 and they certainly weren’t a bigger club then, they just had some luck with an mega rich owner who also genuinely cares about the community and the city and put his money where his mouth is…..but then so haven’t we in our past, “there’s no greater blade than me” ring any bells?
 
Both are great examples of what can be achieved without spending crazy money. The common denominator with both those clubs is they have very smart people at the top; at Leicester they have very savvy owners, and Burnley have a very shrewd and intelligent manager in Dyche. Both clubs have a very clear philosophy and identity and both have built very strong cultures which is possibly the strongest single element of a successful football club. The Blades had it for the first 4 years under Wilder and it shows what a good culture can build. What Leicester do very well is to keep investing in their existing players; tying them to improved contracts year on year which in turn maintains the value of their assets. Take Vardy for a good example, by improving his contract year on year they lower the risk he will leave for nothing and also keep their asset at a good value. Nothing wrong with copying elements, however, the most crucial thing is to have a plan and for that plan to be based in realism.
 

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