I’ve seen club owners make some daft decisions but Leicester City’s appointment of Claude Puel seems plain bizarre.
It’s baffled, saddened and angered me all in one go.
Baffled because I’m struggling to find a reason why my old club would make such an underwhelming appointment that’s hardly going to inspire a dressing room filled with players who were Premier League champs just two seasons ago.
Saddened because I think Leicester fans would rightly have expected the club’s owners to be braver and more ambitious.
And angered because once again English managers – and Sean Dyche in particular – appear to have been overlooked for a Frenchman who hardly pulled up any trees at Southampton and left St Mary’s having made little lasting impact.
It’s no wonder Leicester fans have reacted with surprise and bewilderment because it looks one of the oddest managerial marriages I’ve seen in recent years – it just makes no sense to me.
I played for Leicester under Martin O’Neill and they became the Fearless Foxes. To me, Puel looks a whimpering, crestfallen soul.
Welcome to the Faceless Foxes.
Even though they had an Italian boss in Claudio Ranieri, Leicester stunned the world by winning the Premier League in a very English way with a direct game.
They have a distinctive Unique Selling Point and their modus operandi is based on hard graft with the spin-off for players that if they do well it can open the door for a move to a bigger stage as N’Golo Kante and Danny Drinkwater found.
Dyche has done a brilliant job at Burnley and this would have been a decent upgrade to a club prepared to spend money even though the owners seem trigger-happy.
So what do Leicester’s Thai ownership do? They go for a bloke that’s hardly bought into the English sporting culture and doesn’t come across as tailor-made for the Premier.
When he was at Saints I thought his body language was poor and he didn’t seem able to motivate individuals. But I have seen Dyche build an impressive reputation on limited resources and turn Burnley into a small-town team who can more than hold their own in the top flight.
He would have been a perfect fit for the Leicester but Sean’s just got one problem. He’s English.
It seems you get a negative vibe and think the worst when you mention English or British bosses.
It’s far trendier for a club to have a foreign coach. I’ve seen the look on the look on the faces of 21-year-old kids when you mention Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis – it’s almost like they are seen as anti-football.
Youngsters have grown up in this global football village and been gifted this beautiful Pep Guardiola way of doing things where even the goalies do Cruyff turns.
Guardiola serves up adventurous, trendy tapas but it’s plain old meat and two veg from guys like Big Sam and Pulis.
English or British basically means route one, kick and rush, can’t play, not good technically so we are stereotyping a whole group of managers.
But managers like Dyche, Eddie Howe and Chris Hughton, who are all doing well in the Premier League, are far savvier than that.
Hughton is a classic example. He’s worked with clubs where they have had to be defensive or a bit more direct, and now he’s at Brighton with a playing staff of good technical players.
He’s coached lots of different styles but no one would stick head above parapet and say he’s built good teams and shown good management.
As for Puel it’s fair to say by the reaction that the jury is still out. Maybe we should give the guy a chance and wait and see. But I’m not holding my breath.