2011: It’s Sven Goner Eriksson

We here at Fosse Posse love to bring you the latest news and opinions on our great football club, which we all love, Leicester City. But we also like to reminisce and look through blue tinted glasses at how our team have come through the last 133 years.

We’ll delve way back and highlight the likes of Arthur Chandler, Frankie Wortho and others, as well as Cup Finals, landmark achievements and moments that have just filled us with joy (and sometimes despair)!

October has seen numerous manager changes in recent years, including Peter Taylor, Gary Megson and of course now Craig Shakespeare but we’re gonna take a look back at one of the biggest names to get the boot.

Monday 24th October 2011

Following a string of poor results and performances, the Leicester City board decided it was time for a change and ended the contract of Sven Goran Eriksson after just over a year in charge of Leicester City.

Sitting 13th in the Championship and following on from a 3-0 home defeat to Millwall, Sven was called in on Monday 24th October to be advised his services we’re no longer required by Apichet Raksriaksorn and Vichai Raksriaksorn.

Sven knew he was in danger after he had called an emergency meeting with the players on that Monday morning and told them he was fortunate to be still in a job.

Eriksson had come in at the start of October 2010, taken over after Paulo Sousa’s poor start to the season saw us in the relegation zone, instead pushing for promotion as hoped.

He was then quick to bring in some new faces to boost us back up the table as he brought Kyle Naughton, Greg Cunningham and Curtis Davies in on loan as well as picking up Darius Vassell on a free.

City’s home form helped them slowly climbed the table but no away wins in December showed further investment was needed in January to really kick start the climb up the table.

Sol Bamba was brought in from Hibs and Sven’s high profile helped him secure some quality loan signings from Premiership clubs.

Chris Kirkland, Ben Mee and Yakubu all came in until the end of season, along with Patrick van Aanholt and Jeff Bruma from Chelsea.

Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images

City started 2011 undefeated until mid-February, including an enjoyable 2-0 win over Derby at Pride Park, giving hope we could nick a play-off place.

However, the results didn’t quite come and eventually Leicester finished 10th hoping to build on that platform for the following season.

Milan Mandaric had now left as chairman and the new owners and Chairman Vichai Raksriaksorn we’re willing to allow Sven to invest once again to get Leicester into the Premiership.

A total of £15M was spent on varies new players including Kasper Schmeichel, Lee Peltier, Sean St Ledger, Matt Mills, Jermaine Beckford and Paul Konchesky.

David Nugent, Neil Danns, John Paintsil and Michael Ball also came in on free transfers to completely rebuild the squad.

It started well with a 1-0 win at Coventry but too many draws before a thumping 4-0 win over Derby at The King Power stadium wasn’t enough to satisfy the success hungry Thai investors.

Leicester's inconsistency was to galling for the board especially because of the club's outlay in the summer.

This would be Sven's last managerial post in England, following on from Manchester City and then as director of football at Notts County before further failed International appointments with Mexico and Ivory Coast.

So after only a year with the foxes, he moved onto the football revolution in China, where he remains today.

Meanwhile Leicester headed for a return of their former manager Nigel Pearson, and he would help make a much bigger impact to the club, on our upward journey back to the top.