End Of Season Review 2019-20 Part Five

Today is the turn of Eddie Blount to provide opinions on last season as well as looking ahead…..

Before the season started what were your hopes on what we could achieve?

Top half of the table and qualifying for a European competition

Given how the season panned out, in terms of success how do you rate it out of 10 and why?

Overall 8/10 for what we achieved this season Would have been 10/10 had we qualified for the Champions League but still the second best performance by City in the Premiership

Overall how do you rate Brendan Rodgers performance?

Good to very good overall. He gives us a credibility that we have not always had from our managers so that the media see us as having the potential to bring about another big surprise which must give the players confidence

Jamie Vardy won the Player of the Year Awards, would he have been your choice and who else do you think deserves praise for their performances?

Vardy must be first choice with Ndidi second but honourable mentions for Schmeichel, Ricardo, Evans and Soyuncu.

What were your views on the signings made during last season?

Perez is yet to prove his worth though I would like to see him play behind Vardy as he is not a wide player at this level. Tielemans is an astute passer of the ball but needs to be stronger on the ball and to improve his fitness levels but he has age on his side still

Which player do you think made the most progress last season and why?

Has to be Soyuncu who had massive boots to fill yet did so magnificently and saved us many millions in the process

Which player did you think underperformed the most last season and why?

Toss up between Perez (played out of position) and Gray (not for the first time)

What was your personal highlight of the season?

Again a clear choice – Southampton away! Not very often a team wins 9-0 away! This also furthered City’s reputation as a club on the rise

VAR – how do you feel about its effectiveness last season and what would you change?

VAR was poor. Too little communication with spectators (see cricket and tennis for how it should be done). We need a review system rather than VAR investigating every incident and slowing the action down

Too rule-bound – we do not want offside decisions overturned by fractions of a millimetre. Alter the rule to give a tolerance of say 10 cm as it is impossible to know precisely to the milli-second when the ball was kicked and the present system pretends that it can be.

VAR destroys the essential spontaneity of the game as it is presently deployed – how can you celebrate a goal which VAR may overturn? It gives support to the view that there are too few top brains in the FA

In this case our Iheanacho winner was given

Moving onto next season

If you had to choose one position where we needed to strengthen, what would it be?

Goal-scoring support for Vardy particularly someone who is a threat in the air

What other changes do you think are necessary to improve on this year’s squad?

We need a wide right player who can create chances for others and weigh in with a few goals of his own – ie another Mahrez

Would you be looking to add some experience to a fairly youthful squad or would you continue bringing in younger players and develop them?

It has to be a balance between youth and experience of course. In defence we have that but going forward we have an inbalance of younger players – in spite of Vardy! Overall we are not far off a good blend when all players are available

If you had a chance for a word in the owner’s ears, which player(s) would you be advising to sign?

I wouldn’t mind Traore of Wolves or even Sarr from Watford. Grealish is the sort of strong midfield player we could do with

What are your expectations and fears for next season?

I would expect us to be top half and challenging for Europe again but the demands on players with Europa League participation will need careful management and some luck with injuries and suspensions as we saw what happened this season when the luck ran out

With the Europa League, Premier League and 2 Cup competitions, along with a condensed season, what would you give priority to and what would you be prepared to sacrifice?

Priority 1 is a high finish in the Prem. Priority 2 is to qualify for the closing stages of the Europa League. The cup competitions are the lambs which will have to be sacrificed as we must avoid spreading the jam too thinly

The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation