Leicester City: A New Era for Russell Martin

Leicester City know all about history. They just don’t want to be chained to it.

A decade on from that 5,000-1 Premier League miracle and three years removed from lifting the FA Cup, the club that once rattled English football now finds itself in League One, nursing back‑to‑back relegations and a bruised reputation. Into that turbulence walks Russell Martin, a manager with his own story to repair.

“Hopefully I'll be judged on the job I do here and not on my previous job and all that stuff,” he told BBC Radio Leicester. “We have to find our own way and then be judged on that.”

A manager with something to prove

Martin arrives at the King Power with a curious CV. He took Southampton back to the Premier League just over two years ago, a high watermark for a coach long praised for his possession-based style. Then came Rangers. A 123-day spell, messy and short, that left questions hanging over his methods and his future.

He has chosen Leicester, and League One, as the place to answer them.

The club, like the manager, is trying to reset its image. Leicester’s fall has been steep: from champions and cup winners to a second season in the third tier in 142 years. The weight of that arc hangs over everything, and Martin knows it.

“I know the club got relegated but, prior to that, that club had amazing success over a sustained period of time – like, huge – and of course maybe you get judged based on that,” he said. “I can't judge people on the last couple of years.”

The message is clear. The title, the great escape seasons, the FA Cup win, even the collapses since then – all part of the story, none of it allowed to dictate what comes next.

A new power structure under pressure

Martin is the first big call of a new internal order. His appointment was the headline move since James McCarron stepped in as sporting director last season, operating beneath chief football officer Jon Rudkin.

Rudkin, along with owner and chairman Khun Aiyawatt “Top” Srivaddhanaprabha, has become a lightning rod for supporter anger as the club slid from Europe-chasing stability into financial breaches and relegation. Every decision from the top now carries scrutiny.

Martin’s early impression of the hierarchy has been deliberately measured, but pointed.

“There was real honesty about what's gone on, but now there's real honesty and openness and willingness to move forward,” he said. “I can't judge anything that has gone on before because I've not been here. You watch it from the outside, and people will make assumptions, but I've been really open to being surprised since I got here and people have been great.”

Honesty, openness, willingness. The language of a rebuild, but also of a club that knows it can’t afford more missteps.

Promotion or bust

For all the talk of process and patience, the brief is brutally simple.

“It's to get promoted, first and foremost,” Martin said. No caveats. No softening. The second League One campaign in the club’s history cannot turn into a third.

Yet it’s not just about results. Martin wants identity as well as points.

He talks of a team that “plays in a way that everyone understands and believes in, feels connected to and makes the fans proud.” It’s a familiar line from a coach whose sides have been defined by structure and the ball. At Leicester, it will be judged against a fanbase that has seen the club at the peak of English football and now expects at least clarity in how it tries to climb back.

A squad stripped back

The challenge is stark. Leicester are trying to build a promotion-winning side while untangling the financial knots that helped drag them down.

The summer has been dominated by exits. High earners and big names from the relegation years have gone. Denmark defender Jannik Vestergaard agreed to terminate his contract by mutual consent. Harry Winks, once an England midfielder and a symbol of Leicester’s recent ambition, has been sold to Cagliari. Abdul Fatawu’s move to Ipswich Town has brought in around £20m.

Those aren’t the only sacrifices. The club’s issues with spending rules – and the points penalty for historical breaches last season – have forced Leicester to cash in on some of their brightest prospects. The sale of 17-year-old Jeremy Monga to Manchester City underlined the cost of previous excess.

An end-of-season clear-out saw 10 out-of-contract players leave. The consequence was stark: no senior striker on the books once Patson Daka and Jordan Ayew departed.

For a side expected to dominate League One, that is not a detail. It is a gaping hole.

Building a new attack

So far, the recruitment drive has been cautious rather than spectacular. Conor Chaplin is the standout arrival, one of only two signings since relegation.

Chaplin knows the division and knows how to win it. He top-scored for Ipswich Town when they climbed out of League One four seasons ago, and his movement, finishing and work-rate should suit a Martin side that will expect its forwards to press as much as they score.

But Chaplin cannot do it alone. Martin knows it.

“Ideally, we'd have two or three strikers,” he said. “We don't just want one of the same, and it's the same with wingers. Whatever we are looking at, whatever profile it is, it has to be right for us. They need to be desperate to come here and play, they need to be desperate to help us to be successful.”

That word – desperate – is doing a lot of work. Leicester want hunger, not passengers. They want players who see League One not as a comedown, but as a stage to drag a fallen club back up.

A club trying to redefine itself

This is not the Leicester of Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Claudio Ranieri. It is not the Leicester of Wembley in 2021. It is a club stripped back to something far more basic: a giant in a small pond, with the scars of mismanagement and the memory of glory still fresh.

Martin is trying to walk the tightrope between those worlds. He cannot ignore the history – no one in Leicester can – but he refuses to let it be the yardstick.

“We have to find our own way,” he said. That is the task now: a new way, a new team, a new reputation, built under the shadow of a title win that changed everything and a collapse that changed it again.

Promotion is non-negotiable. The style, the recruitment, the honesty he talks about – all of it will be measured against that single demand. The only real question is whether Leicester, and Martin, can turn a story of decline into the start of another improbable rise.