Leicester fan here... if you look at the reaction of any Leicester fan, they would be absolutely gutted if Steve left. He has done an amazing job and takes as much credit as Pearson and Ranieri for taking us out of league one, winning the championship, staying up and then winning the premier league.
Even in league one he was signing people for 50k or for free that ended up being brilliant for us in the league we were in, but also able to step up the next level a lot of the time. We can't show you a massive list of names you'd know, because we were working at a different level for most of his time here.
But during his spells in league one and the championship he brought in the likes of Brady and Chester at Hull as young lads for about £800k, Hull sold them for £16m. Knockaert, Mahrez, Vardy, Drinkwater, £70/80m of anyone's money. He got in young players on loan before most people had heard of them like Cleverly, Lingard, Michael Keane and Harry Kane.
These are just names you've heard of, to us there were many more who did fantastic jobs and were absolute bargains considering what they did for us and the costs.
He does more than just spot a bit of talent. What he did here with the manager was create a team that functioned well together. It wasn't about names, it was about finding someone who had the assets we needed to solve a certain problem. You scoff at signing Morgan, Huth and Simpson... but that's three people from a defence that conceeded just 36 goals last year, 19 less than you. You say "who'd be happy signing them"... would you be happy if you had signed them and won the league with them?
If you want him to just spot talent, that's fine he can do that. But one of his biggest assets is helping in creating the team. This is the guy that would have said go and get Troy Deeney... you probably had a good chuckle at that. But he'd have fit our style like a glove. Sometimes it's not about signing the best player, it's about signing the best player for your system.
Steve has done more for us than find a few players and create a team, he revolutionised our scouting processes. We were one of the first to embrace stats and analytics. If you're interested in a bit of scouting detail these articles by Rob McKenzie who worked for Steve here touch on some information
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/topic/4196/science-of-scouting
Now, there are question marks of course. How he fits the team here might not be how he fits in there. We looked for certain things in players, huger, desire to improve and prove people wrong, their mentality... that was a big thing in our success. Your manager would need to be on board with that 100%. What we also did was take risks on players, people like Mahrez, Vardy, Kante all have question marks over them. Whether it was their height, how skinny they were, their personality... we took risks on people others often wouldn't.
He's had a fair few misses in the market, to be fair most have been frees or low fees. But two of our biggest signings in Okazaki and Kramaric haven't been great, although to be fair... we did win the league with Okazaki, so I think he gets a pass on that one. Kramaric was signed for Pearson and Ranieri had us play a different way, so he could have been a casualty of that.
Who knows what he'll do there, it will depend on the input he's given and his relationship with the manager. I do know he'll be bloody missed here and I feel less secure about the clubs long term health if he goes.
