Leicester City's Russell Martin: No Nostalgia, Just Promotion
Leicester City’s new manager Russell Martin wants no part in nostalgia.
The banners, the bronze of Vichai, the memories of 2016 and that 5,000-1 miracle – they still loom over the King Power. So do the scars of back-to-back relegations. Martin has walked into a club that has lived both extremes of the English game in the space of a decade and is now trying to remember what it is supposed to be.
He is clear on one thing: history will not be the yardstick.
“We have to find our own way and then be judged on that,” he told BBC Radio Leicester, refusing to let Leicester’s dramatic rise and equally dramatic fall define his tenure before it starts. “Hopefully I'll be judged on the job I do here and not on my previous job and all that stuff. It's the same for me.”
This is only the second time in Leicester’s 142-year existence that they have dropped into the third tier. The last time, in 2008-09, they stormed straight back up. The expectation now is similar, but the landscape is not. Financial restrictions bite harder, the squad has been stripped back, and the club is still dealing with the consequences of years of overreach.
Martin knows what promotion from this level looks like. He took Southampton back to the Premier League just over two years ago, his stock rising with their football. Then came a brutal 123-day spell at Rangers that dented his reputation and forced him to reset. League One with Leicester is his gamble as much as theirs.
He insists he will not judge the people above him on what has gone wrong before.
“I can't judge anything that has gone on before because I've not been here,” he said. “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.”
That “outside” view has not been kind to Leicester’s hierarchy. As the club slid from Premier League champions and FA Cup winners in 2021 to League One in 2024, the criticism has focused sharply on those in charge. Chief football officer Jon Rudkin and owner-chairman Khun Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha have been under heavy fire from supporters who watched a title-winning squad unravel and a financial model creak under its own ambition.
Inside the building, there has been change. Martin’s appointment was the first major call made under sporting director James McCarron, who took the role last season beneath Rudkin. It is McCarron and Rudkin who must now give Martin the tools to meet a target that has been spelled out with no room for interpretation.
Promotion. Nothing less.
“It's to get promoted, first and foremost,” Martin said. The second part of the brief is more nuanced, but no less important to him. “[And] to play in a way that everyone understands and believes in, feels connected to and makes the fans proud.”
That is the challenge: to marry results with identity in a division that rarely allows for frills.
At the moment, though, Leicester are a work in progress. A big one.
The summer has been defined by exits. High earners and big names from the relegation years have been moved on to ease the wage bill and satisfy the spending rules that already cost the club points last season. Denmark international Jannik Vestergaard agreed to terminate his contract. Harry Winks, once an England midfielder and a symbol of Leicester’s attempt to stay “Premier League” in style, has gone to Cagliari. Abdul Fatawu’s sale to Ipswich Town brought in around £20m.
The trimming has not stopped at experience. Leicester’s push to comply with financial regulations has forced them to cash in on some of their most promising young talent too. The standout example is 17-year-old Jeremy Monga, snapped up by Manchester City before he had the chance to become a first-team regular at the King Power.
The clear-out at the end of last season was ruthless. Ten out-of-contract players left. Among those departing were Patson Daka and Jordan Ayew, which left Leicester without a single senior striker on the books. A club that once boasted Jamie Vardy in full flight started pre-season without a recognised centre-forward.
So far, the rebuild has been cautious rather than spectacular. Conor Chaplin is the headline arrival, a clever and industrious forward who top scored for Ipswich Town when they climbed out of League One four seasons ago. He is one of only two signings since relegation.
Martin knows that is nowhere near enough.
“Ideally, we'd have two or three strikers,” he said. Not just bodies, but variety. “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 – matters. Leicester are no longer the irresistible story of English football. They are not the club plucking N’Golo Kanté from Caen and watching him tear up the Premier League. They are a fallen giant in League One, wrestling with regulations, expectation and identity.
Martin is trying to strip the job back to its essentials. A clear way of playing. A dressing room that buys in. A club that stops staring at its own reflection in the Premier League trophy and starts looking at the fixture list in front of it.
History will always hang over Leicester. The title. The FA Cup. The relegations. The points deduction. The anger at the board. None of that disappears because a new manager walks through the door.
But in a division where reputations mean nothing once the whistle goes, Martin’s message is blunt: judge this Leicester on what comes next, not on what came before.
