Blame me for Leicester's woes - owner Khun Top

Leicester City owner Khun Aiyawatt 'Top' Srivaddhanaprabha says he shoulders the blame for the club's dismal decline from Premier League title winners to a mid-table Championship side inside a decade.

The recent struggles of the East Midlands club - two relegations in three years, overspending and subsequent investigations into alleged breaches of profit and sustainability rules (PSR) - have alienated an increasing number of supporters.

For weeks before Marti Cifuentes was sacked as manager on Sunday, fans called for his exit.

But that is not the only change that has been demanded, with director of football Jon Rudkin the target of vociferous criticism while Khun Top and the rest of the board have been questioned during protests.

"The [person] most people should blame is me because I own the club, I'm the chairman," the 40-year-old told BBC Radio Leicester.

In a campaign that marks the 10-year anniversary of the Foxes' astonishing Premier League title win, the 2021 FA Cup winners - who reached the semi-finals of the Europa Conference League just four years ago - are languishing in 14th in the second tier and looking to appoint a fourth manager in 18 months.

"When we won the Premier League, was Jon involved? He is involved in a lot of things. When we won FA Cup, when we were playing European football, is Jon involved?" Khun Top added.

"I think it's easy to blame someone and easy to put the knife on people's necks. But my way of working since the first day is that I never blame anyone.

"I'm not protecting anyone because I think it's clear that when we have success there are many people behind the scenes, not only Jon.

"But now we try to point out who should be blamed. When we fail, we fail together."

In a wide-ranging and rare interview, the Foxes' Thai owner confirmed that Rudkin's role will be changed after more than 11 years in a job that saw him help deliver a golden age of success for the club before its recent and rapid downturn.

The league and cup triumphs of the past decade, and lucrative sales of players - be it Harry Maguire's £80m move to Manchester United in 2019 or Riyad Mahrez's transfer to Manchester City for £60m a year before - have been followed by a series of expensive fails.

A succession of underwhelming transfers, the handing-out of inflated contracts and high wages led to Leicester - a club once renowned as the thrifty upstarts that reshaped the established order of English football - becoming the most expensive and highest-paid squad to suffer Premier League relegation in 2023.

Sales in recent years, such as Wesley Fofana's £70m switch to Chelsea in 2022 and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall's £30m move the same way two years later, have become a necessity in an effort to try to balance the books and avoid PSR rule breaches.

Rudkin will now relinquish "day-to-day" involvement in such deals as the 60-year-old is moved upwards and replaced by a sporting director.

"The structure will change," Khun Top said.

"He [Rudkin] will go up above the sporting director, and the sporting director will take care of more of the day-to-day, work more on strategy and what we should play [like], what identity, what players should be brought in, and work with the young ones in the academy."

Khun Top said the past 10 years at Leicester - which also brought personal tragedy, as his father and the club's former chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died along with four other people in a helicopter crash outside the ground - has been a "rollercoaster".

"This football club has shown everything is possible - the good side and bad side," he said. "And we did not expect to be in this position.

"I feel for the fans and I'm the same, I'm a football fan. I love football, and when the team is losing, it hurts a lot. It hurts and sometime I'm like, 'wow, this is very bad'. But you need to find a way out, and you need to find how to fix it."

The club's finances have been top of the repair list.

Khun Top insists wages, which were outstripping the club's turnover in recent years, have been "reduced a lot" and that he expects the club to comply with spending rules in future.

As for charges the club faces for alleged PSR breaches relating to the 2023-24 season when Leicester were promoted as Championship title winners, Khun Top was hesitant to go into detail as he awaits the outcome of a hearing that could bring with it a potential points penalty.

"I cannot say anything, I have to wait until the result comes out and hope it's fair," he said.

"The club is in the healthy position in terms of complying with the PSR. We are OK with that. And I'm here to support on those finances anyway.

"I'm here 100%, and I want to make sure the club is sustainable with a long-term plan, and not just that we are promoted this year and next year come back down again."

The club that Khun Top presides over now is in much the same position as the one his father bought in 2012, sitting in the Championship and rebuilding for a shot at the Premier League.

The difference is that Leicester were then a club on their way back up from League One, while this is now a club whose greatest successes have faded into the background of mediocrity.

Khun Top, however, says he wants to recapture the essence of what drove Leicester to such unimaginable heights in the first place.

"We should be the underdog like before. We should fight for every ball, fight for each other," he said.

"When we won the Premier League, when we won the FA Cup, we had ambition. And ambition will never be gone in this club. It's still here."