The former manager, who was sacked in January, has been reflecting on his six months after the club, talking transfers, finances, culture change, and the ‘right path’
Marti Cifuentes felt Leicester City were “on the right path” under his management amid the financial difficulties the club were facing.
Cifuentes was sacked in January after just six months in charge of City, with the club in the bottom half of the Championship.
City were nine points above the bottom three at the time of the Spaniard’s departure, but received their six-point sanction shortly afterwards. With results deteriorating under Andy King and then Gary Rowett, City fell into League One for just the second time in their history.
While the underlying data suggesting City were struggling badly, Cifuentes said he felt the club were heading in the right direction on his watch as they tried to change the culture at the King Power Stadium.
He also pointed to the difficulties of making those changes while the club were restricted in the transfer market, with no money available to spend.
Under Cifuentes, three loan signings and two free agent goalkeepers arrived. Then four players were brought in during the winter market, just after Cifuentes left, again without a transfer fee paid.
“I cannot say I am extremely happy about the way it ended but at the same time I feel quite proud and calm with the way we tried to handle the whole situation of the club,” Cifuentes told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“It was a good experience in terms of managing a great club with a lot of great people. I really wish them well.
“Since we left, things didn’t get much better. I would say the opposite. It was a challenging moment for the club and definitely an intense period for us.
“This (the culture of the club) is one of the main things. It was one of the main conversations we had before arriving there, it was about giving us the time to change this.
“We spoke about top managers having a lot of resources. But in our case financially it was very difficult. We had to sell a lot of players and we couldn’t invest a penny. It was not easy to make this transition.
“We felt we were on the right path to make this transition over the season. We were closer to the play-off positions when we left. It didn’t go much better.
“Any successful club has to start with a clear philosophy and how you want to do things. In football you can achieve success in many different ways, but the culture must be high performance, it must be with clear high demands and high standards, and that’s something that I know there are a lot of good people there and they are looking at improving that.”
City are now considering who should lead the club in the third tier, with none of their past four managers – Steve Cooper, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cifuentes and Rowett – able to produce effective results.
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