Reacting immediately after the appointment of Nigel Pearson as the Leicester City Manager, Trust Board member Matt Davis told the Leicester Mercury “My gut reaction now we’ve made the choice is that we’ve got to get behind him and give him our total support, the Trust has received favourable feedback from our counterparts at Southampton about Pearson”

This view was echoed on the Tony Wadsworth morning show on BBC Radio Leicester, where Trust Chairman stated “We should all back him (Pearson) now and not under estimate the size of task to get promotion, the way some are talking about our instance return is quite insulting to the other League One clubs, the record of clubs obtaining an instant return in this way is a rarity rather than the norm”

Asked about Milan Mandaric’s earlier statement on wanting back to back promotions to get to the Premiership within the 3 year plan, Bason said “That is totally unrealistic, how many sides have actually achieved this?, the focus has to be hopefully getting promotion this year and then progress from there”

Bason was then asked about Pearson’s main priorities “I fear the first challenge will be to re-build the most successful part of last year’s team, the defence with McAuley gone, and the likelihood of Stearman (interview was prior to the announcement of his transfer to Wolves) and Mattock attracting offers, add to that Kisnorbo’s injury and Pearson has an entire new defence to build”

Bason continued “and then he needs to coach the strikers that remain at the club to convert their chances, as the lack of goals was the reason we went down”.....

In the final article in our series looking at our players who had extended loan periods at other clubs, Dan Levy, reports on Conrad Logan’s spell at Stockport County.

“I’ve been asked to pen a few words on Conrad Logan, who was on loan at Stockport County through most of the season just gone.  I am on the board of Stockport County Supporters Trust, and was a club board member for the two seasons prior to this.  But of course my comments on Conrad are entirely my own, and not those of either the club or the Trust.

And of course I am going to take the opportunity to compare the running of a trust owned club which has shown patience in its management team and just been promoted, with a club owned by a single person, which has got through a number of managers and has been relegated.  Bit of an open goal, and one that it is just too tempting not to kick the ball through. 

Conrad Logan has been an important part of County’s set up this year.  The previous season, County went on a 9 match run of winning without conceding a goal, which was a new record in English professional football.  We did this playing with a loanee from Wolves, Wayne Hennessey, who has subsequently gone on to be Wolves – and Wales – number one.  Which was great, but didn’t solve our issue of not having a good keeper of our own.

We acquired another keeper last summer, who had been playing at Sheffield Wednesday and whom the club thought would be fantastic.  It soon became clear that he wasn’t up to the standard we required. 

Enter Conrad Logan.  To be honest he doesn’t look like he ought to be a professional footballer.  He is pretty tall, but nearly as wide.  He looks like he might leave craters when he lands after reaching for the ball.  He takes up two seats on the team coach.  Etc Etc.  But he is in fact very agile, a great shot stopper, pretty quick off his line and really a very good keeper indeed.......