With Thai-owned Leicester visiting Malaysian-owned QPR this weekend, LFW considers the differing approaches of the two boards as Vincent Tan continues to tear Cardiff City apart.

Overview

An interesting time for Leicester City to be coming to Loftus Road, in more ways than one.

Clearly as a clash between first and third in the league it's a classic Christmas match for the Loftus Road faithful, and the Championship's obvious game of the day. Memories will no doubt be cast back to the previous meeting between these sides on this ground, when QPR just about kept their title charge on track when Ishmael Miller rampaged through on the goal and slid in the match winner with just four minutes left for play.

But given the time of year, and the respective league positions, this feels much more like that 2010/11 home game with Cardiff. That felt like a massive match at the time, between the division's top two clubs under the lights in W12. Adel Taarabt won it 2-1 with a typically swashbuckling goal at the Loft End and the place was absolutely jumping. The atmosphere reached a fervour when both clubs were denied stick on penalties in the final five minutes — a decision Dave Jones no doubt still chunters on about to this day when he's not busy shagging netball players behind his wife's back or getting the sack.

Whether this QPR team — a much more solid but far less entertaining side than the one that won promotion from this league three seasons ago — and a typically stoic Nigel Pearson outfit can serve up such a thriller on Saturday remains to be seen. A 12.15 kick off at the behest of Sky won't do much for the noise levels, although the Crown and Sceptre is doing its bit by opening early.

But it's not only the football providing the intrigue this Saturday. The contrast in the way the QPR and Leicester boards are going about the task of getting their investment into the Premier League is stark, particularly when compared to the insane goings on in South Wales these days.

Cardiff's Vincent Tan has changed the club's traditional colours, ignored the concerns and wishes of the club's supporters, and is now busy undermining his manager Malky Mackay at every possible opportunity. Tonight the BBC reports that Tan has told Mackay to resign, or he will be sacked. Despite winning promotion last season Mackay has seen his director of football sacked already and been told he will not be given a penny to spend in January while rumours of his imminent dismissal have been doing the rounds for weeks. You would be forgiven for thinking that Tan wants a change but doesn't want to pay up the remaining two and a half years of Mackay's contract so is trying to make his position untenable. Quite why you’d want to get rid of one of the league’s brightest managers, so soon after he’d succeeded in winning the promotion you so craved, is beyond anybody with half a brain.

Criticism has come from all sides, but Tan would point out that while he's much less PR-friendly than Tony Fernandes at QPR or Vichai Raksriaksorn at Leicester, his club is in the Premier League now and has recently been to a League Cup final. Mackay was the mastermind for both of course, but that's mere small print to the megalomaniac chairman.

Tony Fernandes remains popular with fans and plays the PR game well but he saw his QPR club relegated from the top flight last season as a direct result of decisions he made over the previous 18 months: sacking Neil Warnock, appointing Mark Hughes, implementing a flawed strategy of buying ageing big-names on major money to replace the heart and soul of the team he inherited and so on. Trying to turn QPR into a "global brand" was the ultimate case of trying to run before learning to walk. Fernandes has never shied away from the limelight though, with an at-times unhelpful addiction to social media and a succession of interviews with media all over the world. He is very definitely the public face of QPR, and seemingly determined to remain that way.

Leicester's owners have been much more reserved. Admittedly naming the ground The King Power Stadium after their Thai travel business wasn't a particularly shy or retiring move, nor appointing Sven Goran Eriksson and allowing him to throw big money around, but you rarely hear anything of note from either the board or the league's most outwardly dull manager Nigel Pearson. Leicester, perhaps learning from the mistakes of the new board's early days — they're still paying wages on crazy contracts handed out during Eriksson's reign — are quietly going about their business.

What all three owners have found is that these days almost every club in the top division and a half of English football has a rich chairman these days — usually a foreign one — and it's only wealth on an Abramovic or Sheikh Mansour level that can make a really significant difference. For the rest, three still go down at the end of every Premier League season. The perception is that QPR cannot compete regularly at the top level without both rich ownership and a new stadium — but Leicester have had both and haven't done nearly as well since moving stadiums as they did in the previous ten years at Filbert Street.

That's worth considering, particularly as the Leicester stadium is one of the worst cases of generic, one-size-fits-all, bowl shaped, soulless new builds, totally devoid of atmosphere and character, that has ever been put up in this country. QPR feel they need something similar to establish themselves in the Premier League, but it hasn't made a discernible difference to Leciester's league positions. Since it was opened in 2002 the Foxes have only had one top flight season in the new stadium - QPR and Palace have both managed more than that in dilapidated, old fashioned stadiums in that time.

It's looking increasingly like the contrasting styles of Raksriaksorn and Fernandes will bring about promotions for their teams come May — and they could well pass Tan coming the other way if he doesn't reign in the mental any time soon.

Interview

This we welcome Leicester fan Ian Gallagher — on the ever growing list of my ex-colleagues who had to suffer the swearing and appalling early morning moods of yours truly - to LFW to give us some input on the Foxes and thank him for his time as ever.

It seems to have taken a while since your takeover to get to a point where you're a serious promotion contender — why is that?

I think the new owners wanted to make a statement with the appointment of Sven Goran Eriksson after the Paulo Sousa disaster and on reflection, it was the wrong choice. Sven was a Hollywood signing and we loved having him here, but he threw an awful lot of money and big contracts at 'big name' players who invariably turned out to be no good.
Admittedly, he signed Kasper Schmeichel, David Nugent and Paul Konchesky, who are still cornerstones of our team, but there was a vast turnover of players and too many of them weren't up to it. Michael Johnson cost us £1m in wages for about 20 minutes' game time, and Jermaine Beckford is possibly the laziest player I've ever seen in a Leicester shirt. Add to that the likes of Matt Mills and Gelson Fernandes, who were much better signings on paper than they ever were on the pitch, and you get the overall picture.

It needed the steady hand of someone like Nigel Pearson to come in and assemble a solid squad with a few bits of genuine quality, which as we all know, is usually the key to success in this league. You can allow him the 2011-12 season as the fabled 'transition period', before last season, where we genuinely could have gone up automatically, but blew it spectacularly after Christmas.

Are the clubs owners well liked by the supporters? Is there much contact between the two?

Yes, I think they are. We don't hear from them that often, but that's actually something of a relief when you look at the blokes at Cardiff and Hull . They issue statements when it's necessary, such as backing Pearson at the tail end of 2012, when there were some daft rumours about him being sacked, but they aren't often seen in the press. They've also paid off our debts on the ground, so we now own it, and have continued to pump money into our excellent academy. I hope I'm not tempting fate, but they rarely put a foot wrong.

Nigel Pearson doesn't seem like the most inspiring bloke, but he's got Leicester going this season. How is he viewed by the supporters? How do you rate the job he's done?

I think there's still a mixed opinion on Pearson, which I find a bit surprising, given his record here. I actually love just how outstandingly dull he is in interviews - never over-excited when we win, and never alarmist when we lose. This must be different to what he's like behind closed doors, otherwise we'd never be as good as we are. People still give him stick for being boring, and say we don't always play great football, but I can't really fault him. He sticks to what he knows: a solid 4-4-2 with pacy wingers, big, strong centre-backs and a bit of creativity in the middle. It worked in League One, and it appears to still be working now. To be honest, we should never have let him go to Hull in the first place.

Who have been the stand out performers, and where are the weak links in the team?

Kasper Schmeichel is an outstanding goalkeeper, easily good enough for the Premier League. His command of his area, shot-stopping and distribution are all first-rate, and he'll be playing in the league above next season one way or another - hopefully with us.

Wes Morgan is an absolute beast of a centre-half and a great leader, and home-grown lad Liam Moore is learning very well from him.

Elsewhere, Jamie Vardy has come on leaps and bounds this year, with goals to match his work rate. David Nugent is banging them in, although he seems to get a lot of stick for not doing much else.

There haven't been any serious weak links, hence our position in the table. But if I had to single anyone out it would be Paul Konchesky, who just has you pulling your hair out a lot of the time. He's solid, and still has quality on occasions, but his positioning is not great for a man of his experience, and you always feel he's about to do something daft.

Chris Wood has also been very disappointing after a strong start to his Foxes career, and hasn't featured much.

Also, I'd say we're maybe missing a big, strong centre midfielder; someone like Liam Trotter at Millwall, or the young lad, Rohan Ince, at Brighton , who impressed me greatly two Saturdays ago. But Danny Drinkwater, Andy King and Matt James are all plenty good enough at what they do.

Is there any suggestion that the board may spend again in January to push on for promotion? Have you been linked with anybody in particular?

I'm guessing not. We've been very prudent this season, mainly because of FFP. Our squad has barely changed since last season, except for a couple of loans and free transfers. I think we need to get a few more players off the books before we can buy anyone, but I don't see who is going to stump up the wages for people like Sean St Ledger and Neil Danns, who haven't featured for us for a long time. I think we're paying the price of spending too much on wages a couple of years ago.

The main issue for us is great swathes of our first team are out of contract in the summer. There's been some whispers about unrest in the dressing room over this. We'd be better off trying to secure the future of some key men - but the likes of Schmeichel and Nugent are still on Sven contracts, and then we're back to FFP again...

Do you think Leicester will be promoted this season and which other teams have caught your eye as potential rivals for the three spots?

I'll be optimistic and say yes. As I said above, we've not added many players, but it's done us no harm. We have a settled squad, and I don't see any reason why we can't go one better than last year. On our day, we can be brilliant.

Your lot have caught the eye, of course. I'd say your team is better than last season, and if you don't win the league with that squad, old 'Arry needs to have a good, long word with himself.

Burnley have too, as the obligatory "didn't expect them to do well" team, and Derby County . I tipped Derby for the play-offs at the start of the year, but as usual didn't have the courage of my convictions to put a bet on. Therefore, they will obviously be up there - although I expected it to be with Nigel Clough.

Saturday is absolutely pivotal for our season, after a couple of bad defeats, and the schooling from Manchester City in the cup. If we can win on Saturday, I think we will be right back on track.

Links >>> Offcial Website >>> http://foxblogger.wordpress.com/>Fox Blogger >>> http://www.leicestertillidie.com/>Leicester Till I Die — blog >>> http://thefoxfanzine.wordpress.com/tag/leicester-city/>The Fox Fanzine >>> http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/leicestercity>Leicester Mercury local paper >>> http://www.foxestalk.co.uk/forums/>Foxes Talk forum >>> http://fansonline.net/leicestercity/>Bentley’s Roof message board

Tweet @loftforwords, @iangallagher82

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TacticalR added 22:28 - Dec 20 Thanks for your oppo report and to Ian. I'm surprised to hear that the fans are critical of Nigel Pearson. He's always struck me as a good manager, and in particular a good fit at Leicester. Also interesting that the owners have taken a back seat after going the high-profile route with Sven Goran Eriksson. The fact that teams like Leicester, Derby and Nottingham Forest have been knocking around the Championship for a good few years shows that you can't take anything for granted, and makes our current position seem all the more impressive.

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