adminA 3-1 home defeat to Peterborough United has only turned the heat up under Russell Martin still further, and the Leicester City manager had some difficult questions to answer after the match.
Leicester City’s 2026-27 League One season continues to be a case of one step forwards, two steps back. A 4-3 win at Stockport County and a 1-1 draw against Barnsley had relieved a little of the pressure that had been starting to build under new manager Russell Martin, and there had been hopes that a three-week international break might give his team valuable time to reset ahead of the autumn months.
But their return to League action against Peterborough United at The King Power Stadium gave little indication that any corners had been turned. Leicester were three goals down by half-time, and with supporters already leaving the ground during the interval, there was only a very mild revival in the second half with an Emil Riis Jakobsen goal pulling the final score back to 3-1.
The result leaves Leicester in 17th place in League One with eight games of their season played, and after the match Martin had to answer some difficult questions in the face of growing speculation that he might not be in this position for that much longer, with little discernable improvement in his team’s performance in this match against a team which started the day one place off the bottom of the table.
Speaking after the match, and as reported by ESPN, Martin stated that the quick fix of replacing the manager after a run of poor results doesn’t always work.
He said that he understands the frustration of supporters over his team’s slow start to the 2026-27 season, and that, “I’m as frustrated as any of them, but if you think changing a manager is a quick fix then I’m not sure that’s ever the way.”
The irony of Martin saying this at this particular time is that the Peterborough match was the visiting manager Robbie Savage’s first in charge of his team following their decision to relieve Luke Williams of his duties on the 19th September.
Martin was critical his own team’s performance, saying that, “I think we create a lot more than they do, but they’re really clinical, and defend the box with everything they have, and we don’t.”
And he added that his team still isn’t playing cohesively enough to get results: “You have to suffer in a game of football and right now, when we have to suffer, we don’t look like a team. We look like a group of individuals trying to do their own job, and you can’t deal with big moments like that.”
Martin escaped one international break unscathed, but he needs a turnaround in results before the end of October
Russell Martin has certainly been in this position before. There were angry protests against him at Southampton prior to his dismissal from that position at the end of 2024, while he was only in the manager’s position at the Scottish giants for Rangers for 123 days before being replaced, making him the shortest-serving manager in the history of the club.
But following two successive relegations from the Premier League, expectations at Leicester City were high for this season. This is, after all, a club whose descent from the top flight has been so rapid that they’re still receiving parachute payments for this season even though they’re playing in the third tier.
Martin has, however, failed to find a formula that works so far in 2026-27. It hasn’t helped that all three of the league defeats that he’s suffered so far have come at home, and with nine goals conceded in those three games. Leicester have won two League matches this season, but the Peterborough defeat
places at the start of play, and losing left the Foxes just one point above the bottom four themselves.
That a manager himself might feel that replacing a manager is a “quick fix” is unsurprising, and with just eight league games under his belt at The King Power Stadium, it may well be that the club themselves could be wary of sacking him this soon, given the precarious state of their finances and the potentially heavy financial costs that can come with doing so.
But another shambolic home defensive performance hardly helps his case, and the Leicester fans who did leave at half-time against Peterborough didn’t miss a sensational second half comeback from their team. Their team managed twenty-four attempts at goal, but could only manage four on target.
It remains the case that Leicester City should be too good to go down for a third successive season, but the early signs have been worrying, and while Martin might have avoided the managerial graveyard that the first international break of the season can be, with five games to pack in before the end of October, results need to start improving, or the former Southampton and Rangers manager might well find himself a former Leicester City manager too.
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Abdulhafiz Teslim
