HUDDERSFIELD Town and Lee Clark are determined to make it business as usual despite the Galpharm manager continuing to be linked with the vacant job at Leicester City.
As Clark has rightly pointed out, there’s little he can usefully say about the speculation because that’s all it is – speculation.
And his sole focus at the moment is preparing his team to make it a record-equalling 42 league matches unbeaten with a victory against Walsall on Saturday.
It’s widely anticipated in the Midlands that Leicester – whose ownership are from Thailand – will start to make initial approaches to their preferred candidate or candidates in the next few days.
They have a Championship match at Burnley tonight and then face Leeds at home on Sunday. After that, it’s an international break.
Steve Pumfrey is assistant sports editor of the Leicester Mercury newspaper, and he says everyone is guessing at the moment as to the time line on an appointment.
“Mike Stowell, the caretaker manager, and Jon Rudkin, the academy director, were put in charge following Sven-Goran Eriksson’s departure, they were at the helm for the 3-2 defeat at West Ham and they will be in charge at Burnley,” he explained.
“After that, there are a couple of potential options.
“It could obviously be commercial sense to make an appointment by Sunday, so that the new manager can be introduced on the pitch before the Leeds game and that would put numbers on the crowd.
“The Leicester average has dropped to around 21,000 from the usual 25,000, but with Leeds visiting and a new manager in place for the first time, that could easily go up to 30,000 on Sunday.
“That, however, would clearly need to be a very quick turn-around and negotiation with whoever came in.”
Leicester have invested £12m on new players this season – including £1m-plus on Lee Peltier from Town – and they have also given their training ground a complete re-vamp and made improvements at the King Power Stadium.
On the managerial situation, Pumfrey continued: “When I spoke with the vice-chairman, Aiyawott Rakssriaksorn, at the end of last week he did indicate that the appointment would be a long and thorough process – which could mean they are seeking to make use of the time provided by the international break after the Leeds match.
“That would give them more time to get things sorted out, but most people are anticipating approaches will start to be made at some point this week.”
