Leicester City have dismissed two first-team coaches—Ben Dawson and Danny Alcock—but have opted to retain manager Ruud van Nistelrooy as they fight to avoid relegation from the Premier League.
The Foxes are currently five points adrift of safety and have managed just one win in their last 12 league games under Van Nistelrooy. The decision to part ways with Dawson and Alcock comes in the wake of a crushing 4-0 defeat to Brentford on Friday.
Both coaches were originally brought in under Steve Cooper but stayed on to work with Van Nistelrooy after Cooper’s departure. However, their time at the club has now come to an end, with Leicester confirming in a statement: “Leicester City has today parted company with First Team Coaches Ben Dawson and Danny Alcock.
“Both Ben and Danny joined the Club at the start of the 2024/25 season, serving under both Steve Cooper and Ruud van Nistelrooy, while also overseeing a brief spell in interim charge of the First Team squad. We place on record our thanks to Ben and Danny for their contribution and service and wish them both well in the next steps of their respective careers.”
The loss to Brentford marked a historic low for Leicester, as they became the first Premier League team to suffer six consecutive home defeats without scoring a single goal in a single season. Van Nistelrooy has since openly questioned whether his squad is capable of competing at the highest level.
“We have to accept that we are in a position where every week we face a better team,” Van Nistelrooy said after the match. “We have to prepare a team to be the best we can be. We cannot ask more from ourselves.
“In the end, you have to look at performing at the maximum of your capabilities. I cannot ask the players to do more than that. With the squad we have, it’s a huge mountain to climb to stay in this league, a huge one. That’s the reality.
“Today it showed that when we make a couple of mistakes and we didn’t perform at our best, Brentford was too big a challenge for us. It’s not fair to have certain expectations. You cannot live up to them. You can only be the best you can be.
“We’ll see at the end if it’s enough or not. So far, we’re in that bottom three for a while, and every game we play, we almost face a better side than ourselves. Everything has to go right to get results and points, and that’s the reality we’re in.”
