10. Wesley Fofana
Average score: 10.00
Highest ranking: 10
Lowest ranking: 10
Wesley Fofana is one of the most gifted centre backs we’ve had at the club, and we must acknowledge his brilliant performance to help secure the club’s first FA Cup. That’s the nice bit out of the way.
His undignified exit was so petulant that you’d struggle to find a single Leicester fan who wishes him well. Add to that his extracurricular hobby of collecting driving bans to build a picture of the type of character he is.
His exit also sparked a season of reckoning where his replacement was cast from a similar mould of unprofessional and entitled centre backs. The key difference is that Faes possesses nowhere near the level of talent, and would land below Fofana if a Premier League club had been foolish enough to sign him.
Matt Jedruch
9. Facundo Buonanotte
Average score: 7.78
Highest ranking: 4
Lowest ranking: 9
Ultimately, Facundo Buonanotte struggles to get any higher in this list purely out of lack of playing time. He did endear himself to the crowd with a mix of energy, enthusiasm and ability, despite playing in one of the worst top flight Leicester City teams of all time.
It all went sour, though. Ruud van Nistelrooy stopped picking him and his spell at the club was in danger of really petering out.
Then we went to the City Ground for a game that had nightmare written all over it as Forest inevitably secured a place in the Champions League while we plunged towards the Championship. Step up Facundo and a goal that makes his lowly position on this list feel a little harsh.
David Bevan
8. Timothy Castagne
Average score: 6.89
Highest ranking: 4
Lowest ranking: 8
Not the only name in this list to divide opinion but I think I’m looking back on him slightly more kindly than most. While a lot of the team in the relegation year downed tools throughout, his didn’t stand out so much, though a Leeds goal he didn’t even challenge for has aged terribly.
Could he, should he have done better… probably. He wasn’t the leader type we needed in the end but he wasn’t the only one.
Helen Thompson
7. James Justin
Average score: 6.00
Highest ranking: 5
Lowest ranking: 9
I’m delighted that JJ has found a new home at Leeds and is playing well at Premier League level. It’s a fact of football that sometimes a player needs a move and the club needs the player to move.
At Leeds, he’s shown many of the qualities we saw in those early days at Leicester. Pace, strength, crashing into the box. A modern full-back in every sense of the phrase.
Looking back, almost all of his good performances at Leicester were in those early days, during that behind closed doors Covid period, before his first very serious ACL injury.
For Leicester, he was never the same player after that and a subsequent similar injury. I once questioned whether he’d ever actually had a good game in front of a crowd? It’s not as daft a suggestion as it sounds.
Last season he was very, very poor and it was definitely time for him to move on and resurrect his career personally and for the club to get a very welcome transfer fee. It turns out that a fresh start, without Wout Faes anywhere near him, was just what he needed.
Iain Wright
6. James Maddison
Average score: 5.67
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: 8
When you have a star player, someone who’s part of the England World Cup squad and is widely liked across the club, decide to take exception to a journalist’s article, you’d expect the fans to back the player. The fact most fans backed the journalist tells you everything about the 2022/23 season.
When James Maddison was good, he was sensational. A million miles away from the players that have followed him. Unfortunately, most of that good play was in the autumn of each season, where frankly he was unplayable at times.
Over Christmas and New Year, he was often unavailable. Niggling injuries, that have become more serious since, left Maddison regularly missing games and his form in decline. This meant that towards the business end of the season, he was often left out of the team and when he did play, he was pretty unremarkable.
Despite the many great goals and impact in happier times, it is that pop at Rob Tanner that endures. As we all know, Maddison wrote the line that replaced Foxes Never Quit as the club’s motto with what’s become the epitaph of our recent decline. Play like that and we’ll be absolutely fine. No James, we really won’t be.
Iain Wright
5. Youri Tielemans
Average score: 5.56
Highest ranking: 3
Lowest ranking: 9
Realistically, Youri should be top of everyone’s list, he’s probably one of the most gifted players to play for the club and scored that FA Cup-winning goal, but his legacy feels tarnished.
The 2022/23 relegation season damaged many players’ legacies with the club for most fans, none more so than Youri. Seemingly giving up in that season when we needed players like him to step up definitely left a bitter taste, but he certainly wasn’t the only one.
I saw past a lot of that due to blind loyalty of loving him prior to that season, but I don’t blame anyone for not being so forgiving.
Becky Taylor
4. Mads Hermansen
Average score: 5.00
Highest ranking: 3
Lowest ranking: 7
Every time I pass a Danish bakery in London, I find myself peering through the window to see if I’ll spot Mads with his missus and his dog. That probably says more about my Instagram doom-scrolling during his period with us than anything else, but there’s also a sense that he was just genuinely likeable.
Some players have achieved far more and ended up lower down this list because of the nature of their departure. Mads was terrific in his first season with us in the Championship, the perfect goalkeeper for Enzoball. From the very first game at home to Coventry, some vital saves helped secure a win and it felt like he’d found a natural home.
He wasn’t quite as effective for us in the Premier League, scuppered by injury and a horror show of a defence in front of him. Either way, you can’t really hate someone who ends up moving to West Ham. Good luck to them, they’ll need it.
David Bevan
3. Harry Maguire
Average score: 4.78
Highest ranking: 3
Lowest ranking: 8
Six of our nine writers put Harry Maguire at either number three or four in their lists. I put him at eight so I’m the wrong person to write this but that’s how the cookie crumbles.
The overall rationale was that Maguire performed reasonably well, didn’t pull a Fofana on us to get his big move and, more than anything, hauled in one of the most ridiculous transfer fees ever paid.
From memory, he also posted a nice message about the FA Cup triumph in 2021. But it’s hard to wish someone well at Manchester United, especially when they end up knocking us out of the same competition four years later while stood in the Stretford End when the ball was played in. Bitter? Guilty.
David Bevan
2. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall
Average score: 2.00
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: 4
Confession time. During his time at Leicester, I found Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall incredibly frustrating – a player who was nearly in the top bracket but whose touch and shooting often let him down, particularly at Premier League level.
But I still put him second in my list, as did five others. Two put him top. The reasons are obvious. He’s from Leicestershire, he worked harder than anyone else for pretty much his entire time at the club and he was a standout performer in the Championship-winning season in 2023/24.
Now it’s more a case, as with our number one pick below, of here’s what you could have won. Both Dewsbury-Hall and Harvey Barnes should still be playing in Leicester blue and it’s particularly galling to watch KDH play for the club that would have been relegated in 2022/23 in our place if Leicester City was not one of the worst-run clubs in the country. Deserving of the grand ovation he’ll get if he ever returns to Filbert Way, even if it’s in another team’s shirt.
David Bevan
1. Harvey Barnes
Average score: 1.33
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: 2
It seems we’re all watching Newcastle to see how Harvey Barnes gets on and whether he scores. Watching him banging in the goals in the Champions League, getting in teams of the week and getting accolades has been brilliant and it’s impossible not to see his celebrations and smile.
A good player who always tried hard and suffered with the collective confidence void in the relegation year, he’s one of a few who came out from that season relatively unscathed. Some of this might be revisionist as he often got criticised while we had him and was underrated and undervalued by a few.
It seems unlikely Barnes would have pushed to leave if we’d not sold him. It’s great to watch him reaching his potential. Seeing people crowded around the TVs in the King Power concourse watching the end of the Carabao Cup final to see our boy win a trophy was pretty wholesome.
Helen Thompson
The Fosse Way 