Bertrand and Vestergaard - the worst decision made by Leicester City in recent memory?

Leicester City have had some shocking summer transfer windows in the past few years. The summers of 2016 (Musa, Slimani, Kapustka) and 2022 (Faes, Smithies, err…) stand out for differing reasons.

As we come towards the end of a winter window in which we still seem to be paying the price for the mistakes of 2021, we’re going to try to defend the indefensible - whoever made the decision to bring in Ryan Bertrand and Jannik Vestergaard was on something… right?

Yes

James Knight

Imagine we live in a beautiful utopia. A world where we beat Southampton 9-0, but didn’t see that as the cue to sign half of their defence. Imagine that instead of a couple of training cones labelled ‘Vestergaard’ and ‘Bertrand’, there was simply a void, a great big patch of grass. And about £25 million of sweet, sweet cash.

What would Leicester look like then? Where would we be?

Imagine visiting Anfield in the Carabao Cup in December ‘21, surging to a 3-1 lead, and simply not subbing on a couple of Dementors to suck the soul out of our defence. Imagine holding a comfy lead over Spurs a month later as the clock ticks past 94, and not watching, horror-struck, as a foot race between Steven Bergwijn and C3PO unfolds before our eyes.

Imagine, even, a universe where Brendan Rodgers spends the pre-season after our FA Cup win doing something other than designing an intricate defensive Jenga tower where Ryan Bertrand is the indispensable foundation. Where there’s some breathing room to fix the gaping holes in our squad, perhaps even with players who actually fit the Leicester blueprint, in a move that inspires James Maddison to sign a new contract with an upwardly mobile club.

Since Jonny Evans arrived for a bag of peanuts in 2018, Leicester have signed five players over the age of 25: Rachid Ghezzal, Ryan Bennett on loan, Alex Smithies, and the South Coast couple. Bertrand’s failure is tinged with some misfortune, but Vestergaard was an unforgivable violation of our golden transfer rule. The punishment was a credit crunch that meant we couldn’t buy anyone else for more than a year.

The players Leicester were linked with in that intervening period is harrowing. Levi Colwill (savour the headline on that one), Noni Madueke, Charles De Ketelaere, Cody Gakpo. Even Ademola Lookman now looms like a haunting spectre of missed opportunity. The true catastrophe of the Bertragaard era is the path not taken as a result.

Everyone makes bad signings, but rarely does a team make signings so bad that doing literally nothing instead would have, ironically in view of subsequent events, made them so much better. Vestergaard, in particular, is an inversion point that set the club back years, removing the wriggle room to keep improving the squad and forcing us towards the reckoning of a Great Reset this summer.

No

David Bevan

This is a hard sell, isn't it? Even worse - it was my idea (the topic, not signing the pair of them).

However, when you consider some of the main issues that have cost Leicester over the past few seasons, I think you can see what the thinking was at the time.

When we as fans look at our club's transfer policy, we're influenced by current trends. Arsenal are threatening to win something with kids (or certainly with very few experienced old heads), while Brighton and Brentford are pulling rabbits out of hats from all over the globe.

Yet at the time, we'd just squandered Champions League qualification for the second year in a row. We had a strong first eleven with a lack of squad depth, a paucity of leaders, general inexperience and a dismal record defending set pieces.

Old heads like Christian Fuchs and Wes Morgan were on their way out and the worry was the team looked naive. Our two big signings that summer were Patson Daka and Boubakary Soumare, both promising young players who would take a year (or more) to adjust to the Premier League.

There were calls for experience.

The manager knew and trusted Bertrand. The new club captain knew and trusted Vestergaard. Both had vast knowledge of the Premier League and you could argue, despite how it's turned out, whoever made the decision to sign them was merely following the same logic applied when we signed the likes of Robert Huth. Plus, yes, where else would you look when you need a couple of defenders than a team you beat 9-0.

Put that to one side and it's long forgotten now but Bertrand was actually good in the first couple of games, in the kind of solid left-back role we still really need behind Harvey Barnes. He was struck down with Covid shortly after and perhaps that has been a factor in him never getting back to the same level. We'll probably never know.

Vestergaard was ostensibly signed as a replacement for Wesley Fofana after Villarreal's Fer Nino inflicted that horrendous injury on Fofana in a pre-season game, but Leicester had already shown interest in the January transfer window. It wasn't a panic buy.

My hunch has always been that he was seen as a replacement for Morgan rather than Fofana. Remember Morgan's latter-day role coming on as a third centre-back and heading everything clear? It worked perfectly in the FA Cup final, and here was a 6 foot 6 Dane ready to attack everything that came into our box. How were we to know that red and white striped men can't jump?

So no, neither were great signings. Neither will go down as Leicester City legends. Quite the opposite. But there was some logic there originally.

And that’s the best I can do…