Hamza Choudhury is back from Watford – but does he fit in at Leicester City this season?
The homegrown hero has returned to the first-team squad in unexpected circumstances, but he’s already being linked with a switch to Southampton. Joe Brewin isn’t convinced there’s a future ahead at his boyhood club
June on the football calendar is what Paul Gascoigne is to Gazza: the calm before the storm. Nothing much happens beyond players posting pictures of Portuguese golf courses and Dubai infinity pools on Instagram, yet it rarely stops supporters from getting The Fear that they haven’t signed half a squad yet.
In fairness, Leicester City do have more work than most clubs this summer. Burning a stack of expired contracts is just the appetiser for what’s to come on the squad-hacking front, as we look to slash the wage bill and replace half our first-team squad. As it stands, the depth chart currently resembles a Sunday League manager’s options for kick-off after eight pints the night before – even with the promising early arrivals of Harry Winks and Conor Coady.
But wait! Nothing says like a new signing than the return of senior loanees. (No, Jon, you can’t write anything else in this feature – Ed.)
While it seems fairly obvious that Marc Albrighton will see out the final year of his deal before bowing out with grace, though, it’s less clear what will happen to Hamza Choudhury. Linked with interest from Southampton by John Percy, we now face yet another call on what to do with the lad from Loughborough.
Hello again
This time last year, the club extended his contract by a year before he trotted off on loan for the season – a savvier move than letting him leave for nothing this summer, done in the hope that he’d impress enough for Watford to shell out a few million at the end of it. The prospect of actually using him again in the top flight was, let’s be frank, about as likely as James Maddison buying a new bag we could all get behind.
By dropping down a division, Choudhury had found his level – a very good level at that, albeit one which would mask his shortcomings on the ball. He was a Championship player.
But now, rather awkwardly, we’re a Championship club – and Hamza’s back.
As it stands, Leicester currently have six central midfielders on their books – though two of those include Dennis Praet (finding stuff to do at Turin Airport arrivals) and Wilfred Ndidi (heavily linked elsewhere). That leaves Winks, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Bouba Soumare… and Hamza.
On the surface, a significant role for him next season looks likely. You might have seen the numbers: only one Championship player averaged more tackles per game than the fuzzy-haired destroyer last season. Nobody averaged as many interceptions.
For a team that got fatally sliced apart in midfield last season, someone with a bit of bastardry seems exactly the type we’d embrace with open arms. We became sick of players who crumpled like Christmas hats throughout 2022-23 – tearing into opposition players with the appetite of Boris Johnson tackling schoolboys is what the boy Hamza was born for.
Of mice and men
Only, there’s quite a big problem here: everything we know suggests he’s just not that good on the ball. And to new boss Enzo Maresca, that’s going to be quite important. In James Knight’s cracking recent appraisal of the squad, he noted that: “More or less every branch of the [Pep] Guardiola tree features a midfield that follows the same pattern: a main defensive pivot tasked with bringing the physicality and always being available for a pass (Rodri, Sergio Busquets, Thomas Partey), someone to keep the ball and engage quickly to win it back (Xavi, Gundogan, Xhaka), and someone to create and score goals.”
Hamza has nailing anything that moves on lockdown, but what he does when he actually gets the ball is a bit of an issue. We know this from watching him already, but the data even from lower levels shows it (below): he’s a monster off the ball; a timid mouse on it. You could potentially forgive a relatively low pass completion rate if he progressed play and took risks, but that’s not the case.
Source: fbref
The question for Maresca is simple, then: is being very good at one thing enough in his team?
It should be noted that Choudhury played in a fairly abysmal Watford team last season, which didn’t help. Fans appreciated his work-rate if not his craft; one level-headed appraisal of his season declared: “It was very clear what he was for, and he did that job reliably well for the most part. What changed mid-season was perhaps the relish with which he undertook his largely destructive duties … there was a vicious light in his eyes before Christmas, whereas later it seemed that he was fulfilling a contractual obligation whilst questioning his purpose, and whether life ought to amount to more than kicking people.”
Decision time
Sadly for Hamza, Steve Bruce isn’t around to try signing him for the seventh time – and Newcastle United have rather moved on since their love affair with him in the not-so-distant past. So what now?
We’re at a contractual crossroads once more. This isn’t Youri Tielemans territory, but the fact is that Choudhury is 25 now, and the club specifically extended his deal so as not to lose him for nothing. In that case, there may be a big call to be made on his future this summer: back him for another new deal, see how things go during the season or cash in now and move on?
In an ideal world, Maresca would probably quite like to analyse his new environment and hang on to players while his squad is so uncertain, even if the fit isn’t really right – or at least until he can get some clarity on possible replacements. It could be that Choudhury becomes a stopgap solution for a thoroughly imperfect situation.
Because really, staying doesn’t suit anyone: he’s started more league matches for Watford than he has us since 2017, and it’s hard to imagine that he’ll be a premier fixture on Maresca’s teamsheets after the opening set of fixtures.
Hamza is by no means the worst player to be lumped with at this level – he’s a loveable Loughborough lad we’d all love to see help us back up at the first time – but after a string of bad decisions at the club, sentiment has to make way for sense this summer. This is shelving Kelechi Iheanacho if he doesn’t fit into a system, not handing Danny Ward your No.1 shirt because he’s been a very patient boy.
Choudhury’s defensive digits might make for excitable reading on Twitter, but there’s potentially a hard decision to shoot Bambi on the cards. Unless, of course, Hamza can break his assassin’s legs first.
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