Making Praets of ourselves: How we fared with our Leicester City summer transfer predictions
Back in late May, we set a challenge for our writers and readers to guess where every Leicester City player would be in September.
While there’s still a chance we’ll shift some of our deadwood to Turkey or Saudi Arabia, we weren’t that specific in our instructions - so it’s time to announce a winner.
The rundown
We had some interesting suggestions, from Ryan Bertrand working at Barwell tip to Wilfred Ndidi gracing the midfield at the Bernabeu.
100% said Daniel Iversen would stay at Leicester, although none of us could have guessed he’d be fourth choice goalkeeper…
Only 5 people said Danny Ward would remain at Leicester. Another two sent him to Notts Forest, while a third had him down as second choice at Shepshed Dynamo.
Everybody wrongly thought Luke Thomas would stay, and 88% thought Victor Kristiansen would too.
Three people thought Jannik Vestergaard would end up at Fulham, one suggested James Justin would - but nobody realised that would be Timothy Castagne’s destination. He was tipped for a variety of Europe’s leading clubs - and Crystal Palace.
Strangely, nobody guessed that Jonny Evans would be playing Arsenal forwards onside in a Manchester United shirt two days after the transfer window closed.
Nobody guessed Boubakary Soumare would manage a move to La Liga, while only 3 people thought Wilfred Ndidi would still be here and literally nobody said Dennis Praet would.
Tete was shipped off all over the place, including Lens, Lyon, Lille, Monaco, Marseille, Augsburg, Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Al-Nassr - and Crystal Palace. There were also shouts for Fenerbahce, Trabzonspor and Istanbul Basaksehir but sadly nobody landed on Galatasaray.
Only two people guessed that Leicester would retain all three strikers.
Indeed, two - one of whom might be involved in the management of this site - threatened the wrath of Jack Holmes and retired Jamie Vardy.
There were 27% who predicted Kelechi Iheanacho would remain a Leicester player, and 32% said the same for Patson Daka. Despite a few guesses apiece, neither of them went to Crystal Palace.
Average scores
The TFW management team averaged 90 - partly because, mentioning no names, one of them shamefully finished bottom of the entire competition - and the writers as a whole averaged 96, while the readers averaged 109.
In our defence, you had a couple more weeks of rumours to fine-tune your predictions. But yes, maybe we should hand over the keys to one of you.
Writers’ winner
With 1 correct club, 3 correct leagues and 8 correct Leicester retentions, the winner among the writers - and regaining his transfer crown after the Tete debacle - was Ric Flair with 120 points.
Ric correctly guessed Daniel Amartey would be welcomed at Istanbul airport by literally tens of adoring Besiktas fans.
Rounding out the top five were Iain Wright on 115 points, David Bevan on 110 and Jamie Barnard and Adam Hodges on 105.
Overall winner
With 2 correct clubs, 2 correct leagues and 9 correct Leicester retentions, the winner of the readers’ competition was Hamza Patel with 165 points. We did promise a prize. We’ll be in touch…
Hamza was one of only two entrants to correctly guess two clubs - James Maddison to Tottenham and Harvey Barnes to Newcastle.
An honourable mention goes to Christine Sigrist, who guessed Barnes to Newcastle and Tielemans to Villa but was pipped to the post with 160 points thanks to the understandable suggestion we’d pack Danny Ward off to Wrexham.
NOW READ: This Leicester Life - Finding Pride in the Foxes’ support
