The return of the one in, one out policy, Schrödinger’s Praet and barely a sniff of any player leaving
We're more than halfway through the January transfer window and it's moving at less than even a glacial pace for Leicester City. Or certainly from the fans point of view anyway.
Transfer activity
Arrivals: N/A
Departures: Daniel Iversen - Stoke City (loan)
Technically we have had an arrival but it’s just poor Luke Thomas, back from the cold bench of Sheffield United who terminated his loan agreement. Enzo Maresca's last two press conferences have felt horribly familiar when he said and now reiterates, that to bring players in, the club needs to exit players.
To generate some funds we need transfer fees and to ease the wage bill. We’ve been here before and well…we know how it ended.
The Leicester financial time loop
If you feel like you've heard that press conference and that line before, you have. It was a point Brendan Rodgers enjoyed bringing up frequently. Maresca seemed a little less publicly frustrated about it than his predecessor but it's not ideal.
This squad doesn't have a quality gulf, nor do we look lost in the way we did this time last year, but there are gaps. There's improvements to make, we're currently operating with one fully fit striker (at least Jamie Vardy is available again) and the load burden on the central midfielders is high.
It's the timing of the statement that set off the alarm bells, the press conference in which Maresca first said this was on January 12th, he claims to have only just been told but we were nearly two weeks into the window. As Chris Lymn wrote yesterday, it’s not great from the outside.
Perhaps Maresca knew earlier or the club hoped to resolve it by early sales? The list of players we want to offload isn't vastly different from the list last summer. Patson Daka may have moved himself to the keep list but in this climate, perhaps we would still sell if the right bid came in. All plans are with a Premier League return in mind.
The question everybody should be asking is, assuming we don’t offload people, or as many as we’d like, what does this mean for the summer? We might be able to make things work with the current squad in the Championship, but we’d expect some reinforcements and improvements to certain areas of the squad in the summer.
You only have to look at Burnley who ran away with the league and have endured the stark reality shock of that gulf between the two leagues. Sure, some of the squad we brought in during the summer are Premier League ready (Mads Hermansen, Harry Winks) but we’ll need to do some business to try and avoid the same trap.
Foxes’ immovable assets
Let’s revisit who’s on the sell list: Danny Ward, Luke Thomas, Harry Souttar, Victor Kristiansen, Dennis Praet. This is the core list of players the club is looking to move on.
Is Kelechi Iheanacho a possible addition too? He's certainly fallen from Maresca's favour but lack of game time at AfCoN may disrupt any clubs coming in for him, not to mention his dip in form in a league he should have been able to make his own.
This is the second or third transfer window we've looked to move some of these players on now. Which begs the question, why can't we? They're not terrible players. Some, like Souttar and Kristiansen, have simply had the misfortune to sign for a manager who got sacked quickly after and then haven’t managed to win over the coaches that followed.
Ward may not have covered himself in glory as our Premier League number one but he is still a decent enough goalkeeper for another club, perhaps a Championship club with loftier ambitions or the likes of Sheffield United where he’s already been linked. Is it the prices we want from clubs, the wages these players want or a bit of both?
Then there's our Belgian midfielder, who has been linked with an exit for the last four transfer windows now. But the right price, Serie A's financial crisis, injuries for us and injuries to him seem to have kiboshed any chances. Though he never plays even when fit, and injuries keep befalling him, it’s feeling like Schrödinger's Praet where he is neither with us, nor has he left us. He cuts a forlorn figure on the bench and is likely the player who most wants out.
With less than two weeks remaining and seemingly no bids even landing, it won’t give the Foxes much time to bring players in either. We’re in a promising dance with Inter Milan for Stefano Sensi with just the small issue of our funds. We’ve been here before too, hey?
Bigger issues or sensibly cautious?
After last season’s woes and adding relegation into that mix, it wasn’t going to be an easy season. Even accounting for parachute payments and the money from the sales of James Maddison and Harvey Barnes. King Power’s recovery to profits will be slow given the world economic climate and how much Covid hit their ventures. The stadium expansion is still planned, a big financial cost to factor in and without offloading a group of players, we’re likely still carrying additional wages.
Don’t forget either that Leicester City took out (or renewed) a loan via MacQuarie, football’s favourite less than savoury-looking bank this time last year. That was guaranteed using Premier League money that we aren’t getting this year. It’s been a mild concern since that was announced. We’re yet to file our accounts too, which could be coincidental and nothing to worry about but it makes for some nervous times. Are there bigger issues or are the club simply trying to prevent us getting to that stage?
This isn't written to be a critique of the club. Looking around the general state of football clubs, we are lucky. We have owners who care about us and we aren't suffering like Reading. But for those bemoaning the lack of signings, maybe we do need to exert some patience. There have been cautionary tales aplenty in the Premier League in the last year, warning signs to other clubs and we have flirted with FFP previously.
Keeping Enzo happy is key
This point was touched on by Chris as a ramification of the news. When Enzo joined, he would have been aware from the previous manager's regular quotes and the lack of activity while other clubs had shopping sprees (Jack Holmes touched on this in an excellent piece earlier this month). He would have wanted certain assurances about transfers and spending. It looked like he'd got those too based on the summer.
The minute things started to fall apart just happened to coincide with a slow transfer window where Brendan didn’t get the overhaul he wanted and seemingly then alienated his actual squad by telling the whole world Leicester had ‘no quality’.
Enzo seems more pragmatic and achieved quite a lot with a budget in the summer. He’s also shown a willingness to bring through existing younger players from the academy but he will want a transfer kitty if we are to return to the top flight.
This isn't quite groundhog day and we don't need to do an unmasking to check that it isn't a freaky Friday moment either (pretty sure it isn't Brendan hiding under a more Italian guise). It's the timing that raises some concerns and Maresca implying it was new information to him. That's the part that has the ‘stop me if you've heard this one before’ quality. Were the club to come out and address it, it could go a long way to reassuring us.
