Emergency stop, beautiful restart: why next summer is actually The One for Leicester's big refresh
Yes, it’s another article about Leicester’s Lack of Transfer Activity. But stop! Wait! This one is different. Next year might really be our year.
With the transfer window winding down, you may have noticed that Leicester have not got the ‘five or six’ new bodies in that Brendan Rodgers was looking for.
Everybody’s favourite LCFC insider, John Percy, did a deep dive into Leicester's financial situation for the Telegraph last week to explain why. In summary, Leicester’s wage bill is really high relative to our turnover and the King Power group has had a funky couple of years thanks to Covid. As they have been reluctant to put more money in and don’t want to fall foul of FFP restrictions, we whacked the emergency stop button on spending this summer.
Assuming we believe this angle - and there’s not much reason to dispute it, given that we don’t have any other information - then this is perfectly reasonable. For those of us outside of the Super League Six who have to care about these things, it makes financial sense. It’s better to act before a crisis hits, when you have options, rather than have to try to flog the office goldfish to keep the lights on a few years down the line.
It’s s more interesting to look at what this means for the future. The good news is that it’s almost certainly a one-year squeeze. The main issue is the size of the squad: too much filler on too much money. By next summer, that problem should be solved.
Project Refresh II: Bigger and better
There are seven players whose contracts expire in 2023: Youri Tielemans, Jonny Evans, Ayoze Perez, Daniel Amartey, Caglar Soyuncu, Nampalys Mendy, and Bertrand. I assume Evans will be offered a new deal and that Tielemans will refuse. If any of the others are given a new contract we have much bigger problems.
Add to the list of six departees with the already-confirmed loss of Kasper Schmeichel, Hamza Choudhury, and Wesley Fofana, along with the possible departure of Dennis Praet, and that is ten first team players off the books. For starters, that cures the massive logjam in the squad and does surprisingly little damage to the first XI.
Using new wage data from FBref (which some might argue looks about as accurate as a Wilfred Ndidi shot from range, but which is the best source we have), we can also put a ballpark figure on how much of a difference that’s going to make financially.
According to that, the ten departures’ annual wages come to about £23 million. Feet to the fire, I would guess it’s significantly more, as the FBref numbers for Tielemans and Fofana look laughably low. We are probably looking at close to a fifth of the total bill of £192m quoted in Percy’s article. And that doesn’t include possible other departures like Jannik Vestergaard, if we manage to get him so drunk that we can finally put him in a cab to literally anywhere else.
There are a few ‘ifs’ here, but I would be quite surprised if any of the players we’ve just reeled off were still here in September 2023. All in, that’s about a quarter of the wage bill off in a year. Crucially, it also involves getting rid of an alarming number of rubbish players: only three of the players we’ve mentioned here started against Southampton, and one (Evans) will probably get a new deal anyway.
Sunshine and rainbows
The point, ultimately, is that this is some short-term pain for long-term gain. The planned refresh couldn’t happen this summer, because selling 10+ players in a couple of months is just not realistic. But it will happen next summer.
This explains the desire to deal in loans rather than permanent signings at the end of the window. The big problem over the past couple of years has been giving long term, big money contracts to players who subsequently fall out of favour. Doing that now would severely hamper the possibility of a proper reset in 2023.
Looking at the contract situation also makes clear that Leicester have done a reasonable job of tying down the players we actually want. Fofana is the obvious example, which has borne fruit to the tune of £70m or so, but the only pressing contract issues at the moment are James Maddison and Wilfred Ndidi. Colour me optimistic that these will get sorted as well.
At which point, the core of a good team is in situ and there is going to be leeway to improve it. With a head of recruitment back from a nice, refreshing holiday and ready to hit the ground running to boot.
The shadow
This is a positive article, so we aren't going to sully it too much with negativity. But there is one last thing to say, which is that getting relegated would throw a teensy bit of a spanner in the works.
There has been a tendency, led by Brendan Rodgers himself, to link the lack of transfer activity to performances on the pitch this season. In my view, the endless stream of negativity from the manager must have an affect on the mentality in the dressing room. He’s also wrong, in the sense that he has a perfectly good group of players to deal with and he’s managing them poorly, rather than being let down by the recruitment team.
Leicester should not get relegated. It would be an almost incomprehensible failure of management were that to happen. Playing bad football has nothing to do with the fact we haven’t signed anyone. It predates it. We were playing bad football before it was cool.
Clearly, the expectations for this year have changed. This year is now all about being in a position to go again next year and overhaul the squad, to set the table for a glorious return to the top. All we need to achieve that for the manager to sort out a solid, sensible tactic where we do the basics right and emphasise the strengths of our current players, rather than their weaknesses. Even we might be able to sort that one out eventually.