To reduce the wage bill, to ensure everyone is eligible, and even just to give Enzo Maresca a manageable number of players to work with, Leicester City need a handful of departures before next week’s transfer deadline.
There are clear contenders for the exit with several players pushed to the sidelines in recent weeks. Maresca said everybody knows where they stand in his squad, and for players like Harry Souttar and Boubakary Soumare, there appears to be a dim future. If they want regular game-time in the next 12 months at the very least, they need to find a new club.
But it’s not just those who aren’t playing that might say their goodbyes. With four of their players, City are entering into dangerous territory.
It was expected ahead of the window that the players who were entering the final 12 months of their contracts and who had some market value would be sold. Having seen the likes of Youri Tielemans and Caglar Soyuncu leave for nothing this summer, City would surely not want a repeat in 12 months’ time.
James Maddison was sold to Tottenham fairly promptly, but the new manager came in for pre-season with plenty of others on the list still at the club. Working with the squad for five weeks over the summer in preparation for the campaign, Maresca learned who suited his system and who didn’t.
He has described Jannik Vestergaard as “an important player” and is selecting the Dane at the heart of his defence while Conor Coady is out injured. He considers Dennis Praet and Wilfred Ndidi as two of his four options in the number eight positions. Kelechi Iheanacho has now started the last two Championship games and looks to be the best fit in the striker role.
It was not expected that any of those four players would be at City this season. Not only do their contracts run out in 2024, but it felt like Vestergaard and Praet’s careers at the club had run their course, Ndidi had suffered a huge drop in form, and Iheanacho was frankly too good for the Championship.
If City had u-turned on their position, decided they were willing to let Maresca keep the players he wanted, and were willing to gamble on them helping the club get back to the Premier League even if they would leave for nothing next summer, then fair enough.
But that’s not exactly the case. All four could still leave. If big enough bids come in, then City will consider sales. Maresca is aware of this. He has said that the number of signings needed is dependent on those who are sold.
But it would feel like City are leaving their manager in the lurch if they were to sell at this point. Four games into the campaign, his squad is starting to settle. While not yet anywhere near the levels Maresca wants to get them to, City are winning matches. Those four players are very much a part of the team that has made the perfect start.
Selling them would bring upheaval to the squad, and would also leave City scrambling around for replacements. They will have shortlists of potential options, as they did when they brought in Wout Faes last summer following Wesley Fofana’s move to Chelsea. But deals can be expensive, or even too difficult to pull off.
Let’s say Crystal Palace move ahead with their interest in Iheanacho and make an offer that City accept. The club will then start to make moves for new strikers who could replace him. There has been interest in Joel Piroe and he would be a solid purchase. He has the right style of play to thrive in Maresca’s system, he is proven at Championship level, and has the scope to get better.
But with just over a week to go in the transfer window, would Swansea sell? Given they would then have to go out and replace their chief marksman with just days to spare, they may not be willing to do a deal. If they are, it might take a huge fee to get them to part, in which case there would be an argument for not selling Iheanacho in the first place. All that, and City would also be in competition with the likes of Southampton and Leeds.
Right now, there is the potential for four of those sorts of scenarios. Business always speeds up towards the end of the window, but given the pace at which City have done deals so far, it seems unlikely that they would enter September with everything having played out perfectly in their favour.
City still have a winger or two and a defender to bring in before the deadline, and they have a host of players they need to move on. Giving themselves even more to do by selling the players Maresca clearly wants to keep, and that would need replacing, feels like it would be an act of self-sabotage at this stage of the window.
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