leicester city

what will happen might be disasturous as striker choices to tranfer news

Published

11 months ago

January 5, 2024

Leicester City used the loan market well in the summer to bring in some talented players. But now they’re on course for promotion, they are giving themselves some decisions to make.

Leicester City Closing In On Attacking Signing - The Real EFL The long-term futures of Callum Doyle and Abdul Fatawu, and the short-term futures of Cesare Casadei and Yunus Akgun, were among the topics on our latest Q+A with readers. Will the former two sign in the summer? Will City cut their losses on the latter two?

And there was plenty more discussed too, not least the intriguing striker battle, where there are four players vying for one spot. What does that mean for the futures of Kelechi Iheanacho and Jamie Vardy? You can read all of our answers below.

Q: Why is nobody talking about the possibility of Callum Doyle staying at Leicester after the summer? Manchester City have always sold their academy graduates (Palmer, Sancho, Lavia, etc.) for the right price, so why does nobody think that we can buy Doyle this summer?

A: That’s a very fair point you’ve made. They are prolific in selling on their academy graduates. James Trafford is another one they sold for a good fee in the summer.

I do think it’s possible that Leicester are able to sign him, and given how highly Maresca rates him, I imagine he will be encouraging the club to look into the possibility of doing a deal for him should promotion be achieved. But it really does depend on how Man City see him. He signed a new long-term contract with them this time last year, and while there was plenty of talk of an option to buy being put into the loan deal, it didn’t happen in the end, possibly because of how highly Man City rate him. I do think with the way Man City play, he could be a good back-up left-back option for them next season.

But yes, they’re not opposed to selling their academy players, especially given how much money they can get for them. I think if City were to try to bring him in permanently in the summer, they’d be looking at paying around £15m to £20m.

Q: I am hoping we can keep Fatawu after his loan is completed. How likely is that?

A: I would say it’s very likely as things stand. Maresca made reference to it after the Huddersfield game, that Fatawu has more time to impress and earn himself a permanent summer move now he’s not going to Afcon.

The suggestions from Portugal are that if City are promoted, there is an obligation for the club to sign him permanently for €17m (£14.7m). Maresca’s comments suggest that City still have a decision to make, although he has also admitted before that he neither knows nor cares about the details in players’ contracts.

Either way, if City get promoted, I would be very surprised if he’s not permanently signed in the summer. Given his contribution this season, how quickly he’s developing under Maresca, and how much scope there is for further improvements, the club will know they have a potentially special player on their hands.

Q: I’m looking at our strikers at the moment. The renaissance of Patson Daka and good home debut by Tom Cannon were much welcome with the injuries of Kelechi Iheanacho and Jamie Vardy, both of which aren’t making headlines at a Championship level. Is it likely they will both leave in the summer?

A: The striker situation is very interesting. The handling of Daka has surprised me in that it’s shown Maresca is not as stubborn as I thought he was. It looked to me like he had decided that Vardy and Iheanacho were his two strikers and that Daka, having signalled his intentions to leave in the summer, would not get a look-in. But Maresca’s persistence with Daka over recent weeks, even when Iheanacho became fit again, showed that he’s just willing to give game-time to any player who is performing well in training and matches. Under Maresca, if you do well, you keep your place, no matter what the pecking order was before.

So all that makes it difficult to make judgements on who could leave in the summer. City have four strikers at the moment and it feels to me they’re all ranking similarly in Maresca’s head. There’s so much that could happen before the summer. We still don’t know if Daka still wants to leave this month, as he did in the summer. We don’t know if Iheanacho’s now changed his mind and wants to go.

But, I would say that should City get promoted, I can see them giving Vardy one more year for him to sign off in the Premier League with. Iheanacho, I can see Maresca wanting to give him a new contract because he does still feel like a more natural fit in the manager’s system. With the way Maresca plays, he needs a striker that is willing to drop deep and drag centre-backs out of position, who can then control the passes and offload it. Iheanacho is the best at that in the team. I do think though that he’s doing it so often that he’s then struggling to be in the right place at the top of the pitch and that is harming his numbers. But I do think Maresca likes him.

Q: I do not believe that Iheanacho wants to stay at the club anymore judging by his demeanour and lack of effort. Is this delusions of grandeur, believing he is better than he is and is saving himself for a move, or does he simply want to move on for his career’s sake? As at the moment, even when fully fit, he does not deserve a starting place.

A: I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I can understand why fans thought he was lazy after he came on against Ipswich. He didn’t look interested at times, was too static, and didn’t chase hard enough considering the energy he should have had. But I don’t remember any accusations of laziness earlier in the season. He’s not been at his best, but the criticism has been around his touch and his finishing, rather than his work-rate.

So this is just one game. It was his first in more than three weeks after being out with illness, which may have been a factor, while he’s been out with injury since, so may have been carrying a knock or something. If he persistently played like he didn’t care, or even if it showed in three or four games, I would not want to see him playing. But after just one game, I think it’s difficult to definitively declare it as laziness.

And it’s not something that fans really need to worry about. Maresca is strict and all of his players know that. If he senses at all that Iheanacho is not pulling his weight or trying hard enough, there’s no way he will put him in the team. If he really was lazy against Ipswich and continues to be, Maresca will spot it and won’t include him until he bucks up his ideas.

Q: Why are we looking for a left sided defensive player? Doyle is now fit and surely him and JJ are perfectly adequate for the rest of the season. I realise from your previous articles that Enzo doesn’t rate JJ in that position but he seems to be doing a pretty good job to me. In fact, like many supporters, I rate him better than Doyle.

A: It’s not that Maresca doesn’t rate Justin in that position. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be playing him there. But he thinks Justin is better on the right. The reason Maresca wants another left-footed defender is because he feels it’s better for building play naturally on that side and get good forward ball into the midfield and attackers. Yes, Doyle does that well, but Maresca has made a point of it being the only position in his team where he doesn’t have two naturals for the position, so he’d prefer to get someone in so that there is a back-up there too.

Q: Do you think Denis Praet will leave in this window?

A: I think it’s possible, yes. He’s into the final six months of his contract and the interest from Italy has always been there, so I could see him heading back to Serie A. It could come down to whether he pushes to go, and I think it’s reached a point now where he is definitely behind Dewsbury-Hall and Ndidi, and maybe even Casadei too, in the midfield pecking order, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he did want to leave. He could then maybe make a late push to get into Belgium reckoning ahead of the Euros.

Q: Another question about Denis Praet. Is it correct that he has never been able to complete a full 90 minutes during his time with City?

A: That’s true of league games, yes. Of his 69 league appearances for the club, the most he’s ever played was 85 minutes in a 1-0 home defeat to Man City in February 2020. He came close earlier this season, in the 1-0 win away at Huddersfield, when he played 84 minutes. But across cup competitions like the Europa League, the EFL Cup, and the FA Cup, he’s played 90 minutes on 10 occasions.

Q: Luke Thomas has been rumoured to be having his loan cut short. Did we ever find out what his contract situation with us is? Is it expiring in the summer?

A: There’s still no definitive expiry date, no. But as far as I’m aware, it doesn’t run out at the end of this season. So he won’t be leaving on a free transfer in July.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Thomas. Maresca suggested he wasn’t able to play as either a left-back who drops in to become a centre-back, or a full-back who becomes a midfielder, so there may not be a position for him should he return to City. Maresca has said he was trying to find a new role for Thomas, but then he left for Bramall Lane so that was the end of the issue. Could he play as a left winger? It feels like the only option left.

Q: Is it time to cut our losses and return Casedei and Akgun to their parent clubs given their poor showing so far?

A: I can’t see that happening, no. I don’t know the ins and outs of the loan contracts to know whether City would have to pay to make that happen, but I also don’t think there is any desire to.

I wouldn’t say either has performed poorly overall. I think they’ve been okay. But they’ve definitely not been on the level of many of the other players and that’s why I do think that if there is room to do so, City will want to sign another midfielder.

But Casadei is Maresca’s man and I think he’s willing to work with him. He does really like how he gets into advanced positions and has praised him for how he has a chance to score in every game. I’m not sure that’s quite true, but there definitely have been moments where he’s done well. His performance against Sunderland was his best, in my opinion. If he could replicate that more often, then he’d be a big hit.

As for Yunus, I think the club are willing to show a bit of patience with him. There’s no lack of endeavour there, and there have been moments of quality too. There have been plenty of players in City’s history who have struggled to adjust to a new league early on but then excelled, such as Vardy and Mahrez. A little more patience may be needed.

Q: Should we be offering contracts now to players Enzo wants to keep and are free in the summer? Is it better to buy in Jan, and bed the player in ahead of a Prem campaign? Like Mahrez. Or do we wait till the summer when the potential for a better quality market opens? Like Cambiasso. Finally, how about pre-contract agreements? Get the player on board for a summer start.

A: With contracts, Maresca said last month it’s something he would look at in February and March. For now, he wants them focused on the job in hand. I think by that point, he will feel confident that anybody at the club will definitely want to be here, and hopefully promotion should be on the horizon too. There’s a balance to strike in terms of showing out-of-contract players you’re interested in keeping them but also not offering them fresh terms too early and damaging the club’s finances. You can’t gamble on big contracts and then not go up.

I think if you can find a player like Mahrez who can help now but who is mainly signed because of the potential to develop, then great. But I do think those sorts of players are harder to come by nowadays in that the data available means players don’t get missed as often. Players who have the potential to be stars are more likely to be signed by Premier League clubs before a Championship side can get their hands on them. I think City are more likely to wait until their Premier League position is secured and that will open up a bigger market in terms of the players they can afford and the players who will want to join them.

On pre-contract agreements, it’s not something City do often, no, but it is something they look at. Often, a deal is kind of agreed in advance but then isn’t announced until the summer. Like with Luis Hernandez. City signed him on a free transfer in the summer of 2016, but had basically wrapped up a deal for him a few months earlier, knowing that his contract with Sporting Gijon was about to expire.