The wheels in the Premier League are quite fast. Classy achievements in one season are not always directly proportional to the results of the following seasons. Consistency is an absolute requirement in order to continue to compete, not just noise. The only time that can be celebrated is the moment when sitting at the top of the standings after fighting 38 weeks. So do not be surprised if not many teams are able to defend the title in two to three seasons in a row. Excluding Leicester City.
Joining the highest caste of English football in the 2014/2015 season, then winning the title the following season is certainly an easy achievement to recognize. But what happened after that? only cheerleaders in the middle of the board even though he was once mentioned as a potential new member of “The Big Six”. In fact, after the championship, Leicester City’s best achievement was only in the 2020/2021 season by sitting in fifth place.
The 2022/2023 Premier League season is entering its 36th week, but there are still six teams trying to avoid relegation including Leicester City. The team made by Brendan Rodgers sits in 18th place and only collected 30 points from 35 matches. They still have to compete with Southampton, Leeds United, Everton, Nottingham Forest and West Ham United to get away from the relegation zone. Nine seasons struggling in the Premier League, Leicester City for the first time threatened with relegation.
The only safest way is to win the remaining three matches. This mission is tough because they will still host Liverpool in Week 39. After that, they visit St James’ Park and then host West Ham United in the final week. Two of the three potential opponents are two teams fighting for Champions League tickets. While The Hammers are also crawling away from the relegation zone. There are no easy opponents for The Foxes.
Since the start of the season, Leicester City’s decline has been quite clear. They were winless in their initial seven games. Worse, conceded 22 goals. This situation is of course very concerning for a team whose status as champions seven seasons earlier. Even under Brendan Rodgers, this season was the first time Leicester City had finished outside the top nine. Then, what happened to The Foxes? from the champion until now only duel on the bottom board.
Leicester City does not have the financial freedom of big teams like Manchester City, Manchester United or Chelsea. It’s almost impossible for them to be willing to spend hundreds of millions in one transfer window. More likely they are “selling out” the players to be able to balance the financial books. It has been proven that in the last five years, Leicester City is the team with the fourth lowest net spend among the 20 teams competing in the 2022/2023 Premier League season. Therefore, the pattern of recruitment is an important part so that they can survive in the top flight of English football every season.
If we take back the heyday of Leicester City, the 2015/2016 season started with a recruitment pattern that was right on target. In that season, the team that was coached by Claudio Ranieri spent 49.9 million Euros to recruit seven players. The most expensive purchase was Shinji Okazaki, who was recruited from FSV Mainz 05 for 11 million Euros. Almost all new players contributed. However, N’Golo Kante has become a new star even though he was just brought in from SM Caen at a very affordable price, 9 million Euros. Leicester City previously had Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez. But the decision to recruit Kante completes the pillars that form the backbone of The Fox until the end of the season.
After that, there were not many Leicester City recruits who made a major contribution to the team. In total there were 34 players purchased after the championship at a cost of 569.85 million Euros (2016/2017 season to 2022/2023). But try to name a player who has made a big contribution to the team. In your head, you must only have two names, namely James Maddison and Youri Tielemans.
The failure of Leicester City’s recruitment pattern began when they failed to find an ideal replacement for N’Golo Kante who left after winning. Wilfred Ndidi and Nampalys Mendy, who were brought in from Kante’s sales, failed to meet expectations so that these two players played less than 20 matches. Meanwhile, the post left by Kante was filled by Danny Drinkwater. However, Drinkwater’s attributes and capabilities are not as complete as Kante’s, so The Foxes’ midfield is in a state of flux in various aspects. It’s no wonder that in that season they only sat in 12th place.
The situation was exacerbated when Riyad Mahrez left for Manchester City in the 2018/2019 season. Mahrez, who became Jamie Vardy’s perfect partner, dulled the front line of The Foxes. Evidently they only scored 51 goals from 38 matches and finished ninth. After Mahrez left, several players were brought in to sharpen the front line. However, so far nothing has been comparable to Mahrez’s contribution when he was in Leicester City uniform. Nevertheless, there is one Leicester City achievement in player transactions, namely selling Harry Maguire to Manchester United for 87 million Euros.
One of the problems that are often encountered by inexperienced teams in the highest level leagues is the dependence on certain players. This condition makes it difficult for the team to be consistent because the team’s performance depends on the performance of the mainstay players. There are several coaches who are able to utilize these players efficiently. He was able to make a team play around these mainstay players. But in general, teams that only rely on a few players find it difficult to maintain consistency. This problem arises as a further impact when it fails to implement an effective recruitment pattern.
This problem also actually happened at Leicester City, even when they won the title. That season became an anomaly season because The Foxes won the championship by only collecting 81 points. These records show that they only get an average of 2.13 points per game.
There were at least four key players that season, namely Kasper Schmeichel, N’Golo Kante, Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy. Schmeichel that season was listed as one of the goalkeepers with the most saves (100 saves). N’Golo Kante plays the midfield general. Meanwhile, Mahrez and Vardy became the deadliest pair with 41 goals and 17 assists from the combination of these two players. Apart from these four players, Wes Morgan, who plays the role of captain, also contributes to maintaining the mentality of his colleagues. Luckily, this dependency was not hampered by many injuries.
This situation has continued for the last three seasons. They now rely on Jamie Vardy, James Maddison and Youri Tielemans. Unfortunately, these three players rarely play together due to injuries, so their performance on the field is always below expectations. In fact, this situation should have been overcome if they had targeted recruitment as discussed in the previous section.
Brendan Rodgers has realized this season that Leicester City has experienced a decline in the quality of players. At the City Ground in February 2022, following his team’s “humiliating” loss to Nottingham Forest, Rodgers delivered a disheartening assessment of his squad.
“There are a lot of these players, between now and the end of the season, who need to prove they still deserve to be here because we’ve seen that for a while,” he said.
“There are players here who have probably achieved everything they could. That is something we will have to see between now and the end of the season. Until then, they have to look at themselves in the mirror and fight tooth and nail to prove they are good enough to be here.”
One indication of the cause is shaky financial stability due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has certainly become a force majeure not only for football as a sport, but also as a business. Moreover, King Power Group operates in sectors that are vulnerable to this situation (retail, tourism, theater, restaurants, hotels and so on).
Based on a study from the Deloitte Money Football League, Leicester City experienced a decrease in revenue in 2020. From 2018 to 2019, Leicester City experienced an increase in revenue of 23 million Euros. But from 2019 to 2020 (the first year of the pandemic) the club’s revenue fell by 31 million Euros. Even though there was an increase after the pandemic started to improve, during this period of time it made Leicester City’s financial stability decrease.
After Brendan Rodgers was fired, this tough mission was borne by Dean Smith. At the end of the month, we will all see whether the English coach is able to bring Leicester City back up, or is forced to drop back down to the Championship Division.
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