A campaign that began with Enzo Maresca insisting his Leicester players sleep overnight at their sprawling, 185-acre Seagrave training base for the first week of pre-season in the name of team building has ended with their primary mission accomplished: promotion boxed off, the Championship crown likely to follow.
Leicester’s most memorable and marvellous moment came when they confounded expectations; this time, it was a case of simply meeting them by getting back to the Premier League at the first attempt.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that surely the most expensively assembled squad in the division – their wage bill was the biggest outside the Premier League top six 12 months ago – has sealed that return after Leeds lost at QPR on Friday night, but it turned into a slog after they ceded a 17-point lead. In the past couple of months, their campaign has flitted between a sense of collapse and catharsis. “It has been a very long season,” Maresca said with a wry smile this week.
Those days last July allowed Maresca – a disciple of Pep Guardiola in terms of style of play and seemingly tailoring (few can pull off a cream pullover) – to hammer home his possession-hungry mantra, one that has split opinion among supporters despite Leicester being on course to record a century of points, a tally only Burnley, last season, have managed since Leicester won promotion under Nigel Pearson a decade ago.
Then, few would have envisaged the extraordinary run that followed – the 5,000-1 title, Champions League trips, a first FA Cup – but, rather than dreaming of a repeat of those heady days, pragmatism will surely strangle their return to the top division.
Beyond the golden relief, the scent of champagne, the confetti and the wild celebrations – Maresca jived with Abdul Fatawu in the dressing room after the forward’s hat-trick in the midweek rout of Southampton rendered promotion all but a formality – there is an unsettling hue of grey.
Now, finally, we know which division Leicester will play in next season but look past that and there is a jarring current of unknowns. Most of which stem from Leicester’s ultimate failure to keep up with the Premier League’s elite in the years since Claudio Ranieri did the unthinkable.
Will the Premier League release the transfer embargo the English Football League imposed on the club for breaching profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) in March? If not, what happens to Jamie Vardy, Wilfred Ndidi and Jannik Vestergaard, among the regulars out of contract at the end of June? Will Leicester be powerless to rubber-stamp the £14.5m deal they agreed with Sporting to sign Fatawu in the event of promotion? “In this moment, it is complicated,” Maresca said on Tuesday.
Under the embargo, Leicester cannot re-sign players or register new ones without EFL approval. Leicester will formally become a Premier League club again at the annual general meeting in Harrogate at the end of June. The league may well have a few questions for them.
Then there is the small matter of a potential double whammy of points deductions. Will they materialise and, if so, when? Leicester issued legal action after being charged by the Premier League for allegedly breaking PSR rules for the period ending 2022‑23. It seems unlikely Leicester will start next season on minus points, with their case likely to prove protracted because it falls outside the framework introduced last year to accelerate decisions.
The club are expected to exceed the permitted financial losses for the three-year cycle ending 2023-24, unless they are able to generate significant funds before the accounting period ends on 30 June. It seems inevitable that Leicester will consider, if not seek, offers for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, comfortably their most valuable asset. They have not denied being at risk of breaching the EFL’s threshold limit for 2023-24 and when releasing their most recent accounts announcing a £90m loss this month, conceded they “may be found not in compliance with the applicable P&S rules for the three-year reporting period ending 2022-23”.
The driver of Leicester’s financial headaches is heavy spending but this season they have not got a lot wrong in terms of recruitment. Mads Hermansen, a goalkeeper as comfortable with the ball at his feet as in his gloves, was arguably the most important piece of the puzzle. Fatawu, who was flagged to Maresca by the head of recruitment, Martyn Glover, and Stephy Mavididi have been revelations on the wings and Harry Winks has been tidy and consistent in midfield.
The defenders Conor Coady and Callum Doyle, the latter signed on loan from Manchester City, have not played as much as expected owing to the form of Vestergaard, whose transformation is arguably the story of Leicester’s season given he spent much of the last one training in isolation. That Vestergaard, a 6ft 6in centre-back, has had 4,290 touches this season – more than any other player in the division – illustrates how central he has been to their success and his role in fuelling back-to-front attacks. Leicester have scored a league-high 86 goals, with Dewsbury-Hall contributing 14 assists.
Given their wobble – and it was a sizeable one given they lost six of their 10 matches before beating West Brom last Sarurday – Leicester deserve credit for getting over the line. Vardy, naturally, has played his part. The 37-year-old has averaged at least one goal every other game in all competitions this season and he initiated the players’ meeting that prompted the much-needed turnaround after a shock defeat at struggling Plymouth.
“There was a lot of honesty,” said Marc Albrighton, one of those whose contract is expiring. “We felt sometimes over the course of especially the second half of the season, the lads seemed to not want to take certain risks.”
Leicester may pay the price for one or two on their return to the top table.
