Having won both the Premier League and the FA Cup for the first time since Farhad Moshiri took control of Everton, Leicester City have often been heralded as an example to the Blues of how to challenge the ‘Big Six’ but so far this season the Foxes have fallen away dramatically - so just what’s gone wrong at the King Power Stadium? Leicester City’s stunning 5,000/1 title triumph in 2016 was arguably the biggest upset in English top flight history and they received the trophy after a 3-1 victory over an Everton side whose manager Roberto Martinez was just one more game and defeat (3-0 at Sam Allardyce’s Sunderland) away from becoming the first Blues boss to be sacked by new owner Moshiri.
Since then, the Monaco-based businessman gone through six managers in as many years at Goodison Park and despite a record-breaking spending spree on transfers, Everton have gone backwards in the Premier League and almost suffered what would have been their first relegation in 71 years last season when they recorded their joint lowest equivalent points haul. Leicester City in contrast having dropped below ninth over the past five campaigns and enjoyed back-to-back top five finishes in 2020 and 2021, also lifting the FA Cup at Wembley in the latter.
However, the East Midlanders head to Merseyside tomorrow in the relegation zone, a position they have occupied since the end of August and while they’ve long been hailed as an exemplar when it comes to going head to head with the division’s moneyed elite, the Leicester Mercury’s Leicester City correspondent Jordan Blackwell explains, there is little margin for error when operating in such circumstances. He told the ECHO: “To be able to compete against the ‘Big Six’ when you don’t have their financial power, everything you do has to be perfect. You can’t afford to have any misses in the transfer market whereas if you’re Manchester United or Chelsea and you buy a player for £30million and it goes wrong, it’s not really a problem, you just buy another one the next summer, how many times have we seen Chelsea buy a striker who doesn’t work and it just doesn’t matter?
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“Leicester can’t afford to do that but the reason they were doing so well was that was because they kept getting it right. They had one summer (in 2017) when they brought in Ricardo Pereira, James Maddison, Johnny Evans and Kelechi Iheanacho who all ended up being very important players for them but since then the squad planning hasn’t quite been up to the same standards.
“It’s almost like you have to plan things a couple of years in advance at a time, thinking ‘well if we sell x player then we’ll have so much to sign y and z next summer.’ They had a problem this summer when they wanted to move a lot of players on but they couldn’t get the interest in them and now they face a scenario in 2023 where they could lose them for nothing and I think if you don’t get your recruitment spot-on, you kind of fall away.”
It was announced in September that Leicester City had escaped sanctions under UEFA Financial Fair Play rules but had been warned that they would be “monitored closely” in future. The Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) First Chamber have analysed the financial affairs of all clubs that participated in the 2021/22 UEFA competitions.
They concluded that the Foxes were compliant with the regulations because of “exceptional COVID deductions and consideration of historical financial results” and the same applied to three other Premier League clubs - Manchester City, Chelsea and West Ham United - plus 15 others from around Europe. However, Milan, Monaco, Roma, Besiktas, Internazionale, Juventus, Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain were all found not to have complied with the break-even requirement and agreed to pay financial contributions of €172 million in total.
Blackwell said: “Financial Fair Play has played its part but it also comes down to a more general financial stability. Leicester were one of around 20 clubs who were given warnings by UEFA for FFP breeches but I think that they’re in a similar position to Everton in that they spend a lot on wages compared to what they make.
“The television money is fairly evenly split in this country and they’ve had a couple of years of getting a little bit extra from Europe but they still spend a hell of a lot on wages. Despite winning the Premier League in 2016, they’re still not a big name commercially, compared to the ‘Big Six’ they’re making barely anything.
“They were in and among those established elite for a few seasons but in one of those years Leicester actually paid more than 100% of their revenue on wages and that’s before you consider any of their other costs. Last year (2021) they chose not to sell any of their big name players having done that consistently and it being part of the model with the likes of N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater, Riyad Mahrez, Harry Maguire and Ben Chilwell all in consecutive summers all for big fees yet they still spent around £60million and none of those signings really made an impact.
“Two of them in Patson Daka and Boubakary Soumare were the type where you’d look to give them a year to settle and then see what they were like but Ryan Bertrand was injured and Jannik Vestergaard (who hasn’t played this season) has just been a terrible signing. On the back of that, this summer it was a case of ‘well we didn’t sell anyone last year so we need to be a bit more sustainable’ and they just brought in a player to replace another one that ideally they wouldn’t have sold so after three years, it feels like the end of a cycle and the squad needed a bit of a refresh but they’ve had the quietest transfer window of any club in the division.”
Ultimately the fortunes of any football club are the responsibility of the manager though and it seems that after a bright start – including that aforementioned FA Cup win 18 months ago – Brendan Rodgers’ stock with many of Leicester City’s fans has fallen after disappointing results in recent months. Blackwell said: “Brendan Rodgers can’t really claim to have the majority of supporters being fully behind him. Starting with the FA Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest last season, there has been an increasing feeling among the fanbase that his time at the club could be coming to a close.
“They got through to the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa Conference League which won a few people back before the end of last season but they struggled domestically towards the end and the home defeat to Everton was the game that killed it off completely. He’s spoken publicly about the lack of transfer activity and while I think that everything he’s said on the subject has probably been legitimate, as compared to the rest of the Premier League they really didn’t spend anything, bringing in one £15million player (Wout Faes) as a replacement for the £70million player (Wesley Fofana) that they sold, some fans have taken that as moaning.
“The story behind Kasper Schmeichel was somewhat blurred. The wider feeling was that he’d been at Leicester for over a decade and was looking for a fresh challenge towards the end of his career but while that was a factor to a degree, I also think that Leicester were happy to move him on.
“He had one year left on his contract at Leicester and I don’t think there was an intention to offer him another one but he managed to get himself a three-year deal at Nice. Schmeichel was one of the players who drove the standards at the club because he was the captain and was so professional in training but his exit was all part of the plan to freshen up the squad and I think that if Leicester are relegated this season, I don’t think you could say that it was because they let him go, there would be lots of other reasons behind that.
“The fans feel that while it would have been nice to have some more transfers coming in, this is still a very good squad that should be doing a lot better than it is and they were so poor defensively over the first few games, that lost a lot of people as well with a feeling that Rodgers couldn’t fix it. There was something of a protest after the goalless draw with Crystal Palace last month with a banner declaring: 'Board – The time for action is now!' but they actually played quite well in that game.”
Although Leicester City remain in the drop zone, they had embarked on a three-match unbeaten run before their 1-0 defeat to reigning champions Manchester City last time out and a win over Everton would see them draw level on points with Frank Lampard’s side and if they were to triumph by two goals or more, even above them in the Premier League table. But Blackwell believes the team are now facing a crucial period in their last couple of Premier League fixtures before top flight football’s enforced hibernation period. He said: “I don’t think the frustration has completely gone, I think there is still an appreciation, certainly from the fans, that with the squad they have, they should be a lot higher in the table with more points than they’ve got. The feeling is that since they came back from the last international break it has been better but they’re probably looking at these next two games at Everton and West Ham United as a good indicator as to how much the team has improved given that they’re both teams around mid-table who Leicester feel they should be on par with.
“There’s understandably a feeling of not wanting to go into the World Cup break in the relegation zone because from both a fans’ and a players’ point of view, that’s then hanging over you for six weeks rather than having an opportunity to do something about it and it’s not good from a psychological point of view.”
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