What happened to Leicester City?

Leicester City have plummeted down the Premier League table in this decline and the fall has been made more dramatic by the fact that the club had enjoyed such a surprising rise by winning the Premier League in 2016 and enjoying the riches that result from appearing in the Champions League. wrong despite its recently acquired Nouveau status. Lester was careful to use the money from his successes wisely, mainly this took the form of investing in players, but instead of spending large amounts on already established players, they invested in young talent and offered them long and lucrative contracts to prevent teams from Those higher up the food chain quickly grab them.

This approach saw them sign Kelechi Hinach for over £25m. James Madison for 20 million pounds. Yuri T Lemons for £45m. Wesley Fofana for £30 million and Pat Sandaka for £23 million. In consecutive seasons from 2017 onwards, to counter the risk involved in spending heavily on younger players, Leicester developed an approach to player recruitment that was designed to offset the potential risk. Leicester's model, as it became known, was to sell a key asset each summer and by reinvesting the profits wisely between 26 and 16 in 2020, the club was able to generate £255m of income through mare sales. of Angola Conte Danny Drinkwater Riyad, Harry MaGuire and Ben Chilwell, this approach seemed so successful that several other clubs claimed By introducing it into their own recruitment process, the money was not only spent on playing with Talent, but Lester also invested in a coach who paid to bring Brendan Rodgers and his staff from Celtic and set them up in a new £100m training complex in Seagrave in north Leicestershire, but then disaster struck in 2020, the coveted pandemic breaking out in England, of course , all Premier League sites were affected by the restrictions covered at the end.

Leicester estimated they lost around £50m as a direct result, but the indirect cost was even greater. Since 2010, the

city

of Leicester has been owned by King Power International, a travel retail group based in Bangkok, Thailand, which is dedicated to the travel industry. King power was severely affected by the covid-19 pandemic between 2019 and 2021, the company's turnover fell from 2.3 billion to 448 million pounds. Although more recently King Power has begun to recover financially and its contracted chairman, Srivada Hara Prava, has promised continued commitment to the club, the timing of the pandemic has left Leicester in a more vulnerable position than most other clubs in the league.

Premier League given its largest investment worldwide. In previous years, when its 2021-22 accounts were published earlier this season, the club announced losses of around £92.5m. Furthermore, Leicester's model was beginning to unravel having committed players to lucrative long contracts. Leicester Bill's salary had grown from £122.4 million per year in 2019 to £182 million per year in 2022 with the drop in income caused by the pandemic, Leicester's salary-to-income ratio soared from 68, 6 to over 80 per cent and while Leicester had previously been able to make up the financial difference by selling their best players in the summer, these types of sales began to decline in frequency, although they managed to collect £70m from Chelsea for Wesley Fofana , the club failed to capitalize on Yuri Tilaments and James Madison, a subtle change.

The recruitment process also came after Brendan Rodgers joined the club where the model had previously been investing in young talent. It now seemed that recruiting was shifting towards bringing in more established players in the summer of 2021. Yannick Bestergard and Ryan Bertrand were brought in on the cheap. but with good contracts it has not proven to be a good signing nor does it promise any real resale value, where the Leicester model was created to encourage a cycle of value generation and reinvestment at the point where they needed to resort to the model with which the club was over.

In fact, so bad has some of the recruitment gone that Leicester will soon lose a group of players to free contracts that they spent over £110m to acquire in the first place - of course, player value is always linked to the performances. on the pitch and this is another area where recruitment failure has come to Heart Leicester in recent seasons. The last few seasons have seen so many failures that it has not only diminished the value of some of the players but also the performance of the team. and the result is a vicious cycle that sees Leicester fall down the table at the same rate as the team's value has fallen.

Given that Rogers was in charge of training and gradually took more control over recruitment, it is worth raising the question. question of his role in the club's decline, as The Athletic's Rob Tanner put it, there have been great achievements during Rogers' four years and he will go down as one of the club's most successful managers, but there is no doubt that Leicester are in a situation worse now than when he arrived, and you certainly shouldn't trust him no matter how much power he finally had. In the end, the club decided that whoever was to blame, Rogers was not going to be the solution to the problems and left by mutual agreement in April 2023 with Roger gone and Dean Smith installed for the rest of the season Leicester City are in real danger: a relegation, a fall that would see them lose around £100 million a year in television revenue, according to the expert's estimate in football finance Kieran McGuire, which would aggravate his situation.

Financial problems make the task of promoting to the first division even more difficult. There are few realities more brutal than those of modern football. In a very short space of time, Leicester City has gone from being an example of good practice within football clubs to becoming the next warning about how everything can go wrong. If you like this video, consider subscribing to the channel where Athletic hosts some of the best sports journalists in the world, including journalists dedicated to each Premier League team, so every fan gets the coverage they need. You don't deserve just the big clubs and you can try it free now for 30 days, see the link in the description.