Assuming you still went on to purchase/promote the same players you now have, as well as keeping those in the OP, they'd probably all get in your squad, being in and out of the first team which could be the difference between being top for a week or so and having a squad you'd expect to be in the title race for the whole season, and every season. Apart from Drinkwater, don't think he'd even be back up for you now.
Maguire would be good cover for League Cup matches. You sold at the right time and the right price with all your cast offs.
Great article and spot on, I would always prefer to keep our best players and buy to improve the squad as well. As we can’t really do that, best thing is to sell high and replace well and we have certainly done that.
The recruitment staff at Leicester have done a great job in selling on the best players and replacing well and you've now built a young squad that's more than capable of handling themselves at the top level.
The biggest issue I think you will run into is when the likes of Vardy, Evans and Schmeichel move on due to their age which is probably closer than what it is further away. I can imagine their experience go a long way in that squad.
leicester are the PL's Dortmund.
brilliant eye for spotting talent but not seen as a massive club, so their better players tend to leave.
may sound harsh but its reality
comment by dunc manson... you must follow ole... you must follow ole (U11713)
posted 8 minutes ago
leicester are the PL's Dortmund.
brilliant eye for spotting talent but not seen as a massive club, so their better players tend to leave.
may sound harsh but its reality
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dortmund are the second biggest club in Germany.
Dortmund not recognised as a massive club? They are one of the biggest in Germany without question, probably second only to Bayern.
yes they are.. but how many big players actually choose to go to dortmund compared to those who leave?
when did dortmund go out and spend big on a player??
you go back in time and all their big players have ended up leaving apart from probably marco Reus.
Gundogan
lewandowski, hummels and goetze all left to join bayern
Sahin
Aubameyang
pulisic
Kagawa
Mkhitaryan
liklihood is sancho and Haaland will be next
second bigest club in germany yes.. a club that can keep hold of their best players when elite clubs come knocking...no
Massively impressed with Leicester this season, and Maddison is one of my favourite players in the PL. Hope we give you guys a blank cheque to sign him.
I don't think you'll win the league though, not with Brendan at the helm, but I do expect you to comfortably finish top 4.
Interesting fans of other Clubs call them 'our best' players
Kante and Mahrez left not too long after the Title Winning Season, two of our 'Best' players which we couldn't do anything about wanting to leave.
The Rest, well 'Gotcha'
I've always said about Maguire: Man Utd weren't just buying a centre back, they were buying a captain. We didn't need that from him. Ultimately I don't think Man Utd regret buying him, (although I'm sure they accept internally £80m was way too much,) and we certainly don't regret selling him.
Chilwell I can't make my mind up on. He started at Chelsea with a bang, but last night he looked very much back to last season's Chilwell - make a run up the line, stop, then pass it backwards to the centre halves and recycle. But then nobody looked that good in a Chelsea shirt last night so he couldn't be picked out. There's still a player in there though, and we should remember that he's still England's left back while Justin... isn't.
Yet.
Drinkwater of course is a different matter. We got rid of him at almost exactly the right time, give or take 14 seconds.
We can speculate as to how we'd be now with those players still in the team, although it kind of depends what conditions you put on it. For instance, would the squad have been built the same way if Mahrez was still here? Because Albrighton and Perez, for their faults, provide defensive of pressing energy that frees up Harvey Barnes more on the other side. Kante is a brilliant player, but you wouldn't play both him and Wilf, surely? That would be overkill. And, if we hadn't sold those players for what I roughly count as in the region of £250m total, would we have brought in other players like Tielemans and Castagne, or have a brand new training ground? (How that hasn't been named the Harry Maguire Training Centre yet, I don't know.)
Leicester have done well to rebuild after player sales, similar to how everyone said Liverpool would fall away when Coutinho left 2 years ago. It's not always the case.
I don't think you can consistently sell your best players and replace them all the time, as Southampton have found out up until recently. The risk is replacing them with good enough players, something that's always a gamble.
Although with Leicester in Europe and looking on course for the CL this season, then there is certainly a good chance of keeping hold of your best players if PL clubs come calling.
I think it’s less about selling our assets, it’s more about the unbelievable recruitment we have delivered over. A sustainable period now.
It’s only ok to lose players if you have a replacement ready.
Chilwell is a great example of that. We were willing to let him go as we knew his limitations and also that we had Castagne on our radar. Now that is shrewd business. Whatever anyone tells me, we have sold Chilwell and recruited 2 better players in Castagne and Justin.
My non-supporting Leicester friends we messaging me on how good those two players were last night.
Now, the benefit we now have is that we don’t need to sell. As an example, we can hold on to Fofana for 1-2 seasons even if Man City come calling. Ultimately we’ll sell but by that point our recruitment team have identified a better player (see Maguire vs Fofana)!
So I think we’ve come up with a great process of only selling 1 top asset when we’re ready to replace.
Now this only continue to work if the recruitment process works. So far so good!
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 44 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I think you can add in there the lure of the bright lights of the big Cities, either London or Manchester.
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kante has always been the one that irritated me the most. We were in the Champions League, he would have got a bumper new contract and all I really expected was one more year. He would surely have got the opportunity again the following season.
Mahrez and Drinkwater I could sort of understand - even if Riyad did have a major sulk and I never really expected Danny’s to work out anyway.
Maguire and Chilwell have worked out perfectly. We have better players and a stronger squad without them. My only regret of selling them is it brings it home that we still can’t compete when clubs come calling and not what they brought to the team.
comment by Jobyfox (U4183)
posted 4 minutes ago
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kante has always been the one that irritated me the most. We were in the Champions League, he would have got a bumper new contract and all I really expected was one more year. He would surely have got the opportunity again the following season.
Mahrez and Drinkwater I could sort of understand - even if Riyad did have a major sulk and I never really expected Danny’s to work out anyway.
Maguire and Chilwell have worked out perfectly. We have better players and a stronger squad without them. My only regret of selling them is it brings it home that we still can’t compete when clubs come calling and not what they brought to the team.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This, this and this!
It was so deflating when Kante left because of the fact everyone talks about got to be on the champions league bla bla bla and then we win the league, in it and he still left! Peed me right off
(Gonna ignore the fact he won the league the next year)
Kante annoyed me as I felt he owed us. We made his career and he only gave us one measly season.
Not a bad one mind.
Mahrez a d DD has served us for a much longer period so I was less bothered.
Who would have thought we’d actually replace Kante. Ndidi for me is ahead of him right now. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
“ I don't think you can consistently sell your best players and replace them all the time”
To be fair, we’ve only did this twice -
One was because of a clause and we have replaced him (belatedly to an extent.
And the other was done eventually on our terms and only because a player kept pushing and pushing for it.
Other than that, it hasn’t happened.
All other players were because we were happy we had better and/or could acquire better. That’s the whole ethos of competent transfer business plus the ridiculous profits we make.
I’m not sure I agree about the comparison with Southampton - we have shown ourselves to be significantly stronger when it comes to transfers and bringing in quality, pound for pound (both financially and from a quality perspective) I’m not sure there is anyone at the moment who equals Leicester for what they do in that department
In addition, we, on the whole keep our best players for years and years - it’s part and parcel of what makes us such a tight knit club and why we can continue to evolve even through devastating loss and change
A few points to add. I note what is being said that we appear to have a stable version of the Southampton model but I'm not convinced - I've still got the feeling that it is not a sustainable way forward and only a matter of time before it ends in tears. I'll freely admit that this is generally (I'll expand on that shortly) not the case at present, our recent acquisitions have been superb.
I don't see us being able to change this situation, we're unlikely ever to be seen as a 'big' club, so the Kantes of the world will always tend to choose the Chelseas. Even within our limited geographical area Forest will have their proponents as being the biggest club in the area due to their two European cups, despite being a similar sized club.
One of the things I find amusing - no doubt many other LCFC supporters do also - is that we've been able to sell a couple of defenders for top dollar to 'big' clubs who weren't that good at defending (Maguire and Chilwell to be specific).
Expanding a bit on the 'generally' above, there is one position where our recruitment has been conspicuously poor, albeit understandably so due to the difficulty in finding good talent there and not least the current occupant - centre forward. By the way, finding someone for a measly million quid who is not only a top quality striker but has been willing to be loyal to the club (given the 'big' club issue) has to go down as the best business done by the club recently. That doesn't change the fact that Vardy isn't getting any younger, although he fortunately does not show many signs of slowing down despite his age - long may that continue.
^^^^ Nuneaton,
Good post - and it's also my worry that this isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Ok, people have pointed out the great recruitment that we’ve done, but there is always a risk when you dip into the transfer market. We still have our expensively purchased flops like Musa, Slimani, Silva and Ghezzal amongst others to demonstrate what happens when this goes wrong.
I like KTF’s optimism that the selling of the likes of Maguire and Chilwell was a carefully managed exercise of selling players and replacing with targets we’d already identified - and there is some truth in this - but also some good fortune that the new recruits have settled so well. I believe, however, that the sales were really generated by financial necessity rather than a desire to rotate the squad.
The rich six have revenues and turnover that dwarf ours. That means that they can pay vast amounts more than us on wages, whilst the percentage of wages we pay compared to our turnover is actually still higher than theirs. We have to do this just to try and compete. This has to be addressed periodically before it gets out of control.
It’s a bit out of date (as it’s based on 18/19 data), but this phenomenon is explained here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.footballcritic.com/amp/article.php%3fuid=1048
The owners are investing in the stadium to try and increase other revenue streams. Our brand and marketing has increased, particularly in the Asian market being a Thai owned club, but we’re playing a long game here. Success will bring better exposure, but you can’t have success without better players - and that means higher wages.
If the model of replacing sought after players for high fees and then replacing with more players with, in some circumstances, even greater potential can be maintained - then it’s a genius strategy. Too many Slimanis and Musas, however, and it would quickly unravel.
I have a Man U supporting friend who lives quite near me and he trots old the old lazy mantra that Leicester are a selling club and I can't seem to get him to contemplate the fact that the big six deliberately unsettle out players and turn their heads.
Once they've done that, ultimately we end up with no option to sell them, someone posted above that young me prefer to live in London or the cool side of Manchester and I'm afraid Gallowtree Gate and Highcross just doesn't cut it. Couple that with the riches they can amass from the top 6, not to mention the kudos of playing for one of the biggest clubs in the country and we are asking too much from our young talent to turn it down.
Now at long last we aren't bullied into rolling over as in previous times and can hold out for big money and over the top prices, but ultimately we know once their head's been turned, they're going.
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posted on 20/1/21
Assuming you still went on to purchase/promote the same players you now have, as well as keeping those in the OP, they'd probably all get in your squad, being in and out of the first team which could be the difference between being top for a week or so and having a squad you'd expect to be in the title race for the whole season, and every season. Apart from Drinkwater, don't think he'd even be back up for you now.
posted on 20/1/21
Maguire would be good cover for League Cup matches. You sold at the right time and the right price with all your cast offs.
posted on 20/1/21
Great article and spot on, I would always prefer to keep our best players and buy to improve the squad as well. As we can’t really do that, best thing is to sell high and replace well and we have certainly done that.
posted on 20/1/21
The recruitment staff at Leicester have done a great job in selling on the best players and replacing well and you've now built a young squad that's more than capable of handling themselves at the top level.
The biggest issue I think you will run into is when the likes of Vardy, Evans and Schmeichel move on due to their age which is probably closer than what it is further away. I can imagine their experience go a long way in that squad.
posted on 20/1/21
leicester are the PL's Dortmund.
brilliant eye for spotting talent but not seen as a massive club, so their better players tend to leave.
may sound harsh but its reality
posted on 20/1/21
comment by dunc manson... you must follow ole... you must follow ole (U11713)
posted 8 minutes ago
leicester are the PL's Dortmund.
brilliant eye for spotting talent but not seen as a massive club, so their better players tend to leave.
may sound harsh but its reality
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dortmund are the second biggest club in Germany.
posted on 20/1/21
Dortmund not recognised as a massive club? They are one of the biggest in Germany without question, probably second only to Bayern.
posted on 20/1/21
yes they are.. but how many big players actually choose to go to dortmund compared to those who leave?
when did dortmund go out and spend big on a player??
you go back in time and all their big players have ended up leaving apart from probably marco Reus.
Gundogan
lewandowski, hummels and goetze all left to join bayern
Sahin
Aubameyang
pulisic
Kagawa
Mkhitaryan
liklihood is sancho and Haaland will be next
second bigest club in germany yes.. a club that can keep hold of their best players when elite clubs come knocking...no
posted on 20/1/21
Massively impressed with Leicester this season, and Maddison is one of my favourite players in the PL. Hope we give you guys a blank cheque to sign him.
I don't think you'll win the league though, not with Brendan at the helm, but I do expect you to comfortably finish top 4.
posted on 20/1/21
Interesting fans of other Clubs call them 'our best' players
Kante and Mahrez left not too long after the Title Winning Season, two of our 'Best' players which we couldn't do anything about wanting to leave.
The Rest, well 'Gotcha'
posted on 20/1/21
I've always said about Maguire: Man Utd weren't just buying a centre back, they were buying a captain. We didn't need that from him. Ultimately I don't think Man Utd regret buying him, (although I'm sure they accept internally £80m was way too much,) and we certainly don't regret selling him.
Chilwell I can't make my mind up on. He started at Chelsea with a bang, but last night he looked very much back to last season's Chilwell - make a run up the line, stop, then pass it backwards to the centre halves and recycle. But then nobody looked that good in a Chelsea shirt last night so he couldn't be picked out. There's still a player in there though, and we should remember that he's still England's left back while Justin... isn't.
Yet.
Drinkwater of course is a different matter. We got rid of him at almost exactly the right time, give or take 14 seconds.
We can speculate as to how we'd be now with those players still in the team, although it kind of depends what conditions you put on it. For instance, would the squad have been built the same way if Mahrez was still here? Because Albrighton and Perez, for their faults, provide defensive of pressing energy that frees up Harvey Barnes more on the other side. Kante is a brilliant player, but you wouldn't play both him and Wilf, surely? That would be overkill. And, if we hadn't sold those players for what I roughly count as in the region of £250m total, would we have brought in other players like Tielemans and Castagne, or have a brand new training ground? (How that hasn't been named the Harry Maguire Training Centre yet, I don't know.)
posted on 20/1/21
Leicester have done well to rebuild after player sales, similar to how everyone said Liverpool would fall away when Coutinho left 2 years ago. It's not always the case.
posted on 20/1/21
I don't think you can consistently sell your best players and replace them all the time, as Southampton have found out up until recently. The risk is replacing them with good enough players, something that's always a gamble.
Although with Leicester in Europe and looking on course for the CL this season, then there is certainly a good chance of keeping hold of your best players if PL clubs come calling.
posted on 20/1/21
I think it’s less about selling our assets, it’s more about the unbelievable recruitment we have delivered over. A sustainable period now.
It’s only ok to lose players if you have a replacement ready.
Chilwell is a great example of that. We were willing to let him go as we knew his limitations and also that we had Castagne on our radar. Now that is shrewd business. Whatever anyone tells me, we have sold Chilwell and recruited 2 better players in Castagne and Justin.
My non-supporting Leicester friends we messaging me on how good those two players were last night.
Now, the benefit we now have is that we don’t need to sell. As an example, we can hold on to Fofana for 1-2 seasons even if Man City come calling. Ultimately we’ll sell but by that point our recruitment team have identified a better player (see Maguire vs Fofana)!
So I think we’ve come up with a great process of only selling 1 top asset when we’re ready to replace.
Now this only continue to work if the recruitment process works. So far so good!
posted on 20/1/21
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
posted on 20/1/21
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 44 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I think you can add in there the lure of the bright lights of the big Cities, either London or Manchester.
posted on 20/1/21
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kante has always been the one that irritated me the most. We were in the Champions League, he would have got a bumper new contract and all I really expected was one more year. He would surely have got the opportunity again the following season.
Mahrez and Drinkwater I could sort of understand - even if Riyad did have a major sulk and I never really expected Danny’s to work out anyway.
Maguire and Chilwell have worked out perfectly. We have better players and a stronger squad without them. My only regret of selling them is it brings it home that we still can’t compete when clubs come calling and not what they brought to the team.
posted on 20/1/21
comment by Jobyfox (U4183)
posted 4 minutes ago
comment by langleyfox (U17390)
posted 1 hour, 59 minutes ago
i always feel a regret when any player goes but have to admit it is the wages those other clubs pay .we cant match them .we had champions leauge football to offer kante and he left for more wages to a club that wasnt in europe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kante has always been the one that irritated me the most. We were in the Champions League, he would have got a bumper new contract and all I really expected was one more year. He would surely have got the opportunity again the following season.
Mahrez and Drinkwater I could sort of understand - even if Riyad did have a major sulk and I never really expected Danny’s to work out anyway.
Maguire and Chilwell have worked out perfectly. We have better players and a stronger squad without them. My only regret of selling them is it brings it home that we still can’t compete when clubs come calling and not what they brought to the team.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This, this and this!
posted on 20/1/21
It was so deflating when Kante left because of the fact everyone talks about got to be on the champions league bla bla bla and then we win the league, in it and he still left! Peed me right off
(Gonna ignore the fact he won the league the next year)
posted on 20/1/21
Kante annoyed me as I felt he owed us. We made his career and he only gave us one measly season.
Not a bad one mind.
Mahrez a d DD has served us for a much longer period so I was less bothered.
Who would have thought we’d actually replace Kante. Ndidi for me is ahead of him right now. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
posted on 20/1/21
“ I don't think you can consistently sell your best players and replace them all the time”
To be fair, we’ve only did this twice -
One was because of a clause and we have replaced him (belatedly to an extent.
And the other was done eventually on our terms and only because a player kept pushing and pushing for it.
Other than that, it hasn’t happened.
All other players were because we were happy we had better and/or could acquire better. That’s the whole ethos of competent transfer business plus the ridiculous profits we make.
I’m not sure I agree about the comparison with Southampton - we have shown ourselves to be significantly stronger when it comes to transfers and bringing in quality, pound for pound (both financially and from a quality perspective) I’m not sure there is anyone at the moment who equals Leicester for what they do in that department
In addition, we, on the whole keep our best players for years and years - it’s part and parcel of what makes us such a tight knit club and why we can continue to evolve even through devastating loss and change
posted on 21/1/21
A few points to add. I note what is being said that we appear to have a stable version of the Southampton model but I'm not convinced - I've still got the feeling that it is not a sustainable way forward and only a matter of time before it ends in tears. I'll freely admit that this is generally (I'll expand on that shortly) not the case at present, our recent acquisitions have been superb.
I don't see us being able to change this situation, we're unlikely ever to be seen as a 'big' club, so the Kantes of the world will always tend to choose the Chelseas. Even within our limited geographical area Forest will have their proponents as being the biggest club in the area due to their two European cups, despite being a similar sized club.
One of the things I find amusing - no doubt many other LCFC supporters do also - is that we've been able to sell a couple of defenders for top dollar to 'big' clubs who weren't that good at defending (Maguire and Chilwell to be specific).
Expanding a bit on the 'generally' above, there is one position where our recruitment has been conspicuously poor, albeit understandably so due to the difficulty in finding good talent there and not least the current occupant - centre forward. By the way, finding someone for a measly million quid who is not only a top quality striker but has been willing to be loyal to the club (given the 'big' club issue) has to go down as the best business done by the club recently. That doesn't change the fact that Vardy isn't getting any younger, although he fortunately does not show many signs of slowing down despite his age - long may that continue.
posted on 21/1/21
^^^^ Nuneaton,
Good post - and it's also my worry that this isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Ok, people have pointed out the great recruitment that we’ve done, but there is always a risk when you dip into the transfer market. We still have our expensively purchased flops like Musa, Slimani, Silva and Ghezzal amongst others to demonstrate what happens when this goes wrong.
I like KTF’s optimism that the selling of the likes of Maguire and Chilwell was a carefully managed exercise of selling players and replacing with targets we’d already identified - and there is some truth in this - but also some good fortune that the new recruits have settled so well. I believe, however, that the sales were really generated by financial necessity rather than a desire to rotate the squad.
The rich six have revenues and turnover that dwarf ours. That means that they can pay vast amounts more than us on wages, whilst the percentage of wages we pay compared to our turnover is actually still higher than theirs. We have to do this just to try and compete. This has to be addressed periodically before it gets out of control.
It’s a bit out of date (as it’s based on 18/19 data), but this phenomenon is explained here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.footballcritic.com/amp/article.php%3fuid=1048
The owners are investing in the stadium to try and increase other revenue streams. Our brand and marketing has increased, particularly in the Asian market being a Thai owned club, but we’re playing a long game here. Success will bring better exposure, but you can’t have success without better players - and that means higher wages.
If the model of replacing sought after players for high fees and then replacing with more players with, in some circumstances, even greater potential can be maintained - then it’s a genius strategy. Too many Slimanis and Musas, however, and it would quickly unravel.
posted on 22/1/21
I have a Man U supporting friend who lives quite near me and he trots old the old lazy mantra that Leicester are a selling club and I can't seem to get him to contemplate the fact that the big six deliberately unsettle out players and turn their heads.
Once they've done that, ultimately we end up with no option to sell them, someone posted above that young me prefer to live in London or the cool side of Manchester and I'm afraid Gallowtree Gate and Highcross just doesn't cut it. Couple that with the riches they can amass from the top 6, not to mention the kudos of playing for one of the biggest clubs in the country and we are asking too much from our young talent to turn it down.
Now at long last we aren't bullied into rolling over as in previous times and can hold out for big money and over the top prices, but ultimately we know once their head's been turned, they're going.
Page 1 of 1