Leicester City’s next manager and players’ futures analysed as vast rebuild begins

Leicester City are a Championship club, and that requires huge adjustments.

They need to swiftly cut down their wage bill and that means selling high-earning players. They then need to recruit players to replace them. And they need a new manager to coach them.

Naturally, the rebuild was the focus of our latest Q+A as City supporters looked to the future. You can read our answers below.

Q: Who do you think will be the next City manager? Are there up-and-coming managers out there? Also, do you think we have talented young players who could step up in the Championship?

A: That’s a tough question to answer at the moment. Their number one target was always Graham Potter, but now they’re a Championship club, I don’t know if they would be able to convince him. Despite his time at Chelsea, I think his stock remains high.

In terms of up-and-coming managers, Kieran McKenna at Ipswich is the stand-out candidate. Their record over the final few months of the League One season was outstanding. But a move for somebody like that depends on how much emphasis City put on a manager being at the heart of a team’s success, because they would have to pay to get him out of Portman Road.

The two academy players in the team who I think could make a fist of regular Championship football are the two who are recovering from ACL injuries: Alves and Braybrooke. However, with such a big squad rebuild needed, I would be tempted to play a fair few in pre-season and see if they are good enough to fill out the squad. I’m thinking of the likes of Nelson, McAteer, Wormleighton, Marcal-Madivadua, and Maswanhise.

Q: Do you think Rudkin will leave or be sacked?

A: No, I’ve certainly not heard anything to suggest that, and I would have doubts over that happening. He’s highly trusted by the chairman. That he and Whelan were in place for the success City have had over the past decade I suspect means Top will stand by them.

Q: Do you know how many (if any) of our squad have wage reduction relegation clauses? I fear for the future of the club with our wage-to-revenue ratio and stricter FFP in the Championship.

A: Some definitely do, certainly those more recently recruited, but I don’t know if it was standard practice to write those clauses into contracts when City were doing well. For a good few years, it seemed like relegation was not even a possibility, so possibly not.

Reducing the wage bill is the biggest job for the club, maybe even more so than getting the right manager in. They need to make themselves sustainable financially and that means getting players off the wage bill sharpish. Thankfully, the strict FFP rules in the Championship do give some leniency to sides who have been in the Premier League, and so they should be able to steer clear of breaking any rules for now. But their revenue, around £220m in 21-22, is going to fall by £100m at the very least. The place where they save money is on their wage bill, which stood at £182m in 21-22.

Q: When do you think Leicester will bring in a new manager? Would we be able to spend a decent amount this summer and if so when do you think we would start bringing players in?

A: It’s one of the priority jobs, so I would hope a new manager is in place in the next couple of weeks. Certainly, they need to be in position before the start of pre-season training, which I imagine will begin at the end of June to give themselves six weeks to get ready for the Championship season.

With the way the club operate now in terms of their recruitment, I don’t think it’s imperative that a new manager needs to be in before transfers can start, but it probably would be better for all involved if they were.

They will only be able to spend what they make from sales. They’re going to have a lot of positions they need to fill, and so cash needs to be spread out. But thankfully, they should be able to make a fair bit of money from selling the likes of Maddison, Barnes, Castagne, Ndidi, and Iheanacho. Between those five players, you would hope they can raise more than £120m. Sales will come before signings.

Q: How many players will leave Leicester?

A: A lot. Comfortably more than half. I think there’s only a handful I can definitely say will remain, like Souttar, Kristiansen, and Dewsbury-Hall. And then there are a few maybes, like Ward, Iversen, Smithies, Ricardo, Justin, Faes, Thomas, Vardy, and Daka, with Choudhury and Albrighton potentially coming back into the fold after their loan spells.

Q: I’d really like to understand Jon Rudkin’s position. I would have thought wages and contracts totally out of control sits squarely as his door? And why on earth did we see absolutely no emotion or reaction when City scored their first goal in the last match against West Ham?

A: Yes, you are right that contracts and wages are Rudkin’s domain. The contract issue is the main one for me. There needed to be more work done to get players out of the door that they didn’t want to stay, particularly Tielemans and Soyuncu. On good contracts, both are £30m players. With one year left, I’d still rate both at around £15m each. But now they’re leaving for nothing. At £15m for a replacement for each, it may have been that the quality didn’t match up, but they could have bought players with potential there. However, because they didn’t sell, they didn’t have a chance to buy young, hungry players.

It’s not that Rudkin can be blamed for players like Tielemans not signing contracts. It wasn’t anything to do with money, he just wants to play Champions League football. But not getting even a little bit of money for him by lowering the valuation was a big problem.

As for why he didn’t celebrate, I don’t think that’s worthy of criticism. There’s an angle from near Iversen as well and while Faes goes wild when Barnes’ goal goes in, Evans barely reacts. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t happy about it, but it’s just that he knew that the job wasn’t done. It’s probably the same with Rudkin.

Q: Why is no one talking about George Hirst? He’s done well at Ipswich since January. Could do well in the Championship? Personally, we could also do a lot worse than bring back Choudhury and Albrighton. It would save some money.

A: The thing with Hirst is that he’s so far struggled when he’s been in the Championship, either with Rotherham or with Blackburn. He’s done well in League One with Portsmouth and now with Ipswich, so maybe now is the time he will be able to make the step up. But I can’t be confident that he would come back to City and do really well. Also, the club may be able to keep Daka and/or Vardy, and so then a striker would not be a priority. In that case, they could sell Hirst and invest the money into other areas of the team.

As for Choudhury and Albrighton, they are interesting cases. City clearly want to be a Premier League team again, so do they bring on board players they decided were not good enough for a Premier League team? But equally, you’d back both to be good enough to contribute in the Championship. Both started well at their loan clubs before underwhelming. Choudhury, though, still finished second in the division for tackles and interceptions, so he would definitely offer something.

Q: Let’s say we sell £100m worth of players and reduce the wages, how much realistically do you think we will be able to re-invest? With the mass exodus we are likely to see, do you think we will be able to put together a competitive squad to challenge for the play-offs?

A: As long as the wages come down drastically, as they should do with the players who are leaving, then they should be able to invest a good portion of the money they receive in sales. However, there are going to be so many gaps in the squad to fill, especially with eight leaving on free transfers, that those funds are going to have to be spread around the team. Let’s say they get £40m for Maddison, you’d probably be looking at getting in three players at £10m each and then pocketing the rest to cover the cost of wages throughout the season.

Whether that squad will be competitive enough to challenge for promotion, it is difficult to say. That will 100 per cent be the aim, but the rebuild is going to be so vast that it’s going to require team-mates to gel and players to get on the manager’s wavelength very quickly.

Q: Where does relegation leave the stadium expansion and redevelopment plans?

A: I’m still trying to establish that. When the plans were first published, I was told that relegation would not hamper any stadium development, and that the club were committed to it whatever division they were in. However, whether that’s the case in reality, I’m not sure. Hopefully the answer to that question will become clearer in the next couple of weeks.

Q: How much influence did Rodgers have in transfers, contracts, and player retention?

A: In terms of transfers, he had his say, yes, particularly in the summer of 2021. While Daka and Soumare were players picked out by the scouting and recruitment team, he had a big hand in the arrivals of Bertrand, Vestergaard, and Lookman. That was interesting because I’d always got the impression that he didn’t like that he was so involved with transfers when he was at Liverpool, but felt obliged to be because the ownership were new there and didn’t have the best grasp on their recruitment department.

But changes were made at City when Martyn Glover came in. Rodgers had very little involvement in the signings of Souttar, Kristiansen, and Tete, but for the fact he wanted players in those positions.

In terms of contracts, he had very little say, and in terms of player retention, I don’t think he had much either. He was always saying that the club shouldn’t be afraid to sell players. Certainly, when he came back into work last summer, he was expecting a number of his players to have been sold, and yet they were all still there.

Q: Who would you want as the new manager, and which positions do they have to strengthen immediately? What would be your current prediction where we will finish next season?

A: Of the names being bandied about, I do really like Kieran McKenna at Ipswich. I think he’s a manager too that would please fans, which would be a very good start for the hierarchy winning everyone back over.

As for which positions need strengthening, I think the obvious two will be on the wing and in attacking midfield, replacing Maddison and Barnes when they inevitably leave. City don’t have anybody in their ranks who can replicate what they did, so those are definitely two positions they are going to need to sign players in.

There is so much that could yet happen for me to make an accurate prediction. But right now I would probably say 8th. They have two months of good decisions to make that prediction more positive.

Q: Do you know if Vardy is going to stay and help the team return to the Premier League?

A: That’s a good question because it’s one that’s up in the air. Nearly every factor points to him staying, in terms of his contract, his age, his ability, his commitment to the club, but there is the issue of his wages. He is the club’s highest earner, and it feels like they can’t have a player as costly as he is in the Championship unless they are going to contribute amazingly. Can that still be guaranteed of Vardy? I’m not sure. Certainly his period under Smith gave an indication that there is still a spark there.

The only other matter would be whether he wants to. He may feel that relegation signals an end to his time at the club. I don’t think he would go to another English club though. I could only see him moving to the US if he does leave.

Q: Do you think the board already have a shortlist drawn up for the manager’s job?

A: They definitely did have a shortlist for potential managers they could target in the event that Rodgers left to one of the clubs that were eyeing him up. The problem was, they couldn’t really turn to that shortlist in the aftermath of his sacking, because the people on that list would not have been keen to take over a club battling relegation.

I imagine, if the recruitment team were starting to look at potential players for the Championship even a couple of weeks before they went down, then the hierarchy would have been looking at potential managers too. Potter will still be high on their list, but convincing him to drop to the Championship would be a challenge.