Leicester City scuppered their own transfer window and Ruud van Nistelrooy is paying the price
Leicester City began the January transfer window in the relegation zone and they end it in the relegation zone, but with a back-up right-back.
It feels like it’s been an inadequate window. Watching City over these past few months, it seemed clear they needed more help in the shape of new signings. They have not been delivered.
At the very least, it seemed a top centre-back was required to try to patch up the leaky defence, and a flying winger was of importance too, given Abdul Fatawu’s injury. Many would say a new striker, to ease the burden on 38-year-old Jamie Vardy, would have been ideal as well.
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Ruud van Nistelrooy has not been given any of those. It puts him in a difficult situation, one where he has to find new solutions with a squad that has so far not been good enough to keep City above water. It will seriously test his ability as a manager.
That’s especially as Wolves, Ipswich, and Southampton, the three teams that City look like competing with for 17th place, have all done more business. They come out of the winter window having strengthened their squads to a greater degree than City.
But while it may feel like a poor window, the truth is that City were hamstrung by previous bad business. Restrictions around Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) limited what City could spend, and keen to only bring in players that improved the starting line-up, rather than merely bulk out the squad – a reasonable approach – they’ve limited themselves to just one signing.
They used up nearly all of the financial wiggle room with a summer net spend of around £50m. Half a season on, the £20m spent on Oliver Skipp, the £15m spent on Caleb Okoli, the decision to sign both Bobby De Cordova-Reid and Jordan Ayew, and the deadline-day loan of Odsonne Edouard all appears to be poor business, deals that have not improved City’s hopes of survival.
Director of football Jon Rudkin and chairman Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha have a duty to support the managers they hire, but City have continually done business for bosses that harms the long-term health of the club, by putting them at risk of PSR trouble and leaving their hands tied in future windows, as has been the case this month. Buying players that Steve Cooper wanted, rather than those that were best for the club, only to sack him after 12 games, is bad business.
But there’s plenty of examples before that too. The four-year deal for Hamza Choudhury and the three-year deal for Jannik Vestergaard at Enzo Maresca’s request also now appear to be ill-advised. City have been spending lots of money on transfer fees and wages of players that aren’t going to keep them in the Premier League.
Of course, it’s easy to call out these deals in hindsight, when they’ve not paid off. But there were a lot of doubts over many of them at the time. Spurs fans could hardly fathom they were receiving £20m for Skipp, who has started just three of City’s last 16 Premier League games.
Van Nistelrooy seemed to have less of a short-term approach. He explained he didn’t want to do any deals that would harm the long-term health of the club.
The Dutchman said at the start of January: “I feel a strong responsibility to get the right players in, and in the right positions where it’s important for the squad and for the club in the long term. It’s a delicate process. It takes time. It requires a lot of effort and work to bring in the right guys at the right time.”
But even so, how is he feeling now? In his very first press conference, he spoke of having had conversations with the club around January business and what the club would be able to do. Surely it was expected that he would see more than one arrival, more than just £3m spent. He would be forgiven for being upset. But City cannot afford to have a frustrated manager when they’re in the thick of a relegation battle.
The positives are that, once Wilfred Ndidi returns to fitness this week, they do have at least two fit players for every position, something that has not always been the case after a transfer window. The £3m signing of Woyo Coulibaly seems like a sensible one. It’s certainly of minimal risk and seems like the sort of business City should do more often, signing players who are close to the ends of their contracts for smaller fees.
Rejecting deals for homegrown players like Kasey McAteer and Luke Thomas, at a time when the club are trying to negotiate PSR difficulties, may seem unwise, but they could not go through with such deals without having better (but still affordable) players lined up to come in. They can’t leave van Nistelrooy short on numbers as well as short on quality.
The lack of arrivals will lead to questions over the handling of Tom Cannon’s exit though. The Republic of Ireland striker did want to leave and there were two teams in Sheffield United and Sunderland who were willing to pay more than City originally spent on him. This was a player who had been deemed not good enough by two managers in Maresca and Cooper, and this was an opportunity to make a profit on him, one that may not have been available again. It’s not a terrible deal.
However, given the money was not reinvested back into the squad, would it not have been better to wait until the summer and then assess him again, at which point Cannon would have completed the first full season of his senior career? There’s always a risk to selling a player, and that it may look like a poor decision in the future, but given the Cannon money hasn’t been used to help City’s survival bid, it seems a hasty call.
But if City do go down, the post-mortem is not going to pin the relegation on the decision to sell Cannon, nor on their January window as a whole. Instead, the problem will be the bad business they have done over the past few years that’s put them in this restricted position in the first place.
