Among the three teams relegated from the Premier League this year, Leicester City is considered to have the strongest lineup, and it seems to be the one that can return to the Premier League the fastest.
However, as long as they have a little in-depth understanding of the situation of Leicester City, the English media will find that their prospects are far less optimistic than imagined!
Leicester City is considered by the outside world to have the most luxurious and expensive relegation lineup in the history of the Premier League. This is of course not an honorable ranking.
However, the team has always been selling players in the transfer market in the past, so even if the team is relegated, it seems that Leicester City can recover part of the funds by selling players as the start-up funds for the team's reconstruction.
Previously, under the exaggeration of some English media, it seemed that Maddison and Barnes alone could extract a transfer fee of more than 100 million pounds from the market.
In addition, teams that are relegated from the Premier League enjoy the so-called relegation protection clause. Although the amount and distribution method are more complicated after the restructuring, it at least guarantees that the team will spend thousands of dollars each year in the first three seasons of the English Championship. extra income of £10,000.
Therefore, Leicester City's hope of returning to the Premier League in the short term seems to be considerable, at least they don't seem to need to worry too much about funds.
However, 캡사이트 believes that the future of this team will not be so smooth.
And one of the most important reasons for this is precisely that Rodgers has chosen to forcefully retain the main players in the team in the last two seasons. Although a considerable number of stars failed to transfer, the club failed to renew their contracts after staying on the team. The management of the contract is extremely chaotic, and the unhealthy salary structure of the entire team can be imagined.
In the weeks after relegation alone, Leicester City will have seven players whose contracts expire in June. This includes Thielemann and Seingu.
Thielemann was once a popular target in the summer transfer market in 2021. That was also the only year after Leicester City won the championship that no considerable transfer income was recorded.
And even last summer, if these two players were sold, Leicester City would not be embarrassed to become the only team in the five major leagues without any summer signings in the first round of the season.
What makes the situation even worse is that in addition to the 7 players who are about to leave the team, there are 8 other players whose contracts will expire next summer.
However, Leicester City may not be able to take care of what will happen a year later. It is too far away for them. The team must first prepare for relegation financially.
The first to bear the brunt is the current wage bill of as much as 180 million pounds, which is also the highest wage bill outside the traditional top 6 of the Premier League.
Previously, due to the high broadcast fees of the Premier League, Leicester City's accounts in May last year showed that the club's annual income could reach 214 million pounds.
After falling into the British Championship, the team's income is expected to drop sharply to 70 million pounds, which is not even enough to pay a fraction of the salaries of existing players. Even if a large number of players leave the team this summer, the remaining salary bills are still enough to cause headaches for the team.
According to BBC statistics, Leicester City's current total loan scale has reached 344 million pounds, but a considerable part of it comes from the team's Thai owner's company, which has just canceled the team's 1.94 pounds of debt earlier this season. .
In addition, the club has reached an agreement with Macquarie Bank in Australia, so that a sum of money can be obtained through loans in advance to meet urgent needs, and the mortgage is the proceeds from the sale of players in the future transfer market, as well as the end of the season. Television broadcast fees are divided into.
However, the interest that the club needs to pay on this loan every quarter is close to 20 million pounds. What does this mean? The English media pointed out that as the team is now relegated to the British Championship, the funds brought by the so-called parachute clause will be completely sucked up by the black hole of expenditure brought by this piece of interest.
In this summer's transfer market, Leicester City may not be as strong as before.
Sports finance expert Kieran Maguire believes that Leicester’s plans this summer may not only happen at the player level, but now the buyer’s position is not what it used to be: “No one wants players to disperse after relegation, but the corresponding scale The abolition of work will still happen.
Some players hold well-paid contracts. Since the club did not anticipate the short-term risk of relegation, their contracts do not even have a salary reduction clause after relegation, which also means that they will become a burden on the club next season. In this case, when suitors flock, Leicester City will be in a far weaker position than before. "
In addition to the imminent loss of a large number of players, Leicester City's coaching candidates for next season are also unknown.
With the team's relegation, Dean Smith's contract with the club, which failed to fight the fire, also came to an end.
After the final game of the league, although Smith issued a declaration that the team will return strongly, he also admitted that he has no idea about whether to stay next season: "I don't know (whether I can stay), we didn't even talk about it or With that in mind, my job requires me to focus on each round."
In fact, Leicester City has been looking for a new coach for next season in the last two months of the season. The BBC revealed that they had approached Potter, who had just been fired by Chelsea, but the latter said it would be best to wait until the end of the season to see, implying that they were unwilling to accept coaching a Championship team next season.
Now that Leicester have been relegated, the financial crisis is underway, and the lineup is facing dismantling, it is naturally difficult for Potter to be interested in taking over.
In addition, Leicester was once very satisfied with the former Leeds coach Marsh, and even offered Marsh's coaching staff a three-year contract, but was also declined by the American coach. The reason given was that it was not suitable for him to take over. opportunity.
The last time Leicester City was relegated from the Premier League was in the 2003-04 season, after which they worked hard in the lower leagues for 10 years before returning to the Premier League.
In these 10 seasons, the team spent another year in the third tier league (League One). This time, if Leicester City wants to return to the top league, it may also have to go through a journey of purgatory for a long time.