Pre-Season Preview: Leicester City

With Brendan Rodgers in charge and Jamie Vardy up top, Leicester City will look to build on their league position last season.

Leicester City, who have a strong team with Kasper Schmeichel commanding his back-line and Vardy scoring 18 goals last term, ended the season in a very respectable and well-deserved ninth place.

The Premier League champions from the 2015/16 season had an all-round great squad that saw the likes of Manchester City only get a 1-0 win in May but lost at the King Power Stadium 2-1.

Transfers

Leicester have made some great additions into the club. Youri Tielemans transferred permanently for £40.5 million from Monaco, with Ayoze Perez coming from Newcastle for £30 million and James Justin signed for the Foxes from Luton Town for £6 million. Recently, Harry Maguire and Leicester reached an agreement with Manchester United for the centre-back in a deal that could be worth £90 million after add-ons for the English international. The fee will make him the most expensive centre-back in the world.

Filip Benkovic, Andy King, Islam Slimani, Adrien Silva and Fousseni Diabate all returned from the club due to their loans expiring.

Davide Lorenzo and Danny Simpson got released by the club this summer with Shinji Okazaki leaving the club on a free transfer to Malaga.

Opening six fixtures

Leicester’s first fixture is against Wolves, and with both teams fighting for the seventh place last term, this will be an exciting fixture for both teams.

Next up Chelsea will host Leicester at Stamford Bridge with this being the first of three tough matches for the Foxes, with the other two being away at Old Trafford and at home to Tottenham in September after facing Bournemouth.

Leicester will then visit Bramall Lane in their fourth Premier League fixture with the newly promoted side looking to make it a tough time for the Foxes and try and gain valuable three points in their quest to survive after getting promoted into the Premier League.

Leicester v Bournemouth will also be an interesting fixture. Both of these teams have established themselves as Premier League clubs and will be aiming to get the most out of this upcoming season.

Quotes from the coaches

Assistant manager Chris Davies spoke about the rising performance levels in the build-up to the new season and in pre-season.

He said:

“We don’t want a slow possession game which is predictable, we want one that’s fast and dynamic and very difficult to defend against and we had that.

“So that’s definitely improving and that will only come, it was a fantastic pitch today and a little bit of damp on the pitch helped as well.

“That will come as the weeks go by but I think we’re seeing now a lot of that speed of play that the manager wants and, as I say, we showed it as well so that’s excellent.”

Targets

The main aim for Leicester will be to get back nearer the top six and getting European qualification to either the Europa League or the Champions League. A decent cup run in either the FA Cup or the Carabao Cup wouldn’t go amiss.

Expected starting XI – 4-3-3

Kasper Schmeichel;

Ricardo Pereira, Wes Morgan, Jonny Evans, Ben Chilwell;

Wilfred Ndidi, Youri Tielemans; , James Maddison;

Marc Albrighton; Ayoze Perez, Jamie Vardy.