Over the past 12 months Leicester City have transformed into one of the richest clubs in the country, only 8 years after nearly going out of business. The new owners from Thailand, King Power, have injected high levels of money into the club, and now aim to become a regular Premier League side. To ensure this goal is achieved they are willing to pay extraordinary amounts of money to bring in the high quality needed. Already this summer around £10 million has been spent on new players, and more is likely to follow. With big named players, including Yakubu, Emile Heskey and Owen Hargreaves all linked with moves to the foxes, as a result of the high profile manager, Sven Goran Eriksson’s reputation in the game.
This isn’t taking the wage bill into account with players such as Matt Mills supposedly on £30,000 a week, which is higher than many Premier League clubs can afford, let alone Championship. Last season the manager utilised the loan market, bringing in six players all with very high wages, including Yakubu, who was thought to have been offered more money than he was currently earning at Premier League side Everton.
This season to ensure the team is prepared for their title push, high quality opponents have been arranged for friendly matches. Bursaspor & Valencia are ready to go up against the foxes in Austria, and at the end of the month the mighty Real Madrid will visit the King Power Stadium, in a deal worth £1 million. Is this taking it too far by the new owners and eliminating competition in the Championship?
Or is this just the way football operates today, with a greater number of clubs becoming involved in big money investments from abroad. With the majority of championship sides unable to attract Premier League stars to drop a division, let alone match ridiculous wage bills. This season will provide an interesting insight into whether or not money can buy success, or if it takes more than money to create a winning formula. Also how long this sum of money can be injected into club before it becomes unsustainable and other means of generating funds have to be assessed.
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Are people just jealous that Leicester City are spending so much money, if their clubs had the opportunity to spend as much money as Leicester would they turn it down and say ”its not right to do this” NO they would not.
As a Leicester fan, does it bother me ?? NO it certainly does not. We spend big amounts of money as fans to watch our clubs every week so its going to be great to see a better standard of players at the KP Stadium. Reports like this make Leicester look like villains, but not much was said about Chelsea & co. Instead people were saying what a great team they are etc….
Its not our money that the Thai owners are throwing about, so lets leave them to it and enjoy i say.
Are Leicester City going about business in the right way? YES. The club has been taken over by Thai owners who see the club as a perfect investment. The club has a massive fan base, excellent history and reputation and a good stadium therefore an ideal team to invest in.
The owners have invested (10 million on players + a world class manager) in order to get a team not only good enough for the Championship but that can go up and stay up in the Premiership.
The owners will also see this as an opportunity to increase the interest in football in Thailand and Asia as a whole, creating links with Thai players and the club.
Good business for LCFC and a good investment for the Thai owners.
As chris newbold said as a Leicester fan do I really care? As an outsider looking in the Thai owners are seemingly throwing their cash about but they know what they are doing and have spent it wisely.
For starters they have spent money on restructuring how the entire club is run as a business employing new CEOs, etc.
They have made improvements to the ground expanding the shop (a good stream of revenue) relaid the pitch and fitted big screens, all to make it a better experience for the fans.
Also they have (and this is the key word here) INVESTED in good quality young players, the likes of matt mills, lee peltier and kasper schmeichel for an estimated £1.5m, and if he takes after his dad as a city fan I can only rub my hands with glee!
You say city are spending big money, £10m, but for that £10m we have 8 quality players. The latest being john pantsil, a man who has 66 caps for Ghana and has only ever played in the premiership since he moved to England in 2005. All that experience and not a penny spent on a transfer fee.
lastly we have Sven goran-eriksson at the helm, a man with an enormous wealth of experience at club and international level to help turn the owners premiership dreams into reality. Last season he came in when city were rock bottom of the championship with a completely deflated team. Sven immediately identified key areas and brought in class loan signings such as Kyle naughton to help turn things around. Not only did he turn things around but we surged up the table and only narrowly missed out on the play offs.
So if Sven can emulate that kind of form again and with a with a strengthened squad, Leicester city are strong candidates for promotion this season.
Money well spent? I think so.
As a Leicester Season ticket holder for 20 years, I personally want to see our club performing on the biggest stage possible and I’m very excited by the new season. Do I think by spending lots of money will improve our chances of promotion? Definitely! Do I think it will guarantee promotion to the premiership? No! What this article failed to mention was that the new owners have brought in Susan Whelan as our new CEO who was instrumental in growing the King Power brand in the far east. They want her to be able to expand the Leicester City brand around the world, in particular in the far east to ensure the club generate more sponsorship and much needed income to become a successful and more importantly have a sustainable future as a football club. As well as doing this they have invested money in rebuilding our training facilities and making improvements to our stadium to improve the match day experience. The owners realise the fans are the most important people at our football club and we have averaged over 20,000+ every home game since our stadium opened through the good times (premier league) and the bad (league 1). Football has changed over the last 10 years and the Premier and champions league is dictating it’s future… Would I rather be a fan of a football team aspiring to compete at the highest level possible or would I rather go back 8 years to when we had to lay off the lady who cleaned the kits to save money? Some people may argue that we could end up in that position again with irresponsible spending, however I personally believe we are investing in the correct infrastructure behind the scenes to support buying a new team on the field. Only time will tell but I’m feeling positive about the future!
Im a leicester fan and have been for nearly 16 years, when i wrote this article i was only offering a different argument to the current situation. Personally im extremely happy with the future and the new signings and believe the new owners are thinking of the supporters. I was just interested what outsiders thought of the club.
am not a leicester fan,but i wish them luck in their campaign to reach the promised land,but just for a minute think if they don’t get promoted and stay in the championship their wage bill will be huge,spending lots of money doesn’t always make a team some of the signings sven has brought in is a master stroke although schmeichel is crap and you’ll see that !!
What’s all the fuss about – premier league clubs spend more money on one player then we have spent on eight