LCCFox96

Ward stood out today because just about every fan will tell you he’s probably the next man on the list for upgrading. GK and depth in the wide attacking positions are the majority stand outs on this current squad.

The balance this guy brings our team makes our attack so much more dangerous. Thought we set-up to accommodate our attacking players extremely well today. Iheancho dropping deep, linking play and making late darts into the box, Barnes and Tete running beyond him and cutting inside, with Maddison pulling the strings behind them. That’s a dangerous, dangerous attack. Our starting 11 has massively improved this window. My only concern is depth in the wide attacking positions but by Christ are we due a good run with injuries.

This lad is a serious player. Some lovely pieces play on show and he just gives off that steely aura that he’s up for the scrap and ready to dig in. Loved it when he close lined their player, dumped him on his arse and gave him mouthful when he was on the floor. Have some of that. Wish all our players did that.

What do you think would win in a fight? 1 quintuple decker bus sized Harry Souttar, or 100 Harry Souttar sized quintuple decker buses?

Thanks for compiling - hopefully a more successful second half of the season than first half for most of our loanees. Things I’d love to see from the loanee group are: - Choudhury kicking on from where he left off pre-injury and getting that previously mentioned permanent move to Watford. - Stolarczyk and Nelson to get some good game time versus their original loans, and McAteer to establish himself more than he did at Forest Green. - Hirst to have a similarly successful time in League 1 as he did at Portsmouth to raise his value ahead of hopeful summer sale. I’m really excited to see what Opoku is all about. Find it mad that Eppiah is still with us at 24, and has never had a sniff at first team level. Surely his number is up this summer.

Assuming all of the new boys are fit and we aren’t risking injury or longer term set backs with Kristiansen’s pre-season fitness levels and Souttar’s knock, then for me they all have to start. We’ll have had a new system/set-up in mind that these guys will slot into, and I think there are some major merits to going all in on game 1 and giving an opponent something really different to think about. We’ve been far too predictable and easy to play against recently and it’s nice to have options again rather than scraping the barrel with injuries. I’d go something like: Ward Castagne Souttar Faes Kristiansen Mendy Tielemans Tete Maddison Barnes Iheanacho I’m not 100% with leaving KDH out but I don’t see us starting without a player to screen the back 4, and I don’t think Tielemans will miss out. With better balance on both wingers, I’d like to see Iheanacho start to link up and bring the 3x quality attacking players behind him into the game but suspect it’ll be Daka who is favoured.

I don't get this at all. Perez or Albrighton going, fine. Both of them going to leave us with two fit wingers is mental. We're about to enter a relegation dog fight. Marc Albrighton is not the kind of guy I'd be letting go for a dog fight. Real shame.

If I could hand pick one player in the squad to move on it would be this guy. It's such a mind blowingly frustrating waste of resources because - to a man - the fan base pretty much called this out. He was never, ever going to be a good fit, he had limited resale value, and we knew we'd be stuck with him on an expensive mid-length contract. Yet, here we are - lumped with this bloody carthorse. At least with Bertrand the signing made sense as a free agent to cover a position we had injuries in at the time, and we only have 6months left on his deal vs 18months.

Man City and Newcastle both slogging it out for him will absolutely minimise the risk of a lower fee with 1 year left on his deal too.

Assuming Souttar's medical goes through fine, we now have a LB, a CB, and a left-footed RW in place. Those were priority positions. With the possible exception of GK, I would say this is the next highest priority. If there's a chance we can get it done, we hopefully will push hard. Harrison has a lot of attributes that would aid our fight to climb the table. Is he the most attractive option out there and the first choice for the fans? No. Does he improve the squad substantially? I'd argue yes. Barnes / Harrison and Tete / Albrighton is streaks ahead of our wide options at the start of the month in Barnes and Perez / Albrighton. That's in terms of quality, output, and depth. Harrison's blood and thunder high intensity style of play will appeal massively to our fans too. I was initially put off by the fee, and the fact we hadn't got Tete done. The fee isn't going to be a high as the first mooted £35m and Tete is here now. If the club, Glover, and Rodgers are aligned this couple be a very good addition. Hopefully we can shift at least Perez and Soyuncu to help balance the books too.

Qui est Fofana?

Souttar ticks all kinds of boxes: - Aggressive, physical, 6ft6 mountain of a bloke to beef up our backline - Quick enough to play our current defensive approach - Good long range distribution and comfortable on the ball - Confident and proactive in his defending - Warrior-like mentality - Cheap enough fee at a good age with room for growth - Allows us to remove Amartey from the starting 11 and shift Soyuncu on for a fee now - Excellent reviews from Stoke fans and Australians alike Very happy with this, lots of potential upside to it, and feels like a big impact signing.

You can tell. Same with Faes in the summer. They just feel like old-school Leicester signings in terms of current ability, potential, and character profile. I'm really happy with the 4x permanent signings we've made throughout the season - excluding Smithies as he's cheap GK cover - and if Kristiansen, Tete and Souttar and have a similar impact to Faes pre-world cup then we should start picking up results. I just hope we've done enough business. Other clubs have also strengthened significantly and/or changed manager so I'm still twitchy. Another solid attacking option would welcome.

Copying the Chelsea model. £250mil transfer fee, with Mbappe set to sign a 14-year deal making this a nice affordable £17.85mil per season. Honestly, you'll hear Kaveh and Dharmesh educating us on it all tonight on DEADLINE DAY LIVEEEE.

I agree with this. Since Thomas has come into the side he has been diced up in nearly every game. That has evidently played some significant part in Faes post world-cup form. Thomas' limitations leave Faes horrendously exposed at times. A great example was at the weekend at Walsall where Thomas got caught on the ball on the halfway line and Faes had to hit the turbo to get across and make the challenge on the stretch to stop a breakaway in behind. He went spare at Thomas straight afterwards. It's happened all too frequently when Thomas get done for pace, physicality or smarts, it pulls Faes out of position. Faes hasn't excelled himself at times and has his own limitations but he was substantially better with Justin outside him than Thomas. I'm confident he will be again once Kristiansen gets settled into the side.

From a footballing perspective, a return to the Bundesliga makes a lot of sense for Vestergaard. He did well at Gladbach and played some of his best football in Germany. He desperately needs to find a new home because you can just about count on one hand the number of appearances he's made in the last year. I imagine Vestergaard is one of the players Rodgers alluded too when he said they would leave players out of the 25-man squad if it was best for the club. Finances aside, from a career perspective he cannot afford that. I can see something happening but I imagine it'll be a loan. I'll be streaking naked down the street and jumping for joy if we can move him on permanently and get a fee for him though. Even waiving a fee to get his salary off the books fully for the remaining 1.5 years of his deal is an option. Not holding my breathe, but here's to hoping.

Striker is a position we'll probably reassess in the summer. I think it will soon become an important area of focus for us, but right now pretty much every other position is/was more urgent as our squad was horribly unbalanced and lacking quality in certain areas. Kristiansen and Tete make decent inroads into rectifying that, but positions like CB, back-up at LW, and GK are major priorities over ST. I have far more faith in Vardy, Daka, and Iheanacho as a trio to hit the heights needed to keep us in this division, than I do with the likes of Amartey, bloody nobody backing up Barnes at LW, and Ward.

That feels like a more logical career step for the boy. If he can hit the same heights at Marseille that he did for Morocco at the World Cup then he’s really in business for getting a major move.

That L'Equipe article reeks of some second rate journalist seeing Di Marzio's slip of the tongue on Sky Sports where he said Leeds instead of Leicester by mistake, and then running with it without doing their proper homework. If Romano says we're in the lead, that's good enough for me.

That went well Didn't Wigan pay a 7-figure compensation fee for him too? Sure I read that somewhere. If he waltzes back into his old role, it's like we've just farmed him out as funded head for a bit. Would be funny.

Kent would be a solid addition. I put this in the same bracket as the links with Jaidon Anthony. A good backup LW option to push Barnes with solid numbers, and young enough with room to grow. If it’s a nominal fee too, it could be a good, cheap addition. But it’s not a priority over RW. Half of my family are Aberdeen fans so I’ve seen a fair bit of Kent. He’s a tricky customer, a live wire and always aggressive and direct. Very good work rate and tidy feet too. He’s always done well in Scotland but has also performed in Europe. Bar Aribo, he was the guy who made Rangers tick in attack. We could do a lot worse. He’s also got a nasty streak to him - my family call him “one of the most hun-like huns”. That says all you need to know. We need more players with a bit of bite about them.

For me Souttar is the key domino to fall to avoid panic buying, as he's clearly a priority CB target we've pushed for. If we can tighten up at the back by bringing in a CB to break up that Amartey x Faes partnership with a player who can positively impact our overall squad mentality and has the playing skill sets and personal qualities to improve our defence, I think that will make a remarkable difference. Souttar - on paper - feels a good fit to do that. Before you even consider those returning from injury, a backline of Castagne-Souttar-Faes-Kristiansen already feels better than Castagne-Amartey-Faes-Thomas. It also means we can sanction Soyuncu's supposed move to Atletico to bring in some funds (hopefully £2-3million) and save ourselves 6months of his wages. That'll help. We also swap out a player Rodgers doesn't want for one that he does. That'll help too. Finally, Amartey provides more reliable bench cover than Vestergaard. Yes, we also desperately need a RW and whilst I'd hate to miss out on a player of Tete/Gonzalez quality, I have significantly more faith in Perez / Albrighton to do a sufficient job at RW to keep us up than I do with Amartey / a disinterested and frozen out Soyuncu / Vestergaard at CB. I'd rather keep Perez for 6months and lose him for nothing than shoot our load on a panic buy CB because we can't stretch for a primary target like Souttar. I'd also be comfortable taking a loan at RW to assess a player if that meant finances allowed for a top target, first team ready CB to come in. If we don't get Souttar done soon/at all, and there are still reports that a deal for Tete is proving difficult that's when I'll really start panicking.

I'd be very content with something like: IN: Tete (£25mil) Harrison (loan with option to buy) OUT: Perez (nominal fee) Harrison is a solid player, has decent numbers and would add depth to the LW position behind Barnes that we need. However, something like this would terrify me: IN: Harrison (£35mil) OUT: Perez (nominal fee) I'm not sure it's plausible we have the finances to do a deal for both Tete and Harrison so I severely hope we don't leave ourselves with just Albrighton on the RW

Harrison as a left wing option would be a welcome addition to back up/rotate with Barnes - similar to the links with Jaidon Anthony at Bournemouth. Both players have a lot of qualities to admire and have decent PL numbers but simply put they aren't top, top priorities for us and we won't be splashing such a huge wedge of cash on a lower priority transfer. Spending £35mil on Harrison this window would be madness. If he was available for a much cheaper fee that still enabled us to sign our CB and RW targets, or he was available on loan, I wouldn't be against it. It's one of those where its the circumstance and timing of the deal I'm against rather than the player per se.

If there are no permanent takers in this window, anything we can do to lighten our financial burden with Vestergaard between now and the summer is a must-do. He's not going to be called upon unless we are absolutely desperate - as proved by how he's behind even Soyuncu - and if we can save even 10% of his wage expenditure to help bring in someone we do want we should be all over it. Besiktas/Turkish Super Lig is the kind of league he might do well in so it could help him to earn a permanent move in the summer for a fee. We can but live in hope.