Guys in Disguise; Adrien Silva and Islam Slimani

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Adrien Silva and Islam Slimani joined Leicester City for a joint fee of £50million. Looking back it’s a waste of half a billion, and shows how football management has gone wild and totally unpredictable. Both players were close to legends and iconic figures at Sporting Lisbon. Now they are together again at Monaco.

The duo played a vital part in Sporting’s great results during their days at the club. They also played together, something they have not experienced at all at Leicester City. Islam Slimani joined Newcastle United on loan when Silva was eventually ready to play in that half season ramble, and during Craig Shakespeare’s management period, in a way “crippled” the career of a player starring both domestically and at international level at the time.

Islam Slimani joined Leicester City after a fantastic three year spell at Sporting, scoring goals and being seen as one of the hottest objects in Europe. The disastrous use of Slimani and the way he in a way joined Leicester City without a clear plan of his use.

Being slotted in together with Jamie Vardy up front, replacing Shinji Okazaki and as we all know, Claudio Ranieri tried to change the way Leicester City was playing and might have started a turn without a plan, and Slimani not really working well in a partnership with Jamie up front.

Despite great wins against Club Brugge and Burnley, Claudio decided to experiment and not really build on that Vardy/Slimani partnership to flourish.

This is now history and the duo of Slimani and Silva are again together, both joining Monaco on loan from Leicester. Silva had a good period at the same place last season and hopefully Slimani can be in good hands as well back in a partnership with his former teammate at Sporting Lisbon.

Premier League is the “top arena” for football and someone might say that La Liga is a better league, but on the planet earth you will not find anything better. Portugal and France are good footballing nations but their domestic leagues are not of the quality of Premier League, so this might be a good place to be for the duo.

Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers knows his business and ranks, the 30’s or so, duo are not in the first row of players to play week in and week out at Leicester City and we believe Brendan Rodgers are so correct.

So why are “managers” allowed to use £50million on players that we as fans would now were not really first team material. To have a bit of cover, so you should use, £50million on reserve team players, the World has gone totally mad, and Leicester City should address this as “not tolerated” as money could have been used much more sensible.

Good for all parties that the duo now is back playing and believed to be with great influence at Monaco who probably will use both players from start as they are two clever footballers with a loads to offer.

To be honest, both must be seen as “Guys in Disguise”, since their appearances for Leicester City are not many and they are both players that likely will leave the club as big, big, failures and not really worth the price paid, when you look at the use.

Brendan Rodgers will certainly be sleeping easier regarding the way of dealing with fringe players, which is excellent. And again, don’t sign big money deals when you don’t have a clear first team idea of a player, just let it be.

Slimani will be out on his third loan spell while at Leicester City, Adrien Silva returns to Monaco for a 2nd spell with the French league club.

Adrien Silva

• Full Name: Adrien Sebastien Perruchet da Silva
• Position: Midfield
• Date of Birth: 15.03.1989
• Birthplace: Angouleme
• Nation: Portugal
• Caps / Goals: 26/1
• Major League Career:
  • 2007-18, Sporting Lisbon (168/32)
    • 2010, Maccabi Haifa (6/0) Loan
    • 2011-12, Academica (34/5) Loan
  • 2018 ->, Leicester City (14/0)
    • 2019, Monaco (15/0)
    • 2019, Monaco (-/-)
• Links: Wikipedia

Islam Slimani

• Full Name: Islam Slimani
• Position: Forward
• Date of Birth: 18.06.1988
• Birthplace: Algiers
• Nation: Algeria
• Caps / Goals: 63/27
• Major League Career:
  • 2007-18, Sporting Lisbon (82/48)
  • 2018 ->, Leicester City (35/8)
    • 2018, Newcastle United (4/0)
    • 2018-19, Fenerbahce (15/1)
    • 2019, Monaco (-/-)
• Links: Wikipedia