Leicester and sister club OH Leuven looks a bit lost, coming to recruitment of Norwegian players. When Leicester last had a Norwegian player in their team, it was back in 1987, 37 years ago. Kjetil Osvold came on loan from Forest, to play 4 games, since then no player from this country has been seen. OH Leuven last summer made a move for Erling Haaland’s cousin, Jonatan Braut Brunes, paying Stromsgodset a fee of €2.60m. Braut Brunes is a good and proper forward, but still to see him signed for such a fee and looking in the mirror, you can see they have not hit the target. Braut Brunes has only scored 3 goals in 31 outings for OH Leuven. The King Power regime looks to have little or no real knowledge about the market up here, when judging on the past.
Watching a great number of football games and being involved in this market for decades, we do know what works and not, and from time to time, we have done a few recomendations, but not really seen any signals or interest from Leicester, as they do have their eyes on other areas.
The worst ever reply came from the club a number of years ago, when recomending two 19 year old players, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Kim Kallstrom. An answer came in return with a polite reply, that the club had no special interest in these two Swedish players. Since then we have not really bothered, given any advice in this market to the club, as they tend to have other ideas.
To see players such as Ivan Toney and Che Adams both being overlooked and being dismissed, you start to wonder if LCFC have the correct recruitment plan in place and a good view of bringing forward talent, because missing those two, can’t be easy. We have seen a few good examples in the past, but those players have been very easy to spot as their progress has been in line with demands of behaviour and discipline or at that point playing well, then you will never have a problem to get the answers you are looking for. Nursing forward talent is a very difficult pathway and if players are in some way out of the path of walking, then they will just be ignored or overlooked and that is were clubs often fail massively in having an individual plan in place. Concentrating mostly on group level, and the main star players inside the group, getting the most attention, and in real have no time to build up a plan for a player who is out of the frame in some way, and if you then cannot spot talent, you will be in trouble and that shows at LCFC.
We seldom recomend or report on Norwegian talent, but Faniel Tewelde and Jorgen Strand-Larsen are players we have spoken up and really looked at as Leicester potential at a very early point. Leicester have done a lot of good work, but still not enough to secure the future of the club, often getting in trouble, splashing out money on useless projects as they looks lost in many different transfer decisions.
Jorgen Strand-Larsen has this summer joined Wolves and will be showing his worth in Premier League. He cold have joined Leicester a number of years back for 10 percent of what he is worth today. Man City sister club Lommel did what Leicester should have done, signed up Faniel Tewelde. The fee, not more than £3million at this point, acting on this a year ago, the price would have possibly been lower.
To see the Leicester recruitment going at the moment, heating up and buying for inflated fees, is in real sickening, and shows lack of understanding. Leicester are in real, in a mess at the moment, having to sell off their best players season in and season out and financially having struggles with FFP and PSR. This will of course happen and continue if you can’t spot the talent of players such as Ivan Toney and Che Adams, and instead giving scholarships and following up of players that today are out of the professional game, or the worst use millons on player far from the level of the two mentioned above.
There are no special players around in the Norwegian game at the moment, besides Faniel Tewelde that we believe can follow Erling Braut Haaland and Martin Odegaard, but looking at the new Lommel recruit, he has a special package as we also believed Jorgen Strand-Larsen had, so it will be interesting to follow the development going forward.
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