City’s £67m losses
BUT RODGERS HOPES CLUB KEEPS ALL ITS TOP PLAYERS THIS SUMMER
BRENDAN Rodgers wants to make this the summer Leicester City do not sell a key player, even after the club’s £67 million losses.
City’s summer spending since their return to the Premier League has always been partly financed by the departure of a star name, with N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater, Riyad Mahrez, Harry Maguire and Ben Chilwell moving on in big-money deals over the past five summers.
City have reinvested that wisely to improve their squad and rise up the table.
The club will want to break that cycle, and Rodgers hopes it is this year, even though City have just announced big losses for the 2019-20 campaign.
New, improved contracts could be a solution to keeping players at the club, but that would cause wage payments to rise further.
That may be a concern with the latest accounts showing a wage-to-turnover ratio of 105 per cent, with City becoming the first Premier League side to exceed 100 per cent since QPR in 2013.
“You always plan and prepare to keep your players, but you always have to have that pipeline for the ‘what if?’ scenario,” Rodgers said.
“For this summer, as I sit here, I can’t see us losing anyone. But of course, I may have said that about Ben (Chilwell) and he’s gone.
“But certainly we don’t plan to lose anyone. I think as well if there’s a summer where you maybe wouldn’t be looking to lose your players, it would be this summer.
“Our idea is to get to the end of the season, finish as strong as we can. Hopefully, it will be a great season, keep the players we have, and add to it as opposed to moving any on. That would be the message as for now.
“There will be a level of spending. We’ve already been speaking about that over the past few months. We want to continue improving.
“It won’t be the same as pre-Covid. But there will be investment. We want to strengthen the squad and I’m pretty hopeful we’ll be able to do that.”
Rodgers also said the investment from the club’s owner, King Power, into the training ground should ease the fears of any fans concerned about the level of the losses.
“Like most clubs there is a huge impact with Covid and the pandemic,” he said. “That will hit every club.
“It has also shown the confidence the club have in managing the figures and the budget that they continue to invest. Looking around at the training ground, you can see the investment that is still ongoing as shown.”