NOT-SO-JOLLY RODGERS

Not ONE new Foxes signing as frustrated boss Brendan is in charge of a club that seems to be just standing still

LEICESTER boss Brendan Rodgers is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the club’s owners keep the purse strings tightly pulled.

Has the Foxes bubble, which reached the dizziest heights of all, finally burst?

They are the only Premier League club not to have spent a penny in the transfer window.

And that has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Although the owners refuse to rule out a late splurge, there is increasing concern that the reluctance to spend will cost Rodgers and his men.

All the indications are that, at best, Leicester will struggle to improve on a disappointing eighth-place finish in May.

Traditionally, they have shipped out at least one of their star players for big money every season

– five internationals bringing in a quarter of a billion pounds.

And while that has not happened this time around, yet,

Rodgers’ hopes of freshening up with five or six new players looks a million miles off. Could they be the surprise package to get drawn into a relegation scrap like Everton and Leeds last season?

That’s probably too extreme while they hang on to their most saleable assets – Youri Tielemans, James Maddison, Wesley Fofana, Luke Thomas and Harvey Barnes.

But with title-winning keeper Kasper Schmeichel rumoured to be on his way to Nice and talismanic goal ace Jamie Vardy hitting his 36th birthday in January, Leicester’s powers look to be on the wane.

Vardy continues to defy the odds. His numbers still stack up and there’s no evidence, at 35, of his electric pace drying up.

But for how much longer?

Vardy and Schmeichel

(below) are now the only big-name players with Marc Albrighton remaining from the side that romped to the fairytale title in 2016.

And the sell-by date looms for all of them.

Since Claudio Ranieri’s men lifted the trophy, Leicester have relied on balancing the books by flogging off a major player – the sales of N’golo Kante (£30million), Riyad Mahrez (£60m), Danny Drinkwater (£35m), Ben Chilwell (£50m) and Harry Maguire (£80m) raking in more than £250m in recent years.

Alarm signals are close to sounding.

Leicester look way too good to go down but if they don’t pump in new blood, they face a struggle to gain the kind of momentum which will keep Rodgers’

doubters off his back.