Leicester City's next manager choice is blatantly obvious as ex-Everton boss emerges as major contender

For years now – and through any number of ups and downs – Leicester City have prided themselves on the quality of football that they play. Whether they’re winning the league or sinking into the second tier, this became the side of Mahrez, Maddison and even Dewsbury-Hall, a team that attempted to play aggressive, entertaining football. So should they really consider appointing Sean Dyche?

That, reportedly, is a possibility being given serious consideration as the club’s board look past relegation and the disastrous tenure of Ruud van Nistelrooy, which is not expected to last through the off-season. It looks at first glance like a sharp left turn for the club that appointed Ranieri, Rodgers and Maresca… but it might well be a perfectly pragmatic choice given Leicester’s new reality.

Will Sean Dyche be the next Leicester City manager?

The primary source for the story suggesting that former Burnley and Everton manager Dyche is an option for the Foxes is The Sun’s Alan Nixon, and any story coming from such a newspaper will generate some understandable scepticism.

After all, previous entries in the gossip columns had suggested an interest in managers like Bristol City head coach Liam Manning or Sheffield Wednesday’s Danny Röhl – coaches, in other words, who played a more aesthetically pleasing brand of football than that associated with Dyche, who has been out of work since he was sacked by Everton in early January.

The idea behind appointing a manager like Manning, Röhl or even Russell Martin, another name considered to be in the frame, fits in with Leicester’s historic approach. All attempt to play an attractive brand of football. Dyche, for all his undeniable success as a coach, does not seem to care too much about whether people enjoying watching his teams. He would seem a strange appointment by a board that seems to care about entertainment value.

Perhaps it isn’t so surprising to see a change of philosophy, though. Director of football John Rudkin has been under massive pressure following a disappointing summer of recruitment at the King Power Stadium, and has been the subject of protests from fans who see Rudkin as being largely responsible for a decline in the standards to which the club has been run in recent years. It is possible that owners Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha is starting to take advice from other people as he considers Rudkin’s position alongside that of Van Nistelrooy.

It is Rudkin, after all, with whom the buck stops for the decision to replace Steve Cooper with the former Manchester United striker in the autumn, a call which backfired spectacularly – and ultimately, it is also on Rudkin that the club has failed to adequately replace Maddison or Dewsbury-Hall over the past two years, leaving the club in the Premier League without an apparent creative heartbeat.

Rudkin, who has been Leicester’s director of football since 2014 and can claim plenty of credit for the extraordinary title win under Claudio Ranieri, has long prioritised playing attractive, fluid football – if Dyche really is a favourite for the impending vacancy, it could simply be a sign that Rudkin’s influence is waning.

In short, while Dyche would represent a departure, the circumstances under which the club could seek a break with their own traditions and principles could easily be those under which the club is currently operating – and that’s especially true given the financial reality that the club seems to face this summer.

Why Leicester’s financial problems may make Dyche an ideal appointment

Having posted financial losses for six consecutive years, Leicester were charged last summer with a £24.4m breach of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules for the 2022/23 season – avoiding punishment on a technicality after the club successfully argued that, having been relegated to the EFL, they were not under the Premier League’s jurisdiction for the full year in question.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported that Leicester were in danger of being charged with another breach of the profit and sustainability rules – and while no charges have yet followed the announcement of a £19.4m pre-tax loss for the 2023/24 campaign, the loophole which Leicester’s lawyers found has since been closed. Relegation may not be a heavily-disguised blessing this time around.

In short, despite promotion, Leicester are likely to be in a relatively precarious financial position, at least from the perspective of the sustainability rules which govern the Premier League and EFL. They will be coming down with a wage bill which Capology estimate to stand at £66.7m per year – around £30m more than the highest wage bill in the Championship for the 2024/25 season, which belonged to Leeds United.

In short, belt buckles will have to be tightened this summer as the club looks to balance the books. The financial results for their brief return to the Premier League won’t be released for many months, but unless there was a remarkable turnaround there is unlikely to be a massive transfer budget to blow this summer, and key players may have to be sold.

Trying to build a squad capable of playing creative, free-flowing football under such circumstances might, therefore, be considered something of a pipe dream. There is already a lack of play-making quality in the squad after the current season’s recruitment efforts largely failed, and it will require some skilled work this summer to find another James Maddison or Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, never mind another Riyad Mahrez.

If Leicester are forced to take what has proven to be a relatively weak squad in the Premier League, thin it down a little more and then find a manager who can beat what’s left into shape, then, once can see where Dyche enters the frame.

If Dyche has proven nothing else over the course of his career, it’s his capacity to take a team and make it worth more than the sum of its parts. He has twice achieved promotion to the top flight and knows how to keep a team there even if the budget is a little limited. Given Leicester’s likely financial trajectory for the next few years, that may be a more valuable skill set than that offered by any of the coaches who might appeal to the tactical purists in the King Power’s corridors of… well, power.

Dyche isn’t the manager for the club Leicester have tried to be – and often succeeded in being – over the past decade. But he might be the manager for the club they are going to have to accept that they are over the course of the coming few campaigns. If Leicester are indeed forced to try and earn their place in the Premier League back on a budget, and with grit and organisation the focus over style and flair, then Dyche is about as ideal a choice as one could imagine.