Huge Marti Cifuentes development emerges at Leicester City | OneFootball

Leicester City are set to sack manager Marti Cifuentes, as patience runs out with his indifferent start to life at The King Power Stadium.

Leicester City are set to sack manager Marti Cifuentes following an indifferent start to their return to the Championship, according to Sunday morning reports.

A 2-1 home defeat to Oxford United may have been the final straw for the owners of Leicester City, with reports on Sunday morning that they are set to sack manager Marti Cifuentes following a first half of the season that all at The King Power Stadium would sooner forget.

The Oxford result was Leicester's third game in a row without a win. Losing to the struggling U's left the Foxes in a lowly 14th position in the Championship, although such is the congested nature of the middle of the table that even now they remain just six points from a play-off place.

There remains a possibility, then, that Leicester City could yet find a route back to the Premier League this season, but if the rumours circling The King Power Stadium are confirmed, it won't be the former QPR head coach who'll be trying to get them back there.

Leicester City set to sack Marti Cifuentes

Journalist Pete O'Rourke of Football Insider has posted to X on Sunday morning that Leicester are now set to sack Cifuentes in a huge development at the King Power Stadium.

It's unclear when this news could be formally announced by the club, who will no doubt intend on hiring a replacement as soon as possible, but a decision now looks to have been made on Cifuentes' future following what has been a disappointing season to date relative to Leicester's expectations.

The manager was furious following the 2-1 home defeat to Oxford United on Saturday afternoon. Speaking after the match to BBC Radio Leicester, he said: "We need to look at ourselves. There are many things we need to do much better.

"The Championship is a tough league. We need to regroup and understand the picture and move in the right direction. We need to create more. The expectation from ourselves is that we want to win every game. I understand it's frustrating.

"It doesn't matter what the score is. I want the fans to go home proud. I know they probably didn't feel that way."

Cifuentes couldn't match the expectations at Leicester following relegation from the Premier League

With just ten wins from 29 matches in the Championship following relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season, 2025-26 has been a distinctly underwhelming season for Leicester City. With the substantial financial advantage that freshly-relegated clubs have over most of their rivals as a result of parachute payments, lowly mid-table positions are unlikely to be tolerated for long.

Leicester are in a precarious position, though it should be added that this isn't enetirely his fault. There remains the threat of a points deduction over previous PSR results, and with the Foxes being nine points above the Championship relegation places, it is possible that they could yet be dragged into a relegation battle for which they do not seem particularly well-prepared.

Marti Cifuentes arrived at The King Power Stadium as a replacement for Ruud van Nistelrooy following their relegation from the Premier League in the middle of July 2025. With financial pressures growing and an increasingly unhappy fan base, he had an uphill fight on his hands to keep everybody at the club happy.

But to still be in the bottom half of the Championship as January reaches its end is clearly a level of performance that fell far short of expectation, and Leicester City now seem likely to turn to somebody else to try and rescue what has been a poor season.

With the tenth anniversary of their sensational Premier League title win looming at the end of this season, the club will be looking to celebrate in a better frame of mind than that in which they currently find themselves. It now seems almost certain that Marti Cifuentes will not be part of those celebrations.