Wolves won from £7.5m Leicester City agreement - Foxes never got what they paid for | OneFootball

Conor Coady represented Wolves with distinction and earned international caps while at Molineux, but Leicester City never got the best out of him.

Paying £7.5 million for England international Conor Coady should have been a nailed-on success for Leicester City, but the Foxes never quite got what they could have done out of the former Wolves man.

In all the excitement that surrounded the former England defender Coady's transfer from Leicester City to Wrexham during the summer, one small matter didn't seem to be mentioned very much. Coady had been at The King Power Stadium for the previous two seasons, and the question of whether they were cutting their losses by selling him on never really came up.

Coady had proved himself to be an accomplished defender at his previous club Wolves, but Leicester's £7.5 million decision to take him to their club never quite hit the mark. There were plenty of good reasons at the time to believe that he should have been an inspired signing for the Foxes, but by the time of his departure from the club, it wasn't just a part of their wage bill that they were offloading.

Conor Coady shone at Wolves, all the way into the England team

Coming through the academy at Liverpool, there was always a feeling that Conor Coady could be headed for greatness, even though he could only manage two appearances at Anfield over the three seasons he was in their first-team squad. His ability first reared its head after he was sold to Huddersfield Town in the summer of 2014, at just 21 years of age, following a successful full season on loan at Sheffield United.

But Huddersfield couldn't keep hold of him for very long. After just one season with the Terriers, Wolverhampton Wanderers came in with a £2 million bid. 12 months after arriving at Molineux, Coady was on the brink of something special, dropping back into the middle of a back-three under Nuno Espírito Santo, who led the club back to the Premier League.

Promotion would usher in the golden years of Coady's playing career. He was an ever-present over their first two seasons back, and his assured defensive performances persuaded Gareth Southgate to select him for England for the first time in August 2020 - the first Wolves player to play for the national team since Steve Bull, some thirty years earlier.

Conor Coady turned out to be an expensive mistake for Leicester City

Over his seven years with Wolves, Coady would become one of their most dependable players, running up over 300 appearances there. But at the start of the 2022-23 season came something of a surprise, with the news that Coady would be heading to Everton on a season-long loan with an option to buy. He returned the following summer with Everton having not taken up that option.

Moving to Leicester made good sense for both the player and the selling club. Coady was moving to a club who'd finished in the top half of the Premier League regularly, as well as winning the FA Cup during that time; they were a Championship club again, but an ambitious one. And Wolves picked up £7.5 million for moving him on in July 2023, a £5.5 million profit on what they'd paid for him, on top of his 317 appearances for the club.

But Coady's time at Leicester never really played out as anyone would have intended. The Foxes had just been relegated from the Premier League, but while they stormed to promotion at the first attempt, he was something of a bit-part character, only making 12 appearances for them in the Championship. Their return to the Premier League was better for Coady, with 26 appearances, but Leicester's overall performance was terrible, and they were relegated back to the Championship again.

The sale to Wrexham, then, marked the end of a disappointing two seasons for Coady. Leicester managed to sell him to Wrexham for £2 million, meaning that they'd lost £5.5 million that they could ill-afford to lose on a player who'd only made 43 league appearances for them over the previous two seasons.

Now 32 years of age, there's still time for Coady to give his playing career an Indian summer in North Wales, but Leicester must surely still be regretting going big on a player who seemed like such a sensible decision at the point they signed him, but who didn't by the time he left the club two years later.

It was Wolves who got the best out of him and turned an excellent profit when they came to sell him. For Leicester, it was the opposite, just one of a number of missteps that the club has made in the transfer market in recent years.