Gary Lineker told Leicester City to appoint shock manager | OneFootball

The Foxes were shockingly relegated in the 2022/23 Premier League campaign, and Gary Lineker has opened up about who he wanted to take the reins

There hasn't been a more shocking relegation from the Premier League in recent memory than Leicester City's in the 2022/23 campaign.

The Foxes were being talked up as the next side ready to break the mould and usurp one of the traditional 'Big Six' sides after several high-quality top-flight campaigns, starting with their miraculous title-winning term under Claudio Ranieri in 2015/16.

Under Brendan Rodgers, Leicester finished fifth in consecutive Premier League campaigns between 2019 and 2021, marginally missing out on UEFA Champions League qualification, won the FA Cup for the first time in that 2020/21 term, and made the Conference League semi-finals the year after that.

Therefore, it was a real surprise that, 12 months on from that European semi-final, they were relegated. Rodgers oversaw a terrible opening three-quarters of that campaign, and despite a couple of wins under Dean Smith, the Foxes finished two points adrift of safety.

Now, for the first time in a decade, Leicester were playing Championship football again, something which seemed would never happen for a long time mere years earlier.

Gary Lineker revealed who he felt should have led Leicester City into the 2023/24 campaign

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There arguably isn't a more iconic Leicester figure in recent years than Gary Lineker. The legendary former frontman and broadcaster came through at his boyhood club and played there for eight years before he moved to Everton in 1985.

The 65-year-old is famously a Foxes fan, and he, like many others associated with the club, was hoping for a swift rebuild and return to the Premier League in the 2023/24 campaign.

That started by bringing in a new manager, with Dean Smith not continuing in the dugout that summer. Leicester landed on former Manchester City assistant Enzo Maresca, but Lineker recommended US women's national team manager Emma Hayes to the club before the Italian was chosen.

Hayes, at the time, was coming to the end of her immensely successful run as Chelsea women's boss, where she won seven WSL titles in her 12 years at the helm.

Lineker welcomed the 49-year-old onto his Netflix show, The Rest is Football, and spoke about how he recommended her to then-CEO Susan Whelan.

"I'm going to tell you something now that I've never really told many people," he said on the show. "When Leicester got relegated for the first time about four years ago, I called Susan Whelan, who was then-CEO of Leicester - no longer there, sadly, one of the many mistakes Leicester have made.

"And I called her to say, 'I think you should go for Emma [Hayes] as the Leicester coach.

"I was going for many reasons. Obviously, a) she's a brilliant coach, so it's not some kind of PR stunt, although PR-wise I think it would have been brilliant: the first female manager of a professional men's team in our country.

"And I think we had the players that you'd have done really well with. And she said, 'I think that's a really good idea, but I'm not quite sure the owners are ready to make that step yet'."

In response, Hayes admitted that she's "very, very happy in the women's game," and stated that she is used to coaching males anyway, as around half of her staff are men.

But it does open up the question as to why the higher-ups at the club weren't ready to "make that step," and the 49-year-old stated that she's not the right person to answer that question; rather, those owners who decide to hire managers.

Leicester City need to get back on the right track under Russell Martin next season

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In the end, regardless of whether you believe that Emma Hayes would have been an apt appointment at the King Power Stadium three years ago, the decision to hire Enzo Maresca was a good one.

Many critics feel that the Italian could have kept Leicester up in the Premier League, too, if not for Chelsea snapping him up the year after he won the Championship in his debut campaign with the Foxes.

What can also be agreed is that the decisions at Leicester following Maresca being poached have been nigh-on disastrous, both on the field when it comes to overspending on players who couldn't fit the grade, and off it, when it comes to board reshuffles and managerial hires.

Now, the Foxes are gearing up for just their second-ever campaign below the second tier in their history, with their fifth manager in the space of the two years since the now-Manchester City boss left.