Next Leicester City steps revealed after Marti Cifuentes sacking | OneFootball

Marti Cifuentes has now left The King Power Stadium, and what Leicester want to do now next has now been revealed as they seek to rescue their season.

Having now parted ways with Marti Cifuentes, Leicester City's intentions with regard to his replacement have been made clearer in a fresh update coming from the King Power Stadium.

A 2-1 home defeat by Oxford United proved to be the tipping point for the owners of Leicester City and head coach Marti Cifuentes, who was relieved of his duties with his team in 14th place in the Championship after just six months in the position.

Cifuentes was sacked on the Sunday after the match, but fixtures keep coming thick and fast, so it will be imperative that they make a quick decision to bring in a replacement.

Leicester are back in action on the 31st January against relegation-threatened Charlton Athletic, with the need to push back towards the play-off places following what has so far been a distinctly underwhelming return to the Championship, following relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season.

Leicester City are looking for an "experienced" replacement for Marti Cifuentes

Daily Mail Midlands football correspondent Tom Collomosse has posted to the social media platform X that Leicester City will be looking for someone specific to replace Cifuentes at The King Power Stadium.

According to Collomosse, Leicester will be targeting an experienced candidate to take over from the Spaniard. It remains unclear exactly who that could be, although Foxes supporters may not mind a steady, tried-and-tested pair of hands coming in to take the reins against a backdrop of difficulty both on and off-the-pitch.

For the time being, at least, interim duties will be led by Andy King, who made 379 appearances for the club as a player over 14 years between 2006 and 2020, and who joined the club as an assistant manager of the club's Under-18s upon retiring as a player in 2024 before joining the first team coaching staff under Ruud van Nistelrooy in February 2025.

Leicester's range of options will be limited by wanting "experience" in the middle of the season

"Experience" isn't quite a subjective word, but there are several different ways in which it could be interpreted. It could merely mean "older", for example, or could mean someone who's taken teams from the Championship into the Premier League before.

Andy King has been installed as the early bookmakers' favourite to succeed Cifuentes as the Leicester City manager on a permanent basis, though Collomosse's reporting would appear to cast doubt on whether he'll be considered for the position on a permanent basis.

There are other, more experienced, managers listed among those who could be considered for the job on a permanent basis, including the former Southampton and Rangers boss Russell Martin, the highly-rated Lee Carsley, who's impressed with his work with the England under-21 team, and the former Bournemouth and Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Gary O'Neil.

Whoever accepts the position will arrive at a club in a state of turmoil. There's deep unhappiness among the fan base over the way in which the club has been run in recent years, while Leicester arrived in 2026 with the threat of a points deduction still hanging over their head as a result of PSR breaches.

And there is plenty of work to do on the team. Leicester have now won just two of their last eight Championship matches and sit in 14th place in the table, while they travel to Southampton in the Fourth Round of the FA Cup in the middle of February.

Their season could yet go either way. Despite being in the bottom half of the Championship table with just 17 games left to play, they remain only six points off a play-off place, a gap that could be closed with a winning run.

But at the same time, things could go wrong, too. Slipping back into a relegation fight isn't completely beyond the realms of possibility, although with the gap between themselves and the bottom three at nine points, it would seem to be more likely that they'll push up the table than fall down it, though this would change were they to receive a points deduction over their financial misdemeanours.

The big issue that Leicester have to face as a result of sacking their manager at this time of year is that time is very much of the essence. There's a week to go before the transfer window closes, and Cifuentes' successor may have wanted that time in order to get the players that they want in for the closing stages of the season.

And while Leicester may want experience, it remains the case that the managers that they want will mostly be in work elsewhere. Unless they can tempt someone from elsewhere, they'll be limited to those who are currently out of work, and this will narrow their options to a significant degree.

If Andy King impresses as a caretaker, he could be offered the job on a permanent basis. Alternatively, it may be preferable to hire him on an interim basis until the end of this season and make a more permanent decision once the dust has settled from the end of season comings and goings elsewhere.

Leicester were very late in sacking Ruud van Nistelrooy, more than 9 weeks after the club were relegated from the Premier League. Cifuentes wasn't appointed until the middle of July, giving him just three and a half weeks before the start of the new season.

The issue at The King Power Stadium last summer, however, wasn't the timings of these decisions, it was the perception that it didn't really look as though they had much of a plan over what to do next, following relegation from the top-flight. Leicester City fans could be forgiven wondering whether the senior management of the club have learned anything since last summer.