Leicester City may regret not cashing in on £90k-p/w star - He doesn’t suit Marti Cifuentes' style | OneFootball

Leicester City should have cashed in on Harry Winks this summer. He doesn't suit Marti Cifuentes' style of football at the Foxes.

Leicester City headed into this summer with a bit of uncertainty, following their fairly humbling relegation from the Premier League and back down to the Championship last season.

There was talk that the Foxes could be handed a points deduction by the EFL, and manager Ruud van Nistelrooy didn’t depart until quite late into the summer, before the appointment of former Queens Park Rangers boss Marti Cifuentes.

Leicester supporters would have been reasonably concerned about how this season could go but, after the first month of the campaign, they may well once again be believing a title challenge is on the cards.

Leicester have started by winning three of their opening four matches, with Cifuentes able to get his style of football into his players quite quickly, with his tactical pragmatism balanced against ideological principles allowing for a quick gelling of what is still a bit of a mishmash of a squad.

One player that remained at the club amid a mini-exodus in August was Harry Winks, despite links away, and that may well be something Leicester end up regretting.

Leicester City should have allowed Harry Winks to move on in summer transfer window

The constraints of returning to the second-tier means that the club tend to allow many sales, and that was the case for Leicester in the final few weeks of the window, with Conor Coady and Wilfred Ndidi allowed to move to Wrexham and Besiktas respectively.

They then sold Mads Hermansen to West Ham United and Kasey McAteer to Ipswich Town, with James Justin moving to Leeds United and then playmaker Bilal El Khannouss departing for Bundesliga side Stuttgart.

In the meantime, Harry Winks was linked with the likes of Brentford, Fiorentina and Valencia, but a deal never came to fruition, and that could be something that Leicester regret from a financial perspective.

The 29-year-old former England international, who came through the academy of Tottenham Hotspur, joined Leicester for a fee believed to be in the region of £10 million back in the summer of 2023.

Signing a three-year deal, Winks is now out of contract next year, and the former Sampdoria loanee’s value is clearly dwindling, and that will only continue to be the case by the time the January transfer window comes around.

From a financial perspective, it made little sense for Winks to stay, but on the pitch, too, he is more or less being deemed as surplus to requirements by Cifuentes so far.

Harry Winks doesn’t suit Marti Cifuentes and his style of play - hence why he should've moved on

A couple of seasons ago, as Leicester eventually won the second tier title, Winks was instrumental in the middle of the park for Enzo Maresca.

He dictated the tempo and often the style with Maresca’s more cerebral, possession-based style ideal for a player with the technical quality of Winks.

Cifuentes’ style, though, whilst still reliant on technical ability in the middle, relies a lot more on energy and requires players to be a lot more mobile than Winks is and was.

That has seen him start the season out of the eleven, having been jettisoned from the squad towards the end of last year due to a falling out between himself and Van Nistelrooy.

The arrival of Jordan James on loan from Stade Rennais is only going to push Winks further down the pecking order at the King Power Stadium, too.

There will be games where Winks could come in handy, but that doesn’t necessarily seem as though it is as big enough a benefit as to the financial implications of failing, or choosing not, to sell him this summer.