Leicester City are moving closer to appointing their successor to Ruud van Nistelrooy, with the Telegraph’s John Percy reporting that the Foxes hope to make a managerial appointment later this week.
Interviews Have Taken Place
Percy states that Leicester owner Khun Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha and Director of Football Jon Rudkin were interviewing candidates in London last week, just days after the club mutually agreed to part ways with van Nistelrooy.
Two names believed to be on the Foxes final shortlist are former Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder, who himself was only sacked a few weeks ago, and Gary O’Neil, who has been out of work since December 2024, whilst Sky Sports are reporting that Sean Dyche was interviewed for the managerial vacancy.
The Foxes are also talking to other candidates and executives are hoping to make their final choice by the end of the week.
Why Is This Managerial Appointment So Important For Leicester?
After an excellent run which saw the Foxes establish themselves as a Premier League side, winning the top flight and the FA Cup once, the East Midlands giants have fallen dramatically in recent years.
They were relegated from the Premier League in 2023, but the appointment of Enzo Maresca allowed the club to bounce back to the top division at the first time of asking.
Maresca was poached by Chelsea and replaced by Steve Cooper in the summer of 2024. The former Nottingham Forest manager enjoyed a fairly poor start to the season, winning just two of Leicester’s 12 league games before he was sacked with the side sitting in 16th place.
The Foxes got their next managerial appointment terribly wrong. After a promising spell as caretaker manager at Manchester United, van Nistelrooy was appointed as manager on a two-and-a-half-year contract.
He ended the season with a lower win percentage and fewer points per game than Cooper. The Foxes also broke an unwanted record as they became the first Premier League team to go nine consecutive games without scoring at home.
The gap in quality between the Championship and Premier League is as wide as ever and, if Leicester want to have any chance of reestablishing themselves in the top flight, they must make a quality managerial appointment imminently, or else they could get stuck in the second tier.
Writer’s View
Wilder, O’Neill and Dyche are three good candidates who could all offer slightly different things for Leicester.
Wilder is an experienced Championship coach who has been battling at the top end of the second tier regularly in recent years. But, he has largely struggled to establish his Sheffield United side in the Premier League and he has never looked quite as effective away from Bramall Lane.
O’Neil is the least experienced of the trio which has benefits and drawbacks. His ideas are slightly fresher than Dyche’s or Wilder’s, who have more established styles of play, and this could make it harder for opposition teams to figure out how to play against his teams. But, he has never coached in the Championship and the final weeks of his time at Wolves were extremely worrying with the players losing their temper often and O’Neil making a number of critical comments in the media.
Dyche arguably has the biggest reputation of the three managers as he led his Burnley side in European competition in 2018. He took Burnley from the Championship to the Premier League and he was able to keep the Clarets in the top tier for a long time despite having a small budget. However, his pragmatic style of football has been less effective recently and he has not managed in the second tier for a long time.
