Assessing Leicester’s potential French signings in action

With the France U-21 side in action today, what better opportunity to ‘scout’ a few prospective Leicester City signings.

Looking at their starting line-up, Les Bleus have an embarrassment of riches, especially at the centre-back position. Nevertheless, watching this game was with the sole intention of surveying players who are potentially joining the club soon, rather than envying their squad depth in central defence, which England clearly lack.

Boubakary Soumaré: a future Leicester City player

Boubakary Soumaré is near certain to join, with terms having reportedly been agreed as well as an £18m transfer fee. Playing in a midfield two, Soumaré was pretty mediocre, to be frank.

The Frenchman showcased his ball-carrying abilities with a 100% dribble success, yet lost possession many times. On the ball, Soumaré generally kept things simple, with a few excellent line-breaking passes. Off it, things were less spectacular, with his defensive positioning rather wayward at times. Clearly, he isn’t a Wilfried Ndidi or any sort of replacement for the Nigerian.

Odsonne Édouard

Édouard is a signing familiar to Brendan Rodgers, with the Frenchman being at Celtic during Rodgers’ tenure. Whilst not a near-concrete signing like Soumaré, the striker is reportedly deep in talks with LCFC. Unfortunately, Édouard was disappointingly anonymous in the 75 minutes he played, a shadow of the player who has scored 17 goals in 14 France U-21 games.

Observing him, he is not that similar to Jamie Vardy (no one is!), with his lack of pressing a clear difference to Vardy. Furthermore, Édouard is more physical in build, but today his hold-up play (in the rare occasions he received the ball) was poor.

Jonathan Ikoné

This is the least certain to take place, with Lille probably reticent to sell two of their better players to the same club. Ikone is a player who has been linked several times in the past to the Foxes with the previous £40 million price tag offputting.

Nevertheless, Ikoné plays in the right-wing position, which is currently vacant in the Leicester City side. With Lille’s financial issues, offering a tempting sum of money could lead to the French attacker joining LCFC.

Out of the three players assessed, Ikoné was by far the most promising in this game with some lovely touches and astute use of his body. On one occasion he displayed excellent awareness to turn his marker and then great pace to run in on goal. Unfortunately, there was not a finish to match, something Brendan could definitely improve if he were to join. Just look at the progress of players such as Harvey Barnes.

Round-up

Whilst this was not the best impression made by potential LCFC recruits, it is worth remembering not to judge players on a one-off basis, as every player has bad games. This can work in both ways…

With France now out of the tournament after losing to a last-minute Boadu winner, future opportunities to assess the signings are limited. On the plus side, this may help speed up potential negotiations, with the tournament now over. Hopefully, we can look forward to seeing these players put in productive performances in an LCFC shirt.