Leicester City are once again monitoring the situation of Manchester United loanee star James Garner. Here is all you need to know and a player report.
With a summer refresh on the cards, Brendan Rodgers’ squad will be looking to bring in fresh blood and new talent to reenergise the side. Luckily, this means scouring the leagues to find players who could either challenge our current crop or upgrade our first team.
An unlikely place to search was East Midlands rivals Nottingham Forest. However, thanks to their promotion success and stellar form of late, multiple of their players are on Premier League club’s tabs.
From Djed Spence (Arsenal Loanee) to Joe Worrall, Leicester City are interested in quite a few. The latest reporting is a strong link to midfielder James Garner who was on loan at Forest from Manchester United.
What Leicester City must know
The Foxes are hunting youthful talent with energy in midfield. The English DM/CM is only 21 years old and has been on fine form for Nottingham Forest during the 21/22 Championship campaign.
The midfield player has grown from the Red Devils’ youth academy, being sent on loan to Watford and Nottingham Forest during his career. Garner’s career really shot off when he joined Forest halfway through the 20/21 season.
Garner plays an extremely key role, one not too dissimilar to Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s role for Luton Town when he was on-loan in the Championship. The player starts from deep – more of a No. 6 position – and then acts as the focal point of progression and initial point of creation.
On top of this, he has totalled 49 appearances this season. The midfielder has scored four times and assisted 10 times for Forest across all competitions; he possesses a variety of skills needed for the modern role.
In essence, the English midfielder is a mix between, a ball winning and progressive midfielder. Most of the progression offered by the player is through link ups with creative midfielders/forwards and overlapping fullbacks.
Rodgers’ club play best with an out and out ball winner, a progressor, and a creator in midfield with overlapping fullbacks to support movement, and an aggressive CB to kickstart it all. Garner would take up the current Youri Tielemans role in a double pivot.
The player would perform best alongside ‘KDH’ and James Maddison. This is not the best way that the King Power club have ever played, but it would fit our current style. I suspect though that the gaffer will move us back to a DM-CM-AM midfield rather than dual CM.
In such a case, Wilfred Ndidi starts with KDH and Garner rotating as the primary CM of the team. Garner could be a perfect fit for a more positive-focused and possession-based Foxes team. A move for the player would be most apt.
How likely is a move?
However, to pry such a talent from Manchester will be difficult until after pre-season, where Erik Ten Hag will form his opinion on whether the player has the potential to perform in his system. I for one hope Ten Hag does not like the loan star.
A pacy, creative, progressive, and all-round modern midfielder is a hard one to lose or to keep. Garner will be ambitious enough in wanting to progress his career beyond lower league teams, is good enough to play as backup in Manchester, but could not be a starter for the historic club.
Therefore, a move to a more accommodating side still in the upper half of the Premier League could be beneficial for the player. It could certainly be good for Leicester City, as a comparison between him and either Hamza Choudhury or Papy Mendy reveals his superiority as a target.
I would expect a fee of around £15m for him should the new United boss choose to move the midfielder on. We would also expect great competition from Forest who would want to keep such an important talent. Let Foxes of Leicester know your verdict via our social media channels.