Vestergaard’s Leicester revival: was the Jannik panic justified?

‘Big’ Jannik Vestergaard: he certainly is the man of the moment. What moment that is would be highly debatable depending on who you ask. The 6’6″(1,99m) Danish defender didn’t arrive to the East Midlands with much fan fare. My personal memories of Vestergaard stemmed from the Foxes 9 – 0 demolition of the Saints back in October of 2019. As it would play out, the giant Dane ended up as most Leicester City fans thought he might: on the bench, barely touching the pitch in an official match. LCFC paid £17.6million for him in the summer of 2021 and it’s safe to say that so far they haven’t gotten any return on that investment. But whose fault is that exactly, and can it be rectified?

Let’s take a look at the state of the things when Big Jan arrived. Brendan Rodgers had just notched his second successive fifth place finish, but it was a weird time at the club. People were happy and worried at the same time. Most fans will recall that in each of these seasons Rodgers had brought the team to the brink of Champions League qualification, only to fall out of the top four on the final day of the season; first by losing to Manchester United(19/20), and the following season by losing to Tottenham(20/21). In addition to Vestergaard, the Foxes also signed his Southampton teammate Ryan Bertrand. You may remember him from such starring roles as “Guy that took the red card that led to Leicester steamrolling the Saints nine to nil”. Needless to say, fans struggled to grasp any reason as to why we signed these two athletes.