Reacting to Leicester boss Cifuentes' first competitive starting XI

It's the weekend, it's summer, the sun is shining - and domestic football is back! It doesn't get much better than that. I mean, Leicester City could be in the Premier League, but we can't have it all! In all seriousness, we are glad to be back with some actual competitive Foxes football to explain and analyse for the Blue Army. We are glad to have you aboard.

If you live under a rock in Leicestershire somewhere, you're on holiday, or are super busy, you may not know that LCFC kick off their 2025/26 campaign at King Power Stadium on Sunday versus Sheffield Wednesday. The visiting Owls have even more issues than us at the moment - which is an obvious boost to Leicester's chances of winning.

So we do predict victory for the East Midlanders prior to kick-off. But this piece doesn't concern statistics or match action. No, this is a lineup reaction article. Here we shall attempt to discuss, as well as dissect, Marti Cifuentes' first starting XI as the new man in the Filbert Way hot seat. So, how does the Foxes team look? Would we make any changes? And what's our rating of the Catalan's first effort?

Leicester City boss Marti Cifuentes' initial competitive starting lineup

Jakub Stolarczyk; Luke Thomas, Caleb Okoli, Jannik Vestergaard, James Justin (c); Boubakary Soumare, Oliver Skipp; Stephy Mavididi, Bilal El Khannouss, Abdul Fatawu; Jordan Ayew.

Substitutes: Asmir Begovic, Hamza Choudhury, Wout Faes, Ben Nelson, Harry Winks, Louis Page, Kasey McAteer, Jeremy Monga, Patson Daka.

Reaction

First of all, Justin captain. Erm, he certainly needs to revitalise his career! Maybe responsibility is the way. Foxes of Leicester actually correctly predicted this team apart from Soumare, so it is obviously what we expected.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean it is the lineup I would select. For example, I prefer Nelson to Vestergaard. I'd love to see Monga start but our current two wingers are ideal. Winks is arguably preferable to Skipp. And we still need a new striker! 8/10.