Leicester City should keep touting their stars' Champions League potential as transfer blueprint

The Championship is of a greater concern to Leicester City than the Champions League right now, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have players capable of playing on Europe’s biggest stage.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has not been shy in saying that it’s where attacking midfielder Bilal El Khannouss is heading.

“That’s the challenge for him at this young age, it’s pushing himself to know where his ceiling is,” van Nistelrooy said of the Moroccan at the end of last month.

“The potential is there. To play in a top club, in the Champions League, that’s where his potential is.”

It may seem strange for a manager to tout one of his own players to a level City can barely dream about reaching at the moment, but it shouldn’t be something they hide.

Instead, they should make it their public reputation. It seems the best route for them to ever challenge for Europe again.

It’s what helped City in the past. They were able to market themselves as the final step on the ladder before players joined a big club.

Consider Wesley Fofana. City bought a player with that grand potential and after just two seasons, even missing three-quarters of one campaign with a serious injury, he was sold for double the money to one of the country’s biggest sides.

City can’t make the advertising and merchandising revenue to compete with the top clubs, sustain their transfer business or help them meet Profit and Sustainability Regulations. They need smart player trading to do that.

And they have the training ground to pull it off. They can show prospective signings that they can provide everything they need to develop their game.

No matter what happens with City on the pitch, and whether El Khannouss leaves this summer or next or even in two years’ time, it feels the superstar potential he’s shown will ensure the club make a significant profit on him.

The biggest clubs have the spending power to guarantee signings are a success. They can wait for clubs like City to buy players and offer proof they can make in the Premier League before swooping. They have the capacity to pay the premium that comes with that guarantee.

Yes, it would be frustrating for fans. The highlight of van Nistelrooy’s tenure so far has been watching El Khannouss blossom, the 20-year-old a joy to watch with his confidence and flair in possession, his ability to pick out a pass and to wriggle out of trouble. Of course it would be a shame if he was to leave to greener pastures after just a year.

But the more deals of that kind City do, the more money they will have to spend, and the more they can grow the club. Slowly but surely they can work their way back to the top.

Not every deal will be a success. Players like Boubakary Soumare, who is finally showing signs of reaching his potential now, and Patson Daka were similar ages and had similar pedigrees to El Khannouss when they signed for City, and they don’t look like leaving for significant profits.

But with the transfer of El Khannouss, and the arrivals of Mads Hermansen and Abdul Fatawu before him, there’s enough good signs that City’s scouting and recruitment team can find these sorts of players regularly.

It’s what the club need to be focusing on. They need to be shouting from the rooftops that they can get players into the Champions League in the hope doing so often enough will eventually elevate them to the point they are there themselves.

If that was the blueprint up to the summer of 2021, when they didn’t sell a player, then they need to get back to it, and this time not veer away from it.

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