Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri recently said that his club do not need to spend the big bucks to compete in the Premier League
Leicester City is the definition of playing with house money this season. They exceeded even the wildest expectations by winning the league and will ride that wave for years.
The defending Premier League champs are not doing so hot this season and currently sit 11th in the table but from the looks of it the club and the supporters could not care less.
Despite the slow start, the Foxes have plenty of reasons to be confident going into the rest of the season. They won their opening Champions League match and have spent big in the summer on quality players compared to their usual purchasing habits.
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They spent £16 million pounds on Ahmed Musa and spent another £28 million on striker Islam Slimani. Not to mention some of the other reinforcements they brought in bringing their total spending to around £70 million. They did however sell off N’Golo Kante for £30 million to offset some of that spending.
Manager Claudio Ranieri was asked about that spending and if the club would have to spend more to keep their position in the Premier league.
While Leicester City did spend a great deal of money for a club of their size, it is nothing compared to the financial Giants that they will face this weekend, Manchester United. United spent on one player what Leicester city spent on their entire summer spending.
Ranieri said, as quoted by the Daily Mail:
"“I don’t want to spend £200m, I just want to bring the right players. Our budget is OK. We spend what we need. It is not important that [our Premier League rivals] spend a lot of money. We spent what we needed to spend.Not to excess. We follow the chairman’s philosophy. He wants us to grow up slowly, to make a solid basement. I’m sure we have a solid basement and now we are building the first floor up.”"
The Foxes know that they struck gold last season by winning the league but they know that it is highly unlikely to happen again. What they can continue to do now is to establish themselves as a top 10 club and try to fight for European football and avoid a relegation scrap.
The best way to do so is to maintain their excellent scouting record and to avoid dumping loads of money into underachieving players. We have seen from the likes of Queens Park Rangers and other clubs that spending big money does not guarantee Premier League survival or relevance.
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Leicester City and Ranieri will now focus on being self sustaining and capitalizing on the clubs newfound fame and notoriety. The club is in good hands with the Italian and they will continue to succeed if they keep doing what they did to win the league last season.