Transfer news: Leicester City sign Kelechi Iheanacho for ‘undisclosed’ fee

In reality this deal went one for less time than Slimani last year, or Mahrez this year (or Mahrez last year), but it certainly didn't feel that way. But that doesn't matter now. The deal is signed and done.

Hey look at that, a new 3rd kit! That’s bound to be right up there as the most exciting Foxes news of the day!

Oh, and also, Leicester City have announced the signing of Kelechi Iheanacho from Manchester City on a five year deal. The fee is officially undisclosed, but it’s also definitely £25m.

For a player of his quality and age, that’s a great deal. It sounds like a lot, but that amount will buy you Marko Arnautovic this summer.

The reason he was available for less is that Manchester City were also holding out for a buy back clause, which has been included. Many fans were worried about it; why take on the added risk of a transfer over a loan if they can just take him back? But that was when the price being rumoured was £35m.

If the reports of the actual clause being for £50m are true, that sounds like a great deal for us. The possibilities are 1) the clause is never activated, which suggests he wasn't as good as we hoped, but the clause is no negative then or 2) at some point they buy him back for twice the price, which means we got a fantastic player for some length of time, and that Man City paid us £25m for the opportunity.

So, it turns out that Iheanacho is not simply a commodity to be bought and sold and argued over, but also a football player, expected to compete on the pitch for us this year.

Usually I’d try to provide an article on what we can expect a new signing to bring to the team, but there’s already a much better example of that here.

What does the 20 year old provide? In short: goals. To put it slightly longer: goals, goals, goals. By far his biggest talking point is an impressive boast of having the lowest goals/minute ratio in Premier League history. He’s certainly prolific.

For Leicester City fans, regularly frustrated by the lack of goal scoring output from out host of secondary strikers, it probably sounds ridiculous to say his problem is that he only scores goals. Iheanacho is an out and out goal scorer, which is the primary aim of a forward, after all, but he’s not that well rounded.

That said, an over reliance on Jamie Vardy here has always been a problem. The England man is a streaky, confidence based goalscorer and that means he’ll go through slumps. If Mahrez is gone (or just not playing to his 15/16 standard) there wasn't another player in the squad we could trust to take up the slack and keep us scoring.

There is now.