DONE-DEAL: Leicester has formally signed a formidable winger and outstanding international midfield player, but…

Steve Cooper’s Leicester City are pushing hard on recruitment to ensure survival in the Premier League. They are now turning attention to beefing up their forward options and midfield starters. Here is what you need to know.

The King Power side have renewed the contracts of Jannik Vestergaard, Jamie Vardy, and Wilfred Ndidi; they have signed Abdul Fatawu, Caleb Okoli, Michael Golding, and Bobbie De Cordova-Reid; and, of course there is more rumoured. That is thus far a fantastic window for the Foxes. Cooper will be pleased to have already set up a sufficient side even if no further action is taken in the market.

Nevertheless, there will probably still be some more sales, and Leicester are unlikely going to rest on their laurels: they have to form a better squad and mentality than teams such as Nottingham Forest and Everton. As such, we have seen a couple other links. Namely, for Matias Soule and Richard Rios.

Leicester City linked to international midfielder

The Colombian midfielder Rios is an interesting choice. To first provide context on this, our current midfield without further transfers would likely be formed by Harry Winks, Boubakary Soumare, and Ndidi. It could be argued that with the promising youngsters in our squad that could impact as well as the versatile players we have available mean it is unnecessary to sign another midfielder.

The 24-year-old Colombian is a defensive midfielder by trade, usually driving forward towards the wings to support wing-based progression, before recovering swiftly to regain possession when it has been lost. This seems to be the over-arching stylistic personality of the player: a progressive DM. However, his passing is clearly not quite on the level of Winks.

So, for around £20m disregarding the competition faced for his signature from Everton, it seems like a poor choice without first selling one of the three primary midfielders or Hamza Choudhury. Neither of which seems to be happening at pace at this time. I also do not feel he would add much to the team that Winks already does. Their playstyle is similar to Soumare, so we might as well keep the Frenchman.

That Juventus winger you may have heard of

Matias Soule has been of interest to the Foxes since before the permanent announcement of Abdul Fatawu, and represents an ambitious project for Cooper’s Leicester City. Soule is not a cheap player, and nor would he settle for the second team: this would be a first team signing to take the place of our other talents.

Again though, I am cautious. Although obviously a talented player – primarily a goal-scoring, technicallly excellent right-winger – it again befuzzles me that this is the sort of talent we are looking at. The Argentinian is almost exclusively a right-winger that can perform in attacking midfield every once in a while.

We have Abdul Fatawu and Kasey McAteer on the right, as well as De Cordova-Reid who will fill in there and in midfield when needed. We really need an out-and-out left-winger to challenge Stephy Mavididi. Now then, this could mean Fatawu or McAteer will be moved to the left, but I think that would be a poor choice: especially because it means dropping either the explosive Fatawu or magic Mavididi.

Overall, both players would be great additions to the cast. However, both would be expensive, and both would force us to put players who fought hard for us or their loan teams last season on the bench. Still, if Leicester City purchase either it will almost certainly be an indication of the ambition for the survival project.