Leicester City have presented a successor to the departed Brendan Rodgers. Dean Smith will complete the season as head coach of the current number nineteen in the Premier League.
Leicester City presents the successor to Brendan Rodgers
Dean Smith has previously been head coach of Walsall, Brentford, Aston Villa and Norwich City. In December he was sent off by Norwich and has been without a club ever since. He is appointed by Leicester until the end of the season to keep the club in the Premier League. Smith brings John Terry along as an assistant. They have already worked together at Aston Villa in the past.
Leicester City has been waiting nine games in a row for a win and has therefore dropped to nineteenth place in the English league. The gap to the safe seventeenth place is only two points. At the beginning of this month, Leicester announced that Rodgers’ contract had been terminated in good consultation.
Richards regrets turning down Man City contract extension
Moving our focus from a former Villa coach to a former player. ‘What if I had accepted the contract proposal from Manchester City at the beginning of 2014?’ That question still haunts Micah Richards’ head regularly, the former defender has said in a podcast at the BBC. The now 34-year-old Englishman could start earning £100,000 a week.
Richards received the proposal at the beginning of 2014. He was able to sign for five and a half years with the club where he had completed the youth academy and where he had broken through in the first team. At the time, however, he was unhappy with his prospects at City, with Pablo Zabaleta then favored as a right-back.
“They had to have a certain number of England players to meet the quota. City offered me a weekly salary of £100,000 on a five-and-a-half-year contract. And I turned it down,” Richards said, after which Gary Lineker interrupted in disbelief and asked why. ‘Because I was number two behind Zabaleta. So no, it’s not all about money for me,” Richards continued with a wink.
City rented Richards to Fiorentina in the 2014/15 season, after which the defender left for Aston Villa on a free transfer. With the club from Birmingham, Richards was then relegated from the Premier League. “Because of that relegation, my salary was halved. Instead of £100,000 a week I was making £25,000 a week in the Championship. It’s the worst decision I’ve ever made,” said the cheerful former international with a laugh. He added, “So why do you think I work for every television station now?”
