Harry Winks joining Leicester City was considered a coup. Now both parties need a fresh start

Birmingham CityBlackburn RoversBristol CityCharlton AthleticCoventry CityDerby CountyHull CityIpswich TownLeicester CityMiddlesbroughMillwallNorwich CityPortsmouthPreston North EndQueens Park RangersSheffield UnitedSheffield WednesdaySouthamptonStoke CitySwansea CityWatfordWest Bromwich AlbionWrexhamScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsAnalysisHarry Winks joining Leicester City was considered a coup. Now both parties need a fresh startHarry Winks hides his face after Leicester City are relegated to League One earlier this month George Wood/Getty Images Share articleIt is hard to contemplate now, but Harry Winks was once considered a statement signing. Leicester City had been relegated from the Premier League in shocking fashion despite being backed by the seventh-highest budget in the division, and with a squad stacked with talent. It was July 2023 and a club who had not seen demotion coming needed to secure an immediate return. And so, despite the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) harbouring concerns over whether they risked breaching Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), Leicester invested £10million ($13.5m) on the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder — an England international surely too talented for the Championship. In fairness, they were proved correct. Winks fitted in perfectly to new head coach Enzo Maresca’s possession-based style of play as Leicester won the second tier at a canter. There was even talk of an England recall for a player who had won his 10th and most recent cap in November 2020. Winks and Leicester were back in the Premier League, where they both felt they belonged. Fast-forward almost two years and Winks and Leicester are confronting life in League One after back-to-back relegations. Supporters are mutinous and, while the ownership has borne the brunt of the ire, it is the 30-year-old who has been the focus of the fanbase’s frustration. He was involved in a foul-mouthed exchange with a supporter as he boarded the team coach after a key defeat at Portsmouth earlier this month. He was booed onto the pitch as a second-half substitute as relegation was confirmed against Hull City last week, his every touch thereafter jeered. It has been a dramatic fall from grace, for both the club and the player. The constant changing of managers, and associated tweaks to playing styles, has hampered Winks and his team-mates, but the midfielder has not helped himself, either, with some ill-chosen social media posts and personal choices that have soured his relationship with supporters. He has become the lightning rod for the fan resentment towards an underperforming squad; and, whether fairly or not, the poster boy for the theory that this is a highly-paid group who does not care about the club. A salary of around £90,000 per week is often used as a stick with which to beat him, but sources with knowledge of the situation — speaking anonymously to The Athletic in order to protect relationships, like others consulted for this article — suggest his actual weekly wage is less than half that figure. It will be cut even further next season after a second successive relegation. That said, while Winks still has a year left on his contract after a one-year extension was triggered following promotion in 2024, it seems inconceivable he will still be a Leicester player next season. The club needs a complete reset in the summer, and a huge clear-out of the squad. A large number of players associated with the team’s failures need a fresh start elsewhere, too. What a far cry it all is from those heady days following his arrival. Back then, he seemed the perfect fit, with his signing a significant coup for a club preparing for life back in the second tier. Winks had made over 200 appearances for Tottenham, and was a regular in the Premier League and Champions League. At 21, he had earned the praise of manager Mauricio Pochettino. “For me, he is the perfect midfielder, (someone) who can play box-to-box and like a holding midfielder,” Pochettino told Sky Sports. “He has the quality and capacity to play and use the demand of the game and read it. He’s so clever.” Gareth Southgate handed Winks the first of his England caps in a World Cup qualifier in Lithuania in October 2017 and, a few days later, he was praised for the maturity of his performance against Real Madrid in the Champions League, holding his own against Luka Modric and Toni Kroos as Spurs claimed a 1-1 draw in the Bernabeu. A year later, it was Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola expressing his admiration for the youngster after a cameo performance off the bench as Tottenham lost 1-0 to City at Wembley. Guardiola told reporters post-match that Winks had “changed the game”. Injuries may have disrupted his subsequent progress, but he was still recalled into Pochettino’s starting lineup for the 2019 Champions League final against Liverpool after two months out of action. It was only after Pochettino’s departure from Tottenham that he started slipping down the pecking order, a scenario he would revisit at the King Power Stadium post-Maresca. There was a season playing in Italy with Sampdoria, who were relegated from Serie A at the end of the 2022-23 campaign. Then came the opportunity for a fresh start, albeit in the Championship, with Leicester. In an early interview with The Athletic after his arrival, he explained how he made the move after a conversation with Maresca, who convinced him his style of play would suit Winks. “The most important thing for me was to be wanted and to feel wanted,” he said. That first campaign was one of the best of his career. He was perfect for Maresca’s style of play, with full-back Ricardo Pereira stepping into midfield alongside him when Leicester had possession – which was most of the time. Winks started every Championship game that season when he was available, missing just one through suspension. He was the main cog in Maresca’s unstoppable machine that sprinted back into the top flight at the first attempt. Maresca’s departure to Chelsea was the beginning of tougher times for Winks, who became a victim of Leicester’s scattergun approach to managerial appointments. He went from one of the first names on the team sheet to a figure on the fringes under Steve Cooper, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Marti Cifuentes. Indeed, he spent large spells not even in the squad under the latter two incumbents.  He actually started the first six league games of the 2024-25 season under Cooper, but was left out of the next two — at home to Bournemouth and away at Southampton. Leicester won both. “We hadn’t won for six games so you’re always looking for little solutions,” Cooper said in a press conference after the Bournemouth win. “You want to put a plan together. Harry’s a really important player for us and has had a big impact since he’s been here. And I’m sure that will be the case going forward.” In truth, Cooper felt Winks was not offering Leicester enough out of possession, especially when it came to being alert to cut-backs to the edge of the box after Leicester conceded several goals in a similar fashion. There was no real falling-out with Cooper, but the fact Winks was naive enough to be photographed next to a sign being held up in a Copenhagen nightclub during the squad’s Christmas party that read ‘Enzo, I miss you’ certainly did not help the public perception — especially when Cooper was sacked the next day. Winks’ public persona took a further hit under Cooper’s successor, Ruud van Nistelrooy, who eventually cut him from the squad for the final nine games of a campaign that saw Leicester relegated again. Van Nistelrooy never confirmed the reason for Winks’ omission, but sources at the club suggested it was down to his insistence on commuting to training from his family home just to the north of London, rather than staying at the club’s training ground one night a week between afternoon and morning sessions. Winks had initially moved with his partner, Lowri Algar, to Leicestershire but had his own reasons for not wanting to spend time away from home. She was close to giving birth to their daughter and wanted to be closer to family for support, so the couple moved back from the East Midlands, leaving Winks with a hefty daily commute. He liked a social media post at the time which seemed to confirm the reason for his stance. But if there was some empathy towards Winks for putting his family first, his cause was not helped when Lowri posted a picture on Instagram of Winks with his daughter and an Aperol Spritz two hours before Leicester kicked off against Liverpool last April — the game when relegation to the Championship was confirmed. The player had looked to leave Leicester last summer, but no escape route beckoned. Initially, he did not start under Van Nistelrooy’s successor, Marti Cifuentes, despite him being a manager whose playing style should have suited Winks. But after some influential cameos off the bench, he did win his place back, only to be dragged off at half-time with Leicester 3-0 down at home to Sheffield United at the end of November. The team rallied without him, eventually losing 3-2, and he was not included in another Championship squad until Cifuentes was sacked in January. The Spaniard told reporters that Winks’ omission was a “technical decision”, but it seemed again that the coach preferred the defensive work rate of other midfielders, notably Oliver Skipp. The team had actually enjoyed a mini-upturn in Winks’ absence after that loss to Sheffield United, with Cifuentes asked ahead of the visit of Queens Park Rangers in December for the reasons behind the flurry of form. “I’ve been talking about the culture and about being proud of wearing this shirt and representing this badge,” he said, not directly referring to Winks. “It’s a basic thing. “We want people who are not only feeling good to be here but, as well, are proud and privileged to represent this club. And that’s been the case especially in the last games.” That game was lost 4-1 to QPR and Cifuentes was gone a little over a month later. The former England midfielder only failed to start three games under Gary Rowett. He had been wildly booed by the home support in the draw with Hull City that condemned the team to a third relegation in four seasons, with the jeers pursuing him as he went to his car post-match. Despite that, he began the home match against Millwall three days later, playing the full 90 minutes. If nothing else, that demonstrated a strength of character, even if the stadium was sparsely populated that night. It remains to be seen whether that 1-1 draw will be Winks’ last game for Leicester, with the final trip of the campaign to Blackburn Rovers this Saturday. For everyone’s sake, if he does feature, it should be his final appearance for the club. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms