On Monday, we covered a story from Turkey claiming that Fenerbahce were currently working on a plan that would see Leicester’s Islam Slimani return to the King Power Stadium in January.
Bought for a record fee from Sporting CP during the summer of 2016, the now 30-year-old forward never managed to fully convince the stream of Foxes managers that followed Claudio Ranieri, and Claude Puel eventually decided it was best for everyone if he went on loan somewhere.
Following a disappointing six month spell at Newcastle United, there was a lot of hope the Algeria international could recapture his Liga NOS form in Turkey, but that hasn’t been the case.
In fact, Slimani is probably going through one of the driest spells in his career, and even he can’t explain it.
According to Compétition in Algeria, his manager, Erwin Koeman, is set on doing everything in his power to get the best out of him, as, so far, nothing appears to be working considering the Leicester loanee only has one goal to his name in the league so far this season.
The website state Slimani even went to his head coach and said: “It’s a problem I’ve never had before. I never thought something like this would happen to me, especially when I was scoring very important goals. I want to solve this as soon as possible. Maybe this situation is creating extra pressure.”
From here on in, it’s expected the Leicester forward will have to do less physically on the pitch, playing more of a poacher role with everyone else playing around him.
We’ll see if that works, but, right now, things aren’t going to plan.
