Islam Slimani made quite an impact on his Premier League debut, scoring twice in Leicester City's 3-0 win over Burnley on Saturday.
Anyone who has paid attention to Slimani’s career over the past few seasons will not have been surprised by the quality he displayed.
The Algerian striker, 28, was impressive at the 2014 World Cup, scoring twice, and he has scored at a rate of better than one in two games for his country. At club level, he scored 31 times for Sporting Lisbon last season. His ability in the air is one of his strongest attributes.
Leicester spent £28 million (Dh133.7m) on Slimani on transfer deadline day, but the question is ‘why didn’t they sign him earlier?’.
The tasks facing the Premier League champions and manager Claudio Ranieri ahead of this season were huge.
1) Defend the title against a host of teams who have spent sizeable amounts improving their squads.
2) Compete in the Uefa Champions League and manage a squad to challenge in two games per week.
3) Replace N’Golo Kante, the midfielder who was vital to last season’s successful campaign.
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Key to Leicester having any chance of sustaining a credible title defence was getting off to a good start. Ranieri must surely have looked at Leicester’s fixture list and seen it was lopsided at the start of the season.
Trips to Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham in the first 10 games plus visits from Arsenal and Southampton. That is all but one of the top seven from last season.
They have already been beaten convincingly by Liverpool and played out a goalless draw with Arsenal.
Successful sides rarely stand still and it looked like Ranieri had done his transfer homework, made early signings and improved his squad.
Namaplys Mendy was signed from Nice for £13m to replace Kante while Ahmed Musa and Bartosz Kapustka were the other major arrivals.
Musa, a then club record £16.6m arrival, looked like a perfect fit for Leicester’s counter attacking gameplan while Kapustka was part of a strong Polish front three at Euro 2016.
They all seem like savvy signings, players with quality but plenty of potential to improve too.
It makes Ranieri’s early season team selection appear all the more strange. Mendy, unfortunately, was injured early on but Musa has featured sporadically.
He started the opening day defeat to Hull City but has had to settle for substitute appearances. Every time he has played he has looked dangerous so it is baffling that he has not had more game time.
Kaputska has not even made his debut.
Although all those signings were made in pre-season, it seems like Ranieri is still trying to work out how to integrate his new boys into the squad.
Showing faith in last season’s starting XI is commendable. However, the result is that Leicester have started the season poorly, with a couple of stale performances.
They are already eight points behind leaders Manchester City and, on current form, they are likely to drop points over the next five games, which include those trips to Chelsea, United and Tottenham.
Had signed Slimani in July, he could have hit the ground running after a full pre-season. The signing of a quality player like Slimani can have a major impact on teammates psychologically, causing the players around him to raise their game.
It would have been a massive pre-season boost to have him as part of the club earlier.
It makes Slimani seem like a panic buy — if he was part of Leicester’s original plan for the season they would have moved for him in July.
He also highlights what may be a flaw in Ranieri’s make up. Last season he was able to select the same side most weeks.
In 2016/17 he is almost obliged to rotate his squad — given the increase in matches. Squad rotation is a specific managerial skill, one that Ranieri might not be very good at.
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