Emile Heskey believes there will be tough times ahead for Leicester City after they were relegated from the Premier League.
City, who will be joined in the second-tier of English football by Ipswich Town and Southampton, will be hoping to return to the lucrative top-flight as quickly as possible.
But according to Heskey, who played for the club in the latter part of the 1990s, it will be an uphill battle for the Foxes at their first attempt to re-enter the Premier League..
Heskey cited potential point deductions or possible fines and the loss of players as major hurdles to over come for the Foxes in their quest to get ahead.
Heskey told Prime Casino: "I think they took too much damage in the Premier League. Relegation really set them back. They're going to have to lose a lot of players.
"They might start the season 10 points behind, their best players already sold. They will be trimming the squad and looking for new, committed players. It’s not an easy start to launch a promotion attempt."
Emile Heskey talks with Ruud van Nistelrooy at the King Power Stadium
Emile Heskey talks with Ruud van Nistelrooy at the King Power Stadium (Image: Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
Heskey was equally downbeat about the prospects in the manager's office, with uncertainty surrounding Ruud van Nistelrooy's future. He added: "It’s tough in a sense that we're not a club that builds with a long-established strategy.
"We’re not a club that buys players and builds a team based on the club's philosophy. We buy players on what the manager wants. So if you don't know who the manager is, you don't know what we want.
"Whereas you look at other clubs, they're buying players to suit their style and the fundamentals of the club. That’s not how Leicester operate, so we first need to figure out where we stand now, where we want to get to, and who is the manager to take us there. Then we can start acting smart in the market.
"The main thing for Leicester is that they’re challenging and not falling away. I don't think they'll go straight back up necessarily, but I think they will be challenging and giving a good account of themselves.
"The toughest part for them is whether they bring in the right players that are going to let them mount a challenge, and just as importantly, who's going to be the manager and what sort of style of play will we have?
"We've gone from Brendan Rodgers to Enzo Maresca to Steve Cooper to Ruud van Nistelrooy to now - not knowing whether it is Ruud or someone else. There's been so many different styles of play that we've got to really come back to looking at who we are as a club, who we are as a city, and what it is that we want."
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