The £9m Leicester City transfer decision that could have gone the other way: View | OneFootball

Highlights

Back in January 2015, Leicester City secured the signing of Croatian hot-shot Andrej Kramaric for a fee of £9m.

The Foxes escaped Premier League relegation at the end of the 2014/15 campaign by winning seven of their last nine matches, including a heavy 5-1 victory over QPR who have not returned to the top-flight since.

Kramaric was brought in by then manager Nigel Pearson in an effort to guide the club to Premier League safety but the Croatia international scored just two goals as the Foxes were still able to finish 14th in the table, and six points clear of the relegation zone.

Jamie Vardy's 2014/15 top flight tally of five goals and eight assists was enough to steer Pearson's Foxes away from danger but Kramaric would remain hopeful that he could prove his worth in his first full season at Leicester.

After all, Pearson brought him through the doors at the King Power Stadium following the Croatian's impressive goalscoring record at Rijeka in which the ace bagged 56 goals in 65 games.

However neither Kramaric nor the rest of the world could have predicted what Leicester achieved during the 2015/16 season.

Against all the odds, the Foxes lifted the Premier League table after amassing 81 points from their 38 games with second placed Arsenal finishing on just 71 points.

Manager Claudio Ranieri may have been the mastermind behind the Foxes unlikely top flight triumph but there was no room for Kramaric in this fairy tale narrative.

After making just two Premier League appearances, the Croatian was sent on loan to Bundesliga side Hoffenheim where he scored five goals in 15 games in an initial loan spell.

As with the previous season, Kramaric was not able to showcase his goalscoring talents in Leicester colours due to the presence of Jamie Vardy who bagged 24 league goals in an incredible season, in which the England man broke Ruud van Nistelrooy's long-standing record by scoring in 11 consecutive Premier League games.

Also keeping Kramaric out of the Leicester team was cult hero Shinji Okazaki who was almost an ever present for the Foxes, during their title winning campaign, appearing in 36 out of 38 Premier League Games.

Andrej Kramaric after leaving Leicester

Kramaric left Leicester City in the summer of 2016 to join Hoffenheim permanently meaning he never took part in the Foxes' incredible Champions League 2016-17 campaign in which they reached the quarter-finals where they were cruelly defeated 2-1 on aggregate by Spanish giants Atletico Madrid.

The Croatian has still had a fantastic football career outside of the Midlands and is still at Hoffenheim where he has scored 116 goals in 247 appearances since signing permanently.

The 32-year-old has also had an impressive international career with Croatia, reaching two World Cup semi-finals in 2018 and 2022.

The hot-shot bagged three goals across the two tournaments in Russia and Qatar, strengthening his impressive international goal return in which he has scored 25 goals in 86 caps.

Kramaric is blatantly a top striker on the elite European football scene, but it just didn't happen for him at Leicester City and that's football sometimes.

The Croatian's spell at Leicester overlapped with the time in which Jamie Vardy was at the absolute peak of his powers and not a single Foxes fan would change that for the world given the side's miraculous achievement of winning the Premier League.

However things could have easily gone the other way, and Kramaric too could have been a Leicester City legend who may well be described as the one who got away.