Not just Tielemans:
“Tielemans is one of 10 players now in the final year of their contracts. Caglar Soyuncu, Ayoze Perez, Daniel Amartey, Mendy, Choudhury, Ryan Bertrand, Jamie Vardy, Jonny Evans and captain Kasper Schmeichel will all be free agents next summer as things stand.”
As someone in the comments has mentioned, despite generally being perceived to have done good business every year, the build up of duds in the squad on good money who don’t want to/can’t be moved on has built up and is resulting in a bloated squad that needs a refresh but they’re unable to because of the amount of money tied up in wages.
This is the thing when people complain about their own clubs business in comparison to [insert club here], you only really look that what they did right compared to the full picture of your own club.
Also, as that clubs day in the sun falls away you expect your club to now be as good as the next one to come through and have a purple period.
It was Southampton, now doing a Southampton isn’t a good thing anymore apparently, then it was Leicester, that’s turning too. Currently it’s West Ham. Next will be Villa/Newcastle if they get their recruitment right or perhaps Brighton if they can progress again this season despite us leapfrogging all of those clubs in recent years.
The reality is for any club outside of the top 6 it’s incredibly difficult to bridge the gap or even sustain your place as best of the rest, even when you do throw money at it.
A lot more luck involved in the success of clubs outside the top 6 than people realise. Leicester seem well run, but they might well have been relegated without the good fortune to unearth two top players in Kante and Mahrez.