When West Ham United came calling, slapping a £20 million offer down on Leicester City’s coffee table, there was really no world in which Mads Hermansen was going to stay at the King Power Stadium.
As Alan Pardew explained last week, relegation inevitably leads an exodus of talent.
Pardew took over West Ham United during a summer in which Joe Cole, Glen Johnson and Paolo di Canio all departed, to be followed by David James and Michael Carrick. As one of the few players to emerge from the wreckage of a disastrous 2024/25 campaign unscathed, no one in the East Midlands was surprised to learn that Mads Hermansen would be on his way.
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Still, even the most pessimistic, glass-half-empty members of the Leicester fanbase could not have envisaged Hermansen’s departure to bite quite as viciously as this.
Mads Hermansen shines at West Ham United as Leicester sink into League One
As the Foxes became the latest side to find themselves in a whirlpool of their own making – sucked down into League One after successive relegations – Tuesday’s fateful 2-2 draw with Hull City began with an almighty howler from the 38-year-old goalkeeper crumbling where Hermansen used to command.
Asmir Begovic, the former Stoke, Everton, Chelsea and Portsmouth glovesman, passed the ball straight to Hull winger Liam Miller under no pressure whatsoever.
Miller slotted home with consummate ease with Begovic, just to make things even worse, frazzled and out of position. If any moment summed up Leicester’s season – the latest to suffer successive relegations after Sunderland, Swindon, Wolves and Luton – it was this.
Just 24 hours after Mads Hermansen overtook Arsenal’s David Raya as the goalkeeper with the best clean sheet percentage in the Premier League – securing a clean sheet in 45 per cent of his games – his King Power successor ensured the Foxes will be travelling to Barnsley, Mansfield, Burton and Peterborough on the ten-year anniversary of glorious top-flight triumph.
“It was a careless, lazy pass to set up the Hull opener, and his decision to stand in the middle of his box [as Miller scored] was bizarre,” the Leicester Mercury wrote of Begovic’s costly blunder.
Hermansen has helped to transform the Hammers’ backline
The most ironic part of all this is that West Ham chose Mads Hermansen over a host of other goalkeeping targets because of his tidy distribution and confidence in possession, as well as his cat-like shot-stopping.
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The stats show that Hermansen is making a massive difference to the way the Hammers play, not to mention their vastly-improved defensive record. West Ham host Everton on Saturday looking to make it six clean sheets in ten league matches. You wouldn’t bet against them doing just that.
They say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
Now, the Leicester fans probably knew, as soon as his departure was confirmed, that Hermansen would not be easy to replace.
But the sight of a 38-year-old goalkeeper passing the ball straight to Hull’s forward on the day relegation to the third tier was confirmed? Beyond anybody’s most paralysing nightmares…
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