Inside King Power Stadium: Ballon d’Or winner’s Leicester City refusal, how Winks outshines team

The latest Leicester City news, looking at Ousmane Dembele’s nearly-move to Leicester City, the best clean sheet so far, Islam Slimani’s latest transfer, and more

Leicester City extended their unbeaten run to four Championship matches but it was not the result they wanted in the derby against Coventry.

As they set about preparing to get back to winning ways, here’s a look at some of the news around the club.

The Ballon d’Or was awarded on Monday and with the days of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo’s domination now over, there’s a much more open field for football’s biggest individual prize.

A 35-goal season for Champions League winners PSG helped Ousmane Dembele claim the award for the first time, the Frenchman having reached the level his performances as a teen prodigy suggested he could.

Scoring 12 goals in Ligue 1 for boyhood club Rennes as an 18-year-old saw Dembele attract the world’s attention, with plenty of clubs interested in him.

Fresh off their Premier League title triumph and getting set for the Champions League, City were well in that conversation. In fact, manager Claudio Ranieri even spoke to Dembele over the phone to try to convince him to move to the King Power Stadium.

Dembele, who would move to Borussia Dortmund that summer, was very clear with the Italian.

“Yes, I had Claudio Ranieri on the phone,” Dembele told Ouest France in May 2016. “I was surprised to have him. I told him I will not go to Leicester. I know where I’m going, it’s definitive.”

It remains the case that no Ballon d’Or has ever been on City’s books. Gary Lineker finished second in 1986, behind Igor Belanov, while the club just failed in their attempts to sign Johan Cruyff in the early 1980s.