The latest Leicester City signing Ritchie De Laet has said that he is very much looking forward to the start of the new season and is under no illusion that it will be easy. The former Manchester United defender recently made his move to the Championship club permanent after many seasons of spending time on loan at various clubs including Leicester City. He is expected to be a major factor towards the push for promotion from the club. Leicester City were heavily expected to be challenging for promotion spot last time around, but the expected push never came.

They are once again the favourites for promotion this time around as well due to the heavy spending, but Ritchie De Laet reckons that it will certainly not be easy and that the club should focus only on getting the pre-season right. One of the reasons for Ritchie De Laet thinking that the Championship season this time around will be tough is due to the presence of Premier league teams, who have only been recently relegated from the top division. Clubs like Bolton, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Blackpool are still expected to have a huge pile of cash injection from the parachute payments.

“The three clubs that came down – Bolton, Blackburn and Wolves – are big clubs, plus you’ve got the likes of Blackpool, Cardiff, Middlesbrough and all the other sides that are up there time and time again, including Hull and Ipswich. So it is going to be a tough year for everyone in the Championship and competition for not just automatic promotion, but the play-off places as well is going to be fierce. I don’t think that the ‘favourites’ tag will bother the lads too much because they played with that on their shoulders last season,” De Laet told Sky Sports.