Could Jamie Vardy join the Leicester talent drain for a Chelsea or Man Utd pay-day?

Kasper Schmeichel has left Leicester City, and there is now a rumour that Jamie Vardy could be of interest to Manchester United and Chelsea.

There’s no question that it’s the end of an era. After 11 years with the club, Kasper Schmeichel has left Leicester City for the admittedly enticing south of France. It’s fair to say that Schmeichel’s time with the club has been eventful. Leicester have won the EFL Championship and the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Community Shield, and played their first European football since 2000/01.

While Schmeichel’s departure is another complication for a club that still seems to be drifting, it also marks a significant break with the past.

Jamie Vardy is now the only player remaining from the team that returned to the Premier League after an absence of 10 years which had taken in their only season below the top two divisions. And there have even been suggestions that Vardy could attract the sort of interest that escapes most 35-year-old strikers.

It has been suggested that Vardy could be of interest to both Manchester United and Chelsea, both of whom have been busy in the transfer market – though there is a conversation to be had over how much of this activity has been heat and how much has been light – but who could both do with a goalscoring striker, with Manchester United facing the prospect of a Cristiano Ronaldo-shaped statue starting up front for them and Chelsea having offloaded expensive malfunctioning part Romelu Lukaku back to Inter on loan, with neither club having signed anyone who could be realistically be described as a ‘replacement’.

But United and Chelsea are in similar positions with regard to attacking players. Both have a number of forwards – Anthony Elanga, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial at United and Timo Werner, Christian Pulisic, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech at Chelsea – who don’t quite fit the bill of the 20-goal-a-season striker that would be expected of the upwardly mobile club seeking Champions League football this season.

Manchester United have a long-standing habit of fleshing out their attack with the elderly, and Chelsea are now in that space of being with linked with every player that comes to the mind of ITK merchants on social media.

And this all seems… plausible. Vardy has now completed a full decade with Leicester himself, a period during which he also completed a haul of medals that he almost certainly wouldn’t have believed possible when he…