INTERVIEW: BBC presenter Manish Bhasin discusses his Leicester support and the demands of the football league

Nb: Interview took place before Nigel Pearson was sacked

Starting with your own club Leicester City, last season was quite a rollercoaster; you must have feared there was no way back at one point?

I think rollercoaster is kind of underplaying it! It was almost ridiculous what happened at Leicester, I mean to be bottom of the table for 140 days, you know, five months, nobody should be given the right to stay up in the Premier League but then to win seven of the last nine, and in the way that they did it at the end of the season giving an absolute thumping away at QPR just ended it in the perfect way.

I, like everybody else, and other staunch Leicester fans would have had them down and relegated after one very brief season, and everybody hates that kind of thing but to give ourselves that chance and turn it around in the way that they did was beyond anybody’s expectations. I’m absolutely delighted to be able to stand here today and say that we are going to have a second season in the Premier League after ten years away – it’s just unbelievable. I thought we were dead and buried but clearly we’re not. I’m very excited and looking forward to build on what was a 14th place finish.

I think a lot of fans sat down and looked at it, I saw all but one or two games – and we weren’t doing a great deal wrong. I’ll be honest with you, we just lost close contests, on narrow decisions, we gave away silly careless goals, almost lucky goals to the opposition, and that’s not sour grapes. I went to Arsenal when we lost 2-1 and even Arsene Wenger – this was in the middle of our dreadful run – and Theo Walcott came out after and said we can’t believe these boys who we’ve just played are bottom of the table, they deserve to be a lot higher than that. That was just one of many examples of opposition managers and players saying to the media, Leicester should not be bottom of the table or in the relegation zone with the bravery of their game, they all intimated just as we thought that we were just a little bit unlucky. Two or three signings did change it, but no doubt Robert Huth who has now signed permanently for £3 million pounds – which I reckon we’ll look back at and might discuss it as being the bargain signing of the summer. He’s 30 years old still got a good four / five years in him, premier league experience.

Do you think Nigel Pearson is the right man to continue taking Leicester forward and what do the club need to do to strengthen this summer?

We just need to add quality to what we’ve already got, I think Ulloa did very well for his first ever season in the Premier League, perhaps didn’t get the quantity of goals that he was after. Huth is in, after his loan spell which is one thing that we needed defensively. It all depends on whether Esteban Cambiasso stays or goes – he was pivotal when he came along with Huth. I think those two signings were major factors last season, and I’d love Cambiasso to stay, he’s 34 and won everything there is to win.

The Premier League as a whole looks as strong as ever and all the top sides will continue improving, do you fancy Chelsea to reign again this season? And what do you think of the three promoted side’s chances?

You can’t not admire the work that Eddie Howe has done for Bournemouth, and the players involved – to come up in the way that they did and the fashion that they did was pretty amazing. Some might question how much money Eddie Howe is putting into new signings, Tyrone Mings is just about to complete a move from Ipswich – he was worth £10,000 three years ago and Bournemouth are willing to spend 8 million pounds on an unproven fullback and compare that on the same day that Gerard Deulofeu has gone to Everton, and he’s gone for three and a half / four million pounds, and he’s at Barcelona B, different position, different background – is Eddie Howe paying over the odds to get the squad that he wants? I’m not sure, I know it’s a young exciting Englishman, and clearly you have to pay a premium for that so that might explain Tyrone Mings’ fee.

Watford, new manager – how are they going to do, it’s very much an unproven quantity (?) clearly they’ve got the players in there who you’re going to look out for, the likes of Troy Deeney who you know is going to score a few goals, I think they’ll certainly be dangerous.

Alex Neil has proven to be a revelation hasn’t he? He’s had one season in charge in the English football League and he’s won promotion – and he did it brilliantly well, the players that they kept hold of I think were pivotal to the fact that they managed to go up this season. They underperformed at the start of last season. Keeping the likes of Wes Hoolahan and Gary Hooper proving the pundits wrong that he can score goals. I think they’ll be fine but I think they need to know exactly where their going to go with their transfer dealings. But the way Alex Neil is going he can’t do any wrong at the minute so I expect out of the three that actually Norwich might well do the better over the other two.

Who would you say has picked up the best summer signing so far? Whilst certain names stand out, Gerard Deulofeu for £4m looks like great business for Everton…

I mean Liverpool have done ok so far, but their the only ones who you can really assess at the minute because they got their signings in early, they;ve bought in good reinforcements, I like the exciting acquisitions of the likes of Danny Ings although you’re not quite sure where he’s going to fit in with the Brendan Rodgers kind of thinking. Firmino’s come in from Brazil – there’s some reports that he might have spent up to 35 million pounds on the Brazilian after an initial outlay of 25 million. We’ve seen what he’s been doing at the Copa America, clearly been doing well at Seville, is he the man to get the goals and be a perfect replacement for Raheem Sterling, are we going to see the best out of Sturridge obviously after all his injuries. You look at Gomez, and Adam Bogdan – they’re very much going to be benchwarmers. In terms of signings, we’re talking very early days, and right now Liverpool are the ones who have got in early and they’re the only ones really we can really say, along with Arsenal’s Petr Cech signing although they clearly need to get somebody else like a world cup striker for sure as well as a defensive midfielder.

You’ve obviously watched a lot of football league action in your role with the BBC, why do you think those three divisions are so unpredictable?

It’s hard to generalise across the three divisions, but I think on the whole there are more and more teams wanting to play football the way more and more fans want to see it being played, you know, on the ground, attacking, maybe using width as their main weapon, pressing hard and almost feeling the need to prepare themselves for if they get promoted to the Premier League at the end of that season, and we saw that at the end of last season in the Championship – if you look at the top eight sides and you can make a claim that all those top eight sides, from day one, set out to play football properly.

Who would you tip for the three division winners as things stand? Derby have made some eye-catching signings whilst Portsmouth seem well on their way to having a top squad in League Two…

In the Championship I think the main story has got to be Derby County because obviously Steve McClaren’s left to take over at Newcastle, and the job has gone to Paul Clement and we don’t know too much about him from him being a number two at some big clubs, he’s done his business early, he’s obviously paired his two ex Aston Villa strikers together, Andreas Weimann and Darren Bent – Bent was on loan at Pride Park last season. It’s going to be interesting how the bookies are going to pick their favourites now, they’ve clearly been impressed by the appointment of the new man as the well as the five or six signings that he’s already brought into the east midlands club so we’ll see how that pans out.

Also Bristol City, just by the way that they play their football and won League One, how are they going to trouble some of the more established names in the Championship, the likes of Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough, I think Bristol City might cause an upset or two and I think Steve Cottrell has really got his teeth into that job, so Bristol City and Derby are the ones to look out for.

I like what Portsmouth have done in terms of their managerial appointment because Paul Cook has done a fantastic job at Chesterfield.