It’s amazing that after more than 30 years of Premier League football, new achievements are still being recorded. Not that Leicester City will be particularly chuffed with the trail they have blazed during a particularly torturous 2025/26 campaign…
Only twice has a Premier League champion gone on to be relegated from the top tier. The first was Blackburn Rovers, who hoisted the trophy in 1995 before facing demotion to the Championship in 1999. The Lancashire outfit were promoted back to the Premier League two seasons later, where they would stay for more than a decade. And then the wheels came off… and, by 2017, Blackburn were residing in League One.
The Blue-and-Whites charted the path, but Leicester have found a quicker way to make the journey – they’ve gone from Premier League champions to League One in a mere decade. Where has it all gone wrong for one of English football’s feel-good stories of the past ten years?
The Glory Years
There are few, if any, more remarkable outcomes in sport than Leicester City winning the Premier League title in 2016. They had been threatened by relegation just the season prior, but rallied and – with an inspirational Claudio Ranieri in charge, backed by bargain signings Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante – kicked on in 2015/16.
At odds of 5,000/1, Leicester’s Premier League title win is – by some margin – the most unexpected outcome in sporting history. But this wasn’t the complete outlier that it was reported to be. The Foxes reached the quarter finals of the Champions League in 2016/17, the semis of the EFL Cup in 2019/20 and, famously, lifted the FA Cup for the first time in the club’s history in 2021.
And, in amongst all that, were a pair of fifth-place finishes in the Premier League, so Leicester – during this era – were far more than a mere flash in the pan. However, a tragedy had undoubtedly shaken the foundations of the club. Owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who was incredibly popular within the football club and the city as a whole, tragically lost his life in a helicopter crash in 2018.
A number of Leicester players attended Vichai’s funeral in Thailand, before dedicating the FA Cup win to his memory. The tragedy galvanised the club and brought the staff closer together… there’s no doubt that Vichai’s personality and business acumen were missed terribly in the years that followed.
The Downfall
Following confirmation of Leicester City’s relegation to League One, Chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha has issued the following statement:
To our fans,
Relegation to League One is now confirmed. As Chairman, that responsibility sits with me. There are no excuses.
We have… pic.twitter.com/rKzmniJ34G
— Leicester City (@LCFC) April 21, 2026
For all that success, Leicester never quite had that mega-rich private equity ownership, nor were they acquired by a Saudi oil baron. Financially, the Foxes had begun to outreach themselves; trying to sustain their new-found successes without the commercial revenue you would associate with English football’s biggest clubs.
In 2022/23, Kasper Schmeichel – a totem of the Foxes’ glory years – was let go, while impressive centre back Wesley Fofana was sold. With a number of key players from the title-winning campaign already long gone, this was a very different Leicester side.
And it showed. They didn’t win their first Premier League game until October, failed to win a game between December and the start of February, and by April the Foxes had said goodbye to Brendan Rodgers, who had masterminded their FA Cup triumph.
Dean Smith, assisted by John Terry, was tasked with keeping Leicester in the Premier League. It was mission improbable, and so it came to pass that the Foxes were relegated to the Championship – just seven years after being crowned champions.
The Rebound
The 2023/24 season gave everyone at Leicester City a chance to take stock. Top Srivaddhanaprabha, Vichai’s son, had taken on the running of the club, aided by head of football operations Jon Rudkin. Together, they managed to persuade Enzo Maresca to leave Manchester City’s youth section to become the Foxes’ new head coach… it was a move that would prove to be a masterstroke.
Maresca instigated his progressive style of play, quickly winning over the players and fans alike – helped by winning 13 of his first 14 Championship games in charge, of course. Leicester would go on to seal the Championship title, winning 97 points in an excellent bounce back campaign. It would, however, come at a cost…
A gross over-spend in the pursuit of the title meant that the Foxes breached profit and sustainability rules (PSR) during the 2023/24 season. They were charged in May 2025 and, after a lengthy period of legal wrangling, were eventually docked six points in February 2026. And that, as we will later learn, would prove disastrous…
False Dawn
Maresca left Leicester in June 2024, taking up the head coach’s position at Chelsea. In came Steve Cooper, formerly the manager of the Foxes’ fierce local rivals, Nottingham Forest. That, allied to a playing style which was the antipathy of Maresca’s free flowing fluidity, meant that Cooper was on borrowed time before a ball had barely been kicked. He lasted until November, when fan pressure had led Top to give Cooper the boot. At the time of his sacking, Leicester were outside the relegation zone.
Ruud van Nistelrooy will forever be a mere footnote in the history of Leicester City, but his short stint as head coach was remarkable… for all the wrong reasons. The Foxes couldn’t win; they couldn’t score, for that matter, and at one point broke a Premier League record by failing to find the net in nine consecutive home games. The Dutchman was doomed… and so were Leicester, for that matter.
Double Dip
Relegated from the Premier League once more, the Midlands outfit had a problem. They had an expensive squad of players that few other clubs were particularly interested in taking off their hands, as well as a lack of resources to bring in new faces – enforced, really, by their prior PSR breaches.
The players, individually and collectively, showed an alarming lack of togetherness and leadership, with new head coach Marti Cifuentes unable to get a tune out of them. Leicester plummeted down the Championship table, before being deducted those six points in February.
That loss would, ultimately, prove decisive, although in truth even without the deduction the Foxes would have struggled to retain their place in the second tier. Chants of ‘sack the board’ greeted the final nail in their coffin; a 2-2 draw with Hull City in April.
Who’s to blame? We live in the scapegoat age, of course, but Top surely has to shoulder some of the burden for some questionable staff appointments. And a set of players that ranked 23rd or lower in the Championship for stats including runs, sprints and high intensity? It doesn’t show a great deal of hunger to turn things around, does it now.
Leicester City head into another summer of uncertainty. Players on £50,000 a week in League One, with an £85 million training ground to finance, in a season in which third-tier clubs will be restricted to spending just 60% of their income on transfer and wages? What’s gone before may just be the appetiser for the woes to come for the former kings of English football.
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