Let that sink in for a second. In 2016, Leicester City won the Premier League title at odds of 5,000 to 1 — one of the most extraordinary sporting achievements in history. Ten years later, the same club is staring down the barrel of League One football. Not hypothetically. Not "at risk." Actually, genuinely, almost certainly going down.
The fall from grace doesn't get more brutal than this.
One Win in Seventeen
The numbers alone tell a story that's difficult to read. One win in 17 matches in the Championship. One win in 11 under their most recent manager, Gary Rowett, who was handed the poisoned chalice of trying to keep this club in the second tier. Portsmouth beat them 1-0 in what was described as a controversial narrow win, pushing Leicester deeper into the mire. The boos that rang out from their own fans after that loss say everything you need to know about where the mood is right now.
Jamie Vardy — who was front and centre of that 2016 miracle, the man who scored 24 league goals that season while the footballing world stood slack-jawed — was spotted watching from the stands with his wife Rebekah as the team he devoted a decade to was booed off the pitch. Whatever your feelings about anything that surrounds that family, seeing Vardy sitting in the stands watching this is genuinely sad.
Six Points They Could Not Afford to Lose
You could argue that Leicester's situation was already bad. But the six-point deduction made it critical. The EFL found the club guilty of breaching profit and sustainability rules during the 2023-24 campaign — specifically, of exceeding the permitted £83 million loss limit by £20.8 million over a 36-month rolling period. That charge stemmed from their final season in the Premier League.
Leicester appealed. The appeal was rejected. Six points were docked, and what was already a tight situation became almost impossible. In the Championship, six points is a lifetime. It is the difference between scrapping for survival and actually having a fighting chance.
There's a painful irony somewhere in all this. The overspending that got them in trouble was largely in service of staying in the top flight. Money spent, rules broken, top flight still lost — and now the bill has come due at the worst possible time.
Gary Rowett and a Mission That Looks Nearly Impossible
Rowett was brought in until the end of the season with five games left to play. The chairman was straight about it: this is a fight for survival. Rowett himself had been out of work since leaving Oxford United in December. He knows the Championship, and he knows what a relegation battle looks like up close. But inheriting a squad this broken at this point in the season is a different kind of challenge.
Sky Sports described the squad as "grossly underperforming." That's a pretty damning assessment of a group of players who were, just two years ago, playing top-flight Premier League football. But here we are.
The Broader Picture Is Even Bleaker
This would be back-to-back relegations. They went down from the Premier League last season, and now they are on the verge of dropping again. If it happens, Leicester City will go from Premier League champions (2016) to FA Cup winners (2021) to League One in the space of roughly ten years. The trajectory is stunning in the worst possible way.
Context matters here too. This is not a small club that punched above its weight and came back to earth. Leicester built genuine infrastructure, a new training ground, a globally recognised brand, international fanbase, and for a moment, an actual Champions League quarter-final campaign. They had real foundations. The fact that it has unravelled so completely speaks to deep structural failures — financial mismanagement, ownership decisions, squad building errors — that went well beyond the result of any single season.
What Happens If They Go Down?
League One is brutal for big clubs. It's not the Championship, where Premier League parachute payments and large fanbases still carry weight. It's a completely different environment — travel, attendances, fixture scheduling, wage structures. The idea of King Power Stadium hosting League One football against clubs like Exeter City or Stockport County next season would have seemed like satire a few years ago.
There are also serious financial questions about what a third successive drop does to the club's wage structure. Players signed on Championship or Premier League contracts don't suddenly accept League One wages. Either the club pays above its means to retain players who are too good for that level, or those players leave and the quality drops further. Neither scenario is comfortable.
A miracle is still technically possible. Five games remain. One moment of form, a run of results from the teams around them — football has produced stranger turnarounds. But based on what we have seen, on the numbers, on the trajectory, it would take something extraordinary to keep Leicester City in the Championship this season.
And extraordinary runs are in short supply at the King Power Stadium right now.
Sources: Sky Sports, Goal.com
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