Leicester City: From Premier League glory to the edge of League One

On May 2 2016, Leicester won the Premier League title for the first time, famously beating odds of 5,000/1 to do so.

Results elsewhere confirmed the triumph that day, so it was not until five days later that Claudio Ranieri and his players could celebrate with the fans for the first time, before their final home match against Everton.

Ahead of the 3-1 win, fans inside the King Power Stadium were treated to a memorable serenade by opera singer Andrea Bocelli. It was as surreal as the feat itself, which will be proudly spoken about for generations to come.

Now, that is far from the mind of every Foxes fan.

On Tuesday night, when Leicester host Hull - live on Sky Sports+ - relegation from the Championship could be confirmed just shy of a decade - 3,642 days, to be exact - after their glorious against-the-odds moment.

If they fail to win, their fate will be sealed.

They are not the first former First Division champions to drop to the third tier within a relatively short period after their title win; Portsmouth won the First Division in 1950 and were relegated to the Third Division in 1961, while Leeds won it in 1992 and had dropped two divisions by 2007.

It was Derby who did it in the shortest window, winning the title in 1975 and dropping to the Third in 1984.

In the modern era, though, nothing will compare to this.

Down, up and down again

Leicester finished 12th in their first season after the title win in 2017, with the added rigours of qualifying for the Champions League - and reaching the quarter-finals - taking their toll.

Two ninth-place finishes followed, before two fifth-place finishes and a historic first FA Cup triumph in 2020/21. In 2021/22, they finished eighth and reached the Conference League semi-finals.

The following year, even with a squad that included Harvey Barnes, Youri Tielemans, James Maddison, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Jamie Vardy, they were relegated.

Vardy rolled back the years and hit 18 league goals as Enzo Maresca guided them to the Championship title at the first time of asking, with a 97-point haul in 2023/24. But then he left for Chelsea.

Leicester were 16th when Steve Cooper was sacked on November 24 2024, but when Ruud van Nistelrooy - fresh from a positive spell in caretaker charge of Man Utd - took over, they dropped like a stone. Between December 14 and April 7, they lost 15 of 16 Premier League games.

In 2022/23, relegation was only confirmed on the final day. This time, they went down with a whimper. There were five games to spare.

The slide continues

It was all change again in the summer.

Van Nistelrooy left, with former QPR boss Marti Cifuentes taking the hotseat.

Out went Conor Coady, Wilfred Ndidi, Mads Hermansen, Kasey McAteer, James Justin and Boubakary Soumare. They did not pay a fee for either of their permanent signings - both of whom were goalkeepers - but the loan additions of Julian Carranza, Jordan James and Aaron Ramsey were solid.

Leicester were fourth by the start of the September international break, having won three of their first four, and still there by October 18, with just one defeat in the first 10.

But then they started to slide - and it has got worse since the turn of the year.

In 2026 so far, Leicester have won just two of their 19 Sky Bet Championship matches.

Former Leicester player Gary Rowett took over on February 18, almost a month after Cifuentes was sacked, but has been unable to arrest the slump.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the club lost their appeal against a six-points deduction, imposed for breaching Premier League Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR) in the 2023/24 season. It was the first such punishment in their history.

Without that, they would still be only three points and one place above the drop zone. With it, they are eight points adrift of safety with three to play. Defeat to Portsmouth last time out left them on the brink.

The stats that define a nightmare season

How much of an impact has Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha's death had?

Jordan Halford from the Big Strong Leicester Boys podcast:

"This wouldn't have happened if he [former owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha] was still there. But unfortunately, his son is not quite the businessman or the football club owner that he was. Top [Aiyawatt "Top" Srivaddhanaprabha] is never even at the club himself.

"He did an interview with Sky earlier this year, where he looked so out of touch saying that we're going for promotion. Everyone could see that we were going to struggle to stay up, let alone go for promotion.

"Leicester fans get a lot of criticism for being entitled. We're not asking to be challenging for trophies like we were under Vichai; we're just asking to be sustainably run like Brentford and Bournemouth and Brighton. No disrespect, but we're bigger clubs than all of them.

"If Vichai was still here, this would never have happened."

From February: Owner Aiyawatt 'Top' Srivaddhanaprabha speaks for first time in 10 years on PL title, father's legacy and struggles 

Leicester finances will take 'significant hit' if relegated to League One

Sky Sports News' Rob Dorsett:

Leicester will see a significant hit in income if they are relegated to League One, with revenues predicted to fall by around 50 per cent compared with the Championship - and they would be earning less than a third of what they were in the Premier League this time last year.

For a club which won the Premier League 10 years ago, and the FA Cup just five years ago, the collapse in income will be particularly marked. While they enjoyed annual revenues of £187m in the top division, it is likely to be just over £100m come the end of this Championship season, and would fall to a predicted £60m per year in League One.

Despite the crash in income, it would still make Leicester far-and-away the biggest earners in the division next season, with the average revenues of a League One club one-sixth of Leicester's, at around £10m.

Leicester's speedy fall from grace will at least mean they have some cushion financially as a result of their Premier League parachute payments, designed to soften the blow of top flight relegation in 2025. That entitlement would not change, even if the club suffers a second consecutive demotion.

However, those parachute payments reduce over time, and so that too will be much lower - around £10m lower in Leicester's case - for next season. Any club which drops out of the top division receives roughly 55 per cent of their Premier League entitlement in year one, 45 per cent in year two, and 20 per cent in year three.

That means even if Leicester were to bounce back to the Championship at the first attempt in the next 12 months, their parachute payments will drop still further for the start of the 2027/28 season.

Leicester's wage bill would have to fall by about 30-40 per cent - some of that will happen naturally, with relegation clauses in players' contracts. But there is also likely to be a huge churn in the squad, with large numbers of players becoming unaffordable for a League One club, or simply seen to be of too high a calibre to be content to play in England's third tier.

The most obvious of those is Abdul Fatawu, who Leicester could have cashed in for around £35m when they were relegated from the Premier League last summer.

A number of top tier clubs were prepared to pay that for him at the time, Sky Sports News was told. Now, if Leicester are in League One, his market value is likely to be much lower - maybe £10m-15m lower, for any potential buyer - although you'd expect Leicester to fight for the best price they could.

'The most embarrassing season in Leicester history - and it could get worse'

Jordan Halford from the Big Strong Leicester Boys podcast:

"It's a disgrace. I've said the players were not only an embarrassment to the shirt, but I think they're an embarrassment to their profession. It's the highest paid team to get relegated to the third tier. Leicester have only been in the third tier once in 148 years and we've never suffered back-to-back relegations before.

"When we got relegated in 2008, that had been coming for a while, but it was almost the reset that we needed. But we're not the same football club that we were back then.

"We've won the Premier League and the FA Cup and we've played in Europe for two or three seasons. We're a bit more of a juggernaut now. The training ground cost nearly £100m, the wage bill was more than Everton's last season and it's the highest in the Championship. You can't run a club our size on the revenue that you get in League One.

"This season is the most embarrassing in the club's history - and I think this could just be the start. I wouldn't bet against them getting relegated next season either.

"I can't think of a fall from grace in English football like this. Not in my lifetime, anyway."