{"id":48595,"date":"2026-04-21T12:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T12:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48595"},"modified":"2026-04-21T12:04:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T12:04:34","slug":"leicester-fairytale-turns-sour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=48595","title":{"rendered":"Leicester fairytale turns sour"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ten years after authoring the ultimate sporting fairytale, former Premier League champions Leicester are on the brink of a humiliating relegation to the third tier.
\nIf Gary Rowett’s side fail to beat Hull on Tuesday, they will be condemned to League One for only the second time in their history.
\nLanguishing eight points from safety with only three games left, the Foxes appear destined to plunge into the third tier for the first time since 2008-09 following an astonishing decline over the last five years.
\nIt would be a third relegation in four seasons for Leicester, who dropped out of the Premier League in 2023 and 2025.
\nAfter Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante and company defied 5,000-1 odds by winning the Premier League in 2016, Leicester reached the Champions League quarter-finals the next season and won the FA Cup in 2021.
\nBut Leicester’s golden era is a distant memory as they face the unpalatable prospect of playing the likes of Bromley, Mansfield and Wycombe next season.
\nCrashing out of the Premier League in limp fashion three years ago should have been a wake-up call for Leicester’s Thai owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha and much-maligned sporting director Jon Rudkin.
\nBut Leicester’s hierarchy were painfully slow to address numerous flaws on the pitch, while the club’s ruinous finances have cost them with a six-point deduction this season for breaching spending rules.
\nVardy’s departure at the end of last season severed the last tie with the title-winning squad.
\nMarti Cifuentes, hired to lead a promotion push, struggled to rebuild an unbalanced and inexperienced squad before his sacking in January.
\n\u00a0
\n‘A lack of quality’
\nInterim boss Andy King was unable to turn the tide and relegation fears began to mount after Leicester blew a 3-0 half-time lead in a dismal 4-3 defeat against Southampton.
\nBy the time Rowett was hired in February, the Foxes were two points from safety and the former Leicester defender has mustered only one win from his 11 matches since.
\nBut it is his players that have taken the brunt of the blame, with fans chanting “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” and engaging in an altercation with midfielder Harry Winks after last weekend’s loss at Portsmouth.
\n“A lack of fight is something that’s been labelled at the team over the course of a season. I don’t know whether that’s fair but I think we’ve showed a lack of quality,” Rowett acknowledged.
\nBoardroom blunders have been the defining influence on Leicester’s plummet towards League One.
\nAiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha has struggled to fill the shoes of his father, Vichai, who was killed in a helicopter crash at the King Power stadium in 2018.
\nClaudio Ranieri, architect of their title-winning campaign, was sacked just months after lifting the trophy, with Craig Shakespeare and then Claude Puel proving inadequate replacements.
\nBrendan Rodgers, who masterminded the club’s FA Cup triumph and two fifth-placed finishes in the Premier League, was dismissed as relegation beckoned in 2023.
\nEven when Enzo Maresca led Leicester to promotion in 2024, he immediately departed for Chelsea, necessitating the unpopular and unsuccessful appointment of Steve Cooper, who previously managed rivals Nottingham Forest.
\nRudkin’s recruitment has been no better, with expensive flops Patson Daka, Oliver Skipp, Jannik Vestergaard and Harry Souttar adding to a wage bill that topped \u00a3200 million ($270 million) in 2023 and reportedly contained no clauses to reduce salaries upon relegation.
\nForeshadowing Leicester’s descent, Aiyawatt said in January: “In almost 16 years, we have won five trophies, we’ve had two relegations, three times in Europe. It’s like a movie. It’s like a super drama on Netflix.
\n“We grew bigger and bigger and we forgot what we were before. We thought we are here and that is the most dangerous position to be in.”
\nOn the precipice of relegation, Leicester will hope for another against-the-odds miracle, but the bleak reality of their situation is impossible to ignore.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years after authoring the ultimate sporting fairytale, former Premier League champions Leicester are on the brink of a humiliating relegation to the third tier. If Gary Rowett’s side fail to beat Hull on Tuesday, they will be condemned to League One for only the second time in their history. Languishing eight points from safety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}