LEICESTER — Booed onto the pitch before the game, taunted with angry chants by their own supporters and the once-loved owners urged to “get out of our club” as the team were relegated to League One — what a way for Leicester City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the most remarkable story in Premier League history.
It’s been nearly a decade since Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester — 5000-1 outsiders — sealed the Premier League title, and it would be hard to argue that there has ever been a more unlikely football triumph anywhere.
But there was no joy this time, no Andrea Bocelli singing “Nessun Dorma” in the centre-circle, just bitterness and anger and the sight of club owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha shrugging his shoulders and blowing out his cheeks as the supporters sang “sack the board” at the final whistle.
“The bigger picture is you don’t get relegated over three or four games, you get relegated over a season,” Leicester manager Gary Rowett, who replaced interim coach Andy King in February following the exit of Marti Cifuentes a month earlier, said. “We have to learn. I think the club have to accept this is the horrible part of the journey of a football club.
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“This club won the Premier League not too many moons ago. That was an incredible high at the time for the fans, for everyone associated with the club. The club has to rise again, but it has to learn its lessons because it’s certainly been a season of an awful lot of regret.”
Former Foxes winger Matt Piper, commentating on the game for Radio Leicester, described the relegation as the “worst” moment in the club’s history.
“Leicester find themselves in League One with no real leadership, that worries me,” Piper said. “When there’s no leadership things sink. It’s a desperately low time for the football club, probably the worst in its history. People just don’t know what to do.”
For all the romance of Leicester’s title win, football is ultimately a brutal, unforgiving sport and that was brought home to a sparsely populated King Power Stadium as Rowett’s team were consigned to relegation following a 2-2 draw with Hull City.
Leicester now share with Swindon Town, Southampton, Sunderland and Luton Town the unenviable distinction of suffering back-to-back relegations from the Premier League to League One. Only Blackburn Rovers, champions in 1995 and relegated to League One in 2017, know the humiliation facing Leicester of being former Premier League winners playing in the third tier.
Next season’s fixture list will include two league games against Bromley — a team playing in the fifth tier National League when Leicester won the Premier League in 2016 — and unglamorous local derbies against Mansfield Town and Burton Albion, so it will be a new, cold reality for Leicester.
So where did it all go wrong? Leicester’s 2016 title win might have been a miraculous one-off, but it was nonetheless a result of smart recruitment by a club with ambitions of being the best and most well-run side outside the Premier League’s so-called Big Six of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Manchester City.
Leicester’s title-winning side was not assembled with a blank chequebook, but with low-budget signings including N’Golo Kante (£5.6 million), Jamie Vardy (£1 million) and Riyad Mahrez (£400,000) who became club legends in Ranieri’s team of champions.
And when Kante and Mahrez moved on to Chelsea and Man City respectively, Leicester banked a combined £90 million from their transfer fees, so the club’s model seemed to be sound and the envy of their rivals, large and small.
Even after the tragic death of owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in a helicopter crash in October 2018, Leicester were resilient enough to record two fifth-place finishes under Brendan Rodgers and won the FA Cup under the former Liverpool manager in 2021.
But by then, the cracks were beginning to appear beneath the surface due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and its impact on King Power — a Thailand-based duty-free retail company — which saw its revenue decimated by the global travel shutdown. King Power were suddenly unable to back Leicester with their ambition and financial might, mistakes were made in player recruitment and the losses — on and off the pitch — began to increase, culminating in relegation from the Premier League in 2023.
And although Enzo Maresca — one of six full-time managers since Rodgers was fired in April 2023 — guided the Foxes to an instant return to the top tier from the Championship during his one season in charge, cumulative losses of £201 million between 2022 and 2024 saw them breach Premier League financial regulations. The sting in the tail was applied by the EFL this season (the EFL took over the case following Leicester’s relegation in 2025) with a six-point deduction issued in February for that financial transgression.
With Leicester going into Tuesday’s game against Hull eight points adrift of safety, the six-point deduction was unquestionably a hammer blow but, having lost 10 and won just two of their 19 league games in 2026, the points sanction is not the primary reason for their relegation.
The Leicester fans, who have mounted a prolonged campaigned against the ownership and chief football officer Jon Rudkin, have pinned the blame on the players in recent weeks.
After the defeat at Portsmouth on Saturday, the supporters chanted “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” as the Foxes players sheepishly applauded them at the end of the game and former England midfielder Harry Winks, a £10 million signing from Tottenham in 2023, was filmed having an angry confrontation with fans as he boarded the team bus outside the stadium.
Winks, named as a substitute against Hull, was booed whenever he warmed up on the touchline and he received the same treatment — with some additional loud, unsavoury chants — when he replaced Jordan James on 61 minutes.
Two minutes later, Oli McBurnie scored for Hull to make it 2-2, so Winks, who was escorted to his car by security after the game, might just feel that misfortune is following him around.
A late surge by the home side at least showed some fight, but it proved to be futile — the end result means that Leicester are down with two games left to play.
And who knows what the future holds for the club? The images of title heroes Vardy, Mahrez, Kante and Kasper Schmeichel still dominate the walls of the stadium, but they are now just reminders of a brief, but glorious, summer in the sun.
Owner Srivaddhanaprabha wiped out £124 million of the club’s debt earlier this year and he has vowed to get the team back on its feet, but he faces a battle to win back the support of the fans, who stayed behind to protest outside the ground after the game.
“We want our club back,” “what a waste of money” and “King Power, get out of our club” were the loud messages from the supporters. Ten years ago, it was “we are the champions,” but they won’t be singing that again anytime soon.
