I will never forget the car horns. Sat in the office of the Leicester Mercury, the city’s local paper, at four minutes before 10pm on a Monday night waiting for a whistle to blow 100 miles away at Stamford Bridge.
As soon as it did, they started. A few at first, then hundreds of them, a relentless cacophony of beeps and honks, as people danced from their houses, jumped in their cars and joined the jubilant traffic jam though every street in the city. The noise did not stop until the early hours of the morning.
Quite the fanfare as this modest, hard-working club in the heart of the Midlands were made kings of England.
Now, not even a full decade later, despite a Champions League quarter-final, a Conference League semi-final, an FA Cup and a Community Shield along the way, Leicester City are a League One club.
A third relegation in four seasons, confirmed by Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at home to Hull, and it’s everything we deserve. What should be a moment to look back on with unbridled joy, 10 years on from the club’s greatest ever achievement, is now just a brutal reminder of what we have lost, how far we have fallen and how far we could yet fall. Rock bottom may still be to come.
Relegated with the seventh-highest wage bill in the Premier League in 2023, now relegated with the highest wage bill in Championship history and haemorrhaging so much money we were hit with a six-point deduction, one that probably won’t even matter come the final calculations.
Patson Daka reacts in the 2-2 draw against Hull that confirmed Leicester’s drop to League One
This has been coming for the Foxes – and they only have themselves to blame
We have lost so much more than pounds and points. This is what happens when clubs lose sense of who they are and what made them great. When they stop reflecting the community they represent. When they stop being that modest, hard-working club.
When they start paying Champions League wages but don’t have Champions League players. When they stop selling a star every summer because they think they don’t need to be that kind of club anymore. When they sack managers too late but have no plan to replace them once they do.
When failure is rewarded. When there’s no responsibility or accountability. When concerned fans can see what’s happening with their own eyes but are gaslit into being told there’s nothing to worry about.
‘Stop writing headlines like that which you know makes fans pile on with negativity,’ tweeted James Maddison after a defeat to Southampton in March 2023. ‘Play like that and we’ll be absolutely fine.’ They weren’t fine.
‘If you think Leicester can be in League One, then you have lost your mind,’ said on-loan midfielder Jordan James earlier this season. Consider those minds lost.
Such blind arrogance, whatever company you work for, always filters down from the top. No one can wash their hands of this. Not the players, not manager Gary Rowett. Not Ruud van Nistelrooy nor Marti Cifuentes before him. Certainly not Brendan Rodgers, under whom this decline began, and definitely not chief football officer Jon Rudkin, who has overseen a club being run into the ground but has come out of it with a promotion.
No one will ever understand the painful burden that fell on Leicester owner Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha’s shoulders after the tragic passing of his father Vichai and the pressure to continue his great legacy but that also doesn’t absolve him of the mistakes he continues to make. The club is in a worse position than when his father took over and that’s on him. It is the responsibility of an owner to do what’s best for the football club.
No one can wash their hands of this failure. Not the players, not manager Gary Rowett (pictured)
It’s all such a far cry from when a modest, hard-working Leicester City side shocked the world by winning the Premier League in 2016
Friends always say: ‘Oh, but you’d take it, wouldn’t you?’, referencing the highs of the last decade. As if that makes this moment more tolerable. As if that makes this moment more understandable.
Only it should never have to be a choice. This was all completely avoidable. You wouldn’t tell the lottery winner who squandered his millions on dodgy investments to remember the highs when he’s back working night shifts.
Years of being the best-run club in the country got us to a position where Leicester should never have had to look back. They had it all but blew it by becoming one of the worst. They only have themselves to blame.
