How Leicester City have gone from Premier League champions to League One in 10 years

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"If you think Leicester can be in League One, then you have lost your mind." They were the words of midfielder Jordan James in December when asked if Leicester City could be relegated once again.

And to a certain extent, you can see where the Welsh midfielder was coming from. This is a club that only 10 years ago lifted the Premier League title under Claudio Ranieri .

This is a club that only five years ago claimed the FA Cup for the first time in their history under the stewardship of Brendan Rodgers . This is a club that had allowed others to dream.

That dream has very quickly transformed into a nightmare, having slipped into League One after a dismal campaign with a draw against Hull City officially confirming their fate. Leicester are now a warning of how not to run a competent football club.

Alarm bells have actually been ringing since 2020 when the Midlands side suffered a late-season collapse and failed to secure a Champions League spot and the riches that came with it.

That drop in revenue, coupled with the Covid pandemic, hit the Foxes' Thai owners hard. Leicester then fell at the final hurdle again the following season but remained staunchly behind Rodgers.

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That glorious day under the Wembley arch against Chelsea followed and will stick long in the memory. But the abject failure of the club since then will arguably be remembered more vividly.

A disastrous 2021 summer transfer window saw the club waste huge funds on Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard - all without selling a key player to offset that splurge. Leicester are still paying the financial penalty of that business to this day.

A 4-1 defeat to local rivals Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup as holders in February 2022 sticks out as a clear moment where the foundations of the King Power ownership began to crumble. Rodgers went on the defence and warned that the squad needed a ‘refresh’, while he also claimed that Leicester were 'not the same club' just months later.

The exits of title heroes Wes Morgan, Christian Fuchs and Kasper Schmeichel led to a shocking slip in standards, a symptom that has only worsened. The Foxes inevitably fell out of the Premier League the following season, with Rodgers sacked towards the end of that campaign in favour of Dean Smith - a decision that arguably came too late. Relegations happen, of course, but not to a squad as talented as Leicester’s was.

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There should have been an inquest into how the club found themselves in such a position, particularly from one of such strength. One was certainly promised by the club ownership, with owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha confirming an ‘internal review’ which never materialised.

All club chiefs, including much-maligned director of football Jon Rudkin, retained their roles as if nothing ever happened. Leicester should have learnt their lesson. They simply did not.

There was, however, a brief moment of solace during the 2023/24 campaign as the Foxes earned an instant return to the Premier League under Enzo Maresca . Even that successful campaign has now been tainted and ended up doing serious damage to Leicester in the long run.

The club splashed the cash in an effort to earn promotion, signing England internationals Harry Winks, Conor Coady and more on hugely inflated contracts for significant funds of around £18m.

That saw Leicester breach the EFL’s PSR rules once again . While they had successfully navigated previous charges on a technicality following relegation, they weren’t to have a lucky escape again (but more on that later).

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Leicester continued making the same dire mistakes upon their return to the top flight. Maresca left for Chelsea, with former Forest boss Steve Cooper appointed as his replacement. He was the wrong man from the start - some players making their affection for former boss Maresca clear in a Copenhagen nightclub shortly after his arrival.

The signings of Oliver Skipp, Jordan Ayew, Bobby De Cordova-Reid and Caleb Okoli also did little to inspire confidence that this was a squad equipped to stay up.

Cooper was eventually sacked in November to be replaced by Ruud van Nistelrooy . The Dutchman’s spell at the helm could not have gone much worse, having lost 18 of his 25 Premier League games, ending in relegation. It proved that Leicester's demotion two seasons previously was not just a blip but a sign of a bigger issue.

It was also abundantly clear that the former Manchester United forward did not have a future at the King Power Stadium but it took until June 27 - over four weeks after the final game of the season - for Van Nistelrooy to be officially relieved of his duties. Another three weeks passed before his replacement Marti Cifuentes was appointed - just 26 days before the season opener - a delay that significantly hampered the club's pre-season preparations, as did the departure of the legendary Jamie Vardy without a proper replacement being signed.

Away from a positive start, Cifuentes proved to be another dismal appointment, amassing just 10 league wins before being sacked in January. It then took Leicester almost a month to find his replacement in Gary Rowett.

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In that time, Leicester lost three consecutive games including a 4-3 reverse at the hands of Southampton where they let a three-goal lead slip. That defeat appears to have done irreparable damage to the dressing room, as did a six-point deduction for their previous PSR breaches, the first time ever that the club had seen points taken off them. An appeal was thrown out by an independent commission, landing Leicester in a relegation battle.

Anyone thinking that off-pitch governance is the main reason behind their slip into the third tier is woefully mistaken, though. Rowett has fared the same as many of his predecessors by failing to get a tune out of an expensively-assembled squad who appear unfazed by the plight that the club finds themselves in.

The former Millwall boss has just one win to his name - a run of form that has seen Leicester drop into League One for just the second time in their history. Even without their points deduction, Leicester would still be in the relegation zone and under real threat of a place in the third tier.

Given the trajectory that the club has long been on, anyone that thinks Leicester don’t deserve to be in League One have lost their mind.

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