On Leicester’s ten year anniversary, Carter Smith reminisce on the glory days and grimaces at the future
It is 2016, and Leicester is in complete frenzy. Every fan of the club will know where they were when it happened. Somehow, despite 5000/1 odds, Leicester City have won the Premier League. The whole city was in dreamland. From top to bottom, everyone at the club has etched their names in history. They had done the impossible.
It will be the ten-year anniversary of the historic win next year. How will they celebrate? By the looks of it, with anger, protests and another season in the Championship. Not quite the trajectory fans would have imagined after being crowned champions of England.
Fans knew the fairytale would end eventually. It was only nine months after lifting the trophy when manager Claudio Ranieri was sacked, destroying all the goodwill Leicester had built up from the footballing world. Despite this, interim manager Craig Shakespeare still managed to help drag Leicester through to the Quarterfinals of football’s most prestigious tournament, the Champions League.
After narrowly getting knocked out in the Champions League quarter-final by Atletico Madrid, the club would go relatively under the radar until a devastating night in 2018. After a 1-1 draw to West Ham at home, Leicester’s chairman, Khun Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, along with four others, would be involved in a fatal helicopter crash. The whole of Leicester went into mourning. Tributes came pouring in for the man who helped Leicester achieve the impossible.
Six years later, the loss is still massively felt around the club. He was the heart and soul of not just the team but the whole city. Despite being born over 5,000 miles away in Thailand, he was one of us.
No one knew how the club would proceed after his death. Fans hoped they would recover, but it seems like they never did.
After his death, Leicester started to rise again. Thanks to the appointment of former Liverpool and Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers, Leicester went on to win their first-ever FA Cup, a Community Shield, and give fans another European tour. They established themselves again as one of England’s elite. Some people even claimed Leicester should be part of England’s ‘big six’ clubs. How naive.
In a dramatic turn of events, Leicester, the season after getting knocked out of the semi-final of UEFA’s new competition, the Conference League and finishing eighth in the Premier League, got relegated. Yes, relegated. Even now, I am amazed this happened. Brendan Rodgers went from the most beloved to the most hated man in Leicester. Everything that had been built over seven years crumbled in front of our very eyes.
Still dealing with the shock, the club went into the next season with a surprising amount of optimism. Former Manchester City assistant coach Enzo Maresca became the club’s latest manager. The departures of fan favourites James Maddison, Youri Tielemans and local lad Harvey Barnes left a void in the club, but also a potential for other players to rise.
New signings Stephy Mavadidi, Mads Hermansen and Abdul Fatawu quickly caught the hearts of the Foxes faithful, but it would be Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall who let Leicester fans believe again. It was all going so well.
What has happened since then is nothing short of tragic. Despite a nearly record-breaking season in the Championship, amassing 98 points and finishing first, the morale at the club could not be lower.
After promotion back to the Premier League at the first time of asking, the club would lose both Maresca and Dewsbury-Hall to Chelsea. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were replaced with Spurs benchwarmer Oliver Skipp and former Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this was a complete failure on all accounts. After sacking Cooper in November 2024, the club appointed ex-Manchester United striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy to try and get fans back on side.
Which it did. For about three games.
Fans have hit a breaking point. Even though there are still ten games left to play, most fans have accepted the fact that they will be tasting the failure of relegation once again. It feels like a dark cloud has been cast upon the city. Fans are arguing with each other, and the team is in disarray. From top to bottom, it is a complete mess. But it never had to be like this.
When fans find the time to stop arguing with each other, a lot of their anger is directed towards one man, Jon Rudkin. Rudkin has been the director of football at Leicester City since the end of 2014. Despite the club’s large success during his tenure, he has shown multiple times that he is not up to standard for the ambitions of the club.
Under his guidance, Leicester have been accused of breaking financial rules several times, threatened to have points deducted and had their ticket prices rise higher than they ever have before.
He may have gotten away with the price rises if the product we were paying for wasn’t absolutely dire.
Cracks also started to show internally. Foxes legend Jamie Vardy has been seen several times making his feelings towards Rudkin known. He will no doubt love hearing the protests and chants echo around the King Power.
Of course, it would be unfair to pin this collapse on one man. The players over the last few seasons have put in shameful performances. The lack of effort present in the 2022/23 season is a large factor in where we are now.
After the season in the Championship, fans would have hoped it wouldn’t be the same story again. At the very least, if we were to get relegated, they would go down swinging. Instead, it seems like the club has thrown in the towel.
At this point, fans are not asking for much. They are aware of their pending relegation, and the majority have accepted that; they just want some passion. Or failing that, at least a goal at home, which they haven’t been able to enjoy since the 8th December 2024.
You can split the story of Leicester’s recent history into two parts. The first would be like it was made, produced and directed by Walt Disney himself and the second like it was ripped straight out of the mind of Stephan King.
What does the future hold for Leicester? No one knows. Another miserable season in the Championship seems likely, and if you’re hoping for a repeat of last time, I wouldn’t bet on it. Thanks to the breaking of financial rules, it seems likely that the club will either have a points deduction or a transfer embargo next season.
Fans will forever be scratching their heads at how it got so bad so quickly. Maybe the club really did make a deal with the devil, which granted us six unbelievable years for the price of never-ending agony afterwards.
We will never be sure. Even though they don’t deserve it, the blue army will still be out in full force wherever the club may end up. Mediocrity is nothing new for us; we have been here before. For better or worse, we will forever be supporting through the team’s misery and success. And if nothing else, at least we had a few glorious years along the way.
