From Premier League champions to relegation, Leicester City, who have failed many times to make it to the BIG 6, have finally seen their "blood-selling mode" backfire as their owner, the King Power Group, has been hit by the Wuhan Pneumonia Epidemic, which has caused them to suffer a huge loss of financial resources. The continued chaotic defense, and the dismissal of the highly decorated manager Brendan Rodgers, have also doomed the team to a point of no return.
Talk to a Foxes fan about the 2015/16 Premier League title and many will still bemoan the fact that they missed out on the closest thing to wealth and freedom in their lives (the Foxes were 1 to 5,000 to win the title that season). What was not expected was that the club that had won the FA Cup Community Shield the year before would be relegated to the Championship at the end of the season. Unlike the other two Premier League relegation teams that followed them, Leicester City's relegation is a long story to tell.
Also, after being relegated to the Championship, there are many people, including the biggest names on this site, who are optimistic that the Foxes will have no problem getting promoted next season. Is that really the case?
The English media are now fond of tracing Leicester City's relegation back to the team building strategy that the side developed after winning the 2015/16 Premier League title.
At the time, the Foxes were both trying to prevent the giants from swarming in to carve up their starting lineup in the short term, and were also looking to fund the team by selling off starters. As a result, from the summer of 2016 onwards, one could see the Foxes sell an absolute starter at a high price every year, and then use that money on contract extensions for the rest of the starters as well as gradually acquiring young players from the market in order to gradually complete the bloodletting of the entire lineup.
This strategy looked to be fruitful, with all of those sold starters bringing back high transfer fees and the team remaining European regulars, with 2019/20 & 2020/21 not dropping out of the top four until the final round of rankings. Leicester City were at one point during that five-year period the most celebrated small and medium-sized club in the Premier League, and even got a glimpse of the big boys.
However, this policy was interrupted for a while in the summer of 2021, which some blamed on the general downturn in player trading due to the epidemic, when in fact Leicester City still had a number of hot commodities in their squad. It would have been better to continue with the annual dumping strategy at this point, but Leicester City went against the grain and kept all of their starters in that summer transfer window as they flirted with the Champions League for the second year in a row, and ended up supporting the landlord with a net outlay of nearly £60 million to revamp the roster.
The ensuing 2021/22 season is in fact the turning point in Leicester City's fortunes.
Last season didn't look too bad for them, as they won the Community Shield with the FA Cup at Wembley Stadium, defeating Premier League kingpins Manchester City (which was also the last honor of their 4th Premier League journey), but last season the team had already started to show signs of disarray, having played 58 matches in 6 tournaments, 7 countries, and suffering 31 injuries, and it was during this season that the team's defense started to suffer a lot of conceding symptoms. It was during this season that the team's defense began to give up a lot of goals.
In the end, the Foxes finished 8th in the Premier League; in Europe, they failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the Europa League, and instead went to the Europa League where they fought to the last 4 before being knocked out by the champions Roma; they were knocked out of the FA Cup by 4-1 in a visit to Nottingham Forest, who were still in the Championship at the time, and after the match the manager openly expressed his concern and dissatisfaction with the progress of the team's rebuild for the first time, "Nine of our starting eleven are veteran players from three years ago, when I first took over. Nine of our starting eleven are the same players as when I took over the team three years ago, and some of the players have moved into their psychological comfort zones as a result of past successes. We need to evolve the squad, and this coming summer will be crucial for us.
As a result, by the time the 2022 summer transfer window rolled around, Leicester City were the only club in the top five leagues to start the new season still without any new signings. The room had already had the heart, the Foxes spent £182 million on player salaries alone last season, accounting for as much as 85% of the team's total revenue, and also made them end up losing a record £92.5 million, triggering the FFP alarm on the financial shackles, the Foxes could not move in that transfer market, which was supposed to be the most crucial.
While Leicester City eventually sold WesleyFofana for a whopping £70 million, seemingly keeping up the tradition of selling for a high price in the past, and signed WoutFaes from Ligue 1 on the day the transfer market closed, the house was always embarrassed to find that the cards in his hand were even worse than they had been seven months earlier: compared to last season's FA loss to Nottingham Forest in the released Danish keeper and captain Kasper Schmeichel in the summer, and instead of bringing in a replacement, opted for stand-in keeper Danny Ward to bolster the side, which has led to the Foxes' big blow-up this season, with a surprisingly lowly one point from the first seven rounds and only 17 clean sheets in the entire Premier League.
This season the Foxes are the 10th team to start the season with less than one point in the first seven games, and only four teams eventually escaped relegation, but the last time has been 2017/18 super-hard-hitting Crystal Palace. The youthful back four is in dire straits, and with a goalkeeper and reserves at the bottom of the league, the team's defense is naturally in disarray.
