‘Leicester dream torn apart by unprecedented spending’

It is 10 years since Leicester City became the Premier League’s most remarkable champions.

The Foxes, though, are in danger of marking the anniversary in the most inauspicious of ways with relegation.

It was on 2 May, 2016 that Leicester were mathematically confirmed as top-flight champions for the first time in their 142-year history.

On 2 May, 2026 they face Blackburn with their Championship status now in doubt after they were docked six points for breaching profit and sustainable (P&S) rules.

The punishment dragged them down to the edge of the relegation zone – kept out on goal difference alone.

It is a remarkable slide from glory which can be charted alongside battles against spending regulations.

With only one point from their last four games, supporters are starting to fear things could get worse at the King Power before they get better.

Rather than celebrate the title success a decade ago that defied belief, Leicester could be facing up to life in the third tier for the first time since the 2008-09 campaign.

The Premier League triumph was just the start of a glory period for Leicester.

They also won the FA Cup for the only time in their history in 2021.

There was a season in the Champions League and two Europa League campaigns. In 2021-22 they lost to Roma in the semi-finals of the Conference League.

Back-to-back eighth-placed finishes had the club’s board believing, and spending like, this was now their natural place.

Just 12 months after that defeat to Roma, Leicester were relegated.

“We tried to play with the big boys and we couldn’t,” Lynn Wyeth, chair of the Foxes’ Trust, told BBC Sport.

“It didn’t fit our model. It didn’t fit a club of our size. It didn’t fit our budget.

Leicester spent just over £100m to sign six players across the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns.

It was not just the transfer fees which were to cause issues, it was the salaries and the contracts.

The club’s wage bill ballooned to £206m.

“Everybody assumed that they would a top-eight club,” Football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport.

“They effectively budgeted for that and didn’t take into consideration the potential downside.”

Maguire said Leicester became “a little bit complacent” with contracts.

Premier League player contracts would usually have clauses which would reduce a salary by between 30% or 50% upon relegation.

It is widely reported that, at the time, Leicester did not insert any.

“They had one bad season and they had no comeback in terms of relegation clauses and relegation avoidance clauses,” added Maguire.

“It does seem that these contracts were awarded in such a way that they ignored the existential risk of relegation.”

Without the safety net of these clauses, in the 2023-24 Championship season the club were spending 116% of their income on salaries.

The £107m wage bill was, Maguire said, “unprecedented for a second-tier football club”.

Leicester may have won the Championship title in 2024, but it came at a cost. A huge cost.

Wages to income of the two other promoted teams was 84% for Leeds and 80% for Southampton. The Championship median average was 29%, said Maguire.

Wyeth said the Trust felt the budgets were “incredibly risky”.

“There weren’t enough safeguards in there for thinking what could go wrong,” added Wyeth.

“We were all saying, what if we get relegated?

“The fans could see them walking into it.”

After promotion in 2024 the club still had to face up to financial issues.

Trouble had already been signposted by a Profit and Sustainability rule (PSR) charge brought by the Premier League in March 2024. The club successfully appealed against that on a technicality over jurisdiction.

Then the spending in the Championship was the catalyst for a breach of the PSR threshold by £20.8m, which led to the points deduction.

But there would be no stay in the Premier League to ease their plight as the Foxes went straight back down to the Championship last season, finishing 13 points adrift.

Leicester’s battle against financial rules are well-documented. In 2018 the club had to pay the EFL £3.1m to settle a dispute from the 2013-14 season when the club won the Championship.

This time the punishment for their spending when winning the Championship was in points rather than pounds.

King Power International Group, which bought the club in 2010, continues to insist the club has done nothing wrong.

Reacting to the points deduction on Thursday, it said the punishment was “disproportionate” and “does not adequately reflect the mitigating factors presented”.

Yet in the written reasons the commission rejected Leicester’s claims they had shown “exceptional co-operation”.

Leicester’s current owners have fought all financial charges at every turn, managing to cause multiple delays.

But time ran out this week.

It could have been worse, too. One of the sanction mechanisms proposed by the Premier League would have resulted in a 12-point deduction.

“A lot of fans are saying do not appeal it,” said Wyeth. “For God’s sake, stop fighting and admit you’ve messed up.

“Take the hit and knuckle down and get out of relegation trouble.”

Wyeth fears the board has not learned from the lessons of the past and things could take another downturn.

“Every game you go to, you think it can’t get any worse and then it does,” she added. “And that was before we got the points deduction.”

Key posts remain unfilled. Leicester have no manager after Marti Cifuentes was sacked after just six months in charge. There is no permanent chief executive and no technical director.

Wyth said fans were growing tired with “a lack of transparency about accountability” and protests were likely to increase.

Fans staged a boycott of last month’s game against West Brom. The official attendance was 27,130 because all season ticket holders were included.

The Trust believes the true number was closer to 12,500.

“We’ve got the the King Power Out group picking up steam,” said Wyeth.

“There are new kinds of protest groups, different protest groups coming together.”

Leicester have only played in the third tier of English football once in their history and were promoted as champions at the end of it 17 years ago.