Leicester City were, at one point, a power hitter in English football. It could be argued that this started with them winning the Premier League title in the 2015-16 season.
Things have now taken a serious and drastic turn of events. They now find themselves on the brink of being relegated to League One (third-tier). It's a state that needs to be studied.
On May 2 2016, Leicester won the Premier League title for the first time, famously beating odds of 5 000/1 to do so.
Results elsewhere confirmed the triumph that day, so it wasn't until five days later that Claudio Ranieri and his players could celebrate with the fans for the first time; before their final home match against Everton.
Ahead of the 3-1 win, fans inside the King Power Stadium were treated to a memorable serenade by opera singer, Andrea Bocelli. It was as surreal as the feat itself, which will be proudly spoken about for generations to come.
That was then. On Tuesday night, relegation from the Championship could be confirmed just shy of a decade - 3 642 days, to be exact - after their glorious against-the-odds moment.
They aren't the first former First Division champions to drop to the third tier within a relatively short period after their title win; Portsmouth won the First Division in 1950 and were relegated to the Third Division in 1961; while Leeds won it in 1992 and had dropped two divisions by 2007.
It was Derby who did it in the shortest window, winning the title in 1975 and dropping to the Third in 1984.
In the modern era, though, nothing will compare to this.
Leicester finished 12th in their first season after the title win in 2017, with the added rigours of qualifying for the Champions League - and reaching the quarter-finals - taking their toll.
Two ninth-place finishes followed, before two fifth-place finishes and a historic first FA Cup triumph in 2020-21. In 2021-22, they finished eighth and reached the Conference League semi-finals.
The following year, even with a squad that included Harvey Barnes, Youri Tielemans, James Maddison, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Jamie Vardy, they were relegated.
Vardy rolled back the years and hit 18 league goals as Enzo Maresca guided them to the Championship title at the first time of asking, with a 97-point haul in 2023-24. Maresca then left for Chelsea.
Leicester were 16th when Steve Cooper was sacked in November 2024, but when Ruud van Nistelrooy - fresh from a positive spell in caretaker charge of Man Utd - took over, they dropped like a stone. Between 14 December and 7 April, they lost 15 of 16 Premier League games.
In 2022-23, relegation was only confirmed on the final day. In 2024-25, they went down with a whimper. There were five games to spare.
Van Nistelrooy left, with former QPR boss, Marti Cifuentes, taking the hotseat. Leicester were fourth by the start of the September international break, having won three of their first four and still there by 18 October, with just one defeat in the first 10.
Marti Cifuentes became Leicester's sixth coach in three seasons last July and one of his main goals was to repair the broken relationship between the club's players and its fans.
"It is normal after relegation to have bad feelings," he told The Athletic. "It would be strange not to but I want to bring a fresh start, a new beginning. I would like the players to be judged on what they are doing now and how they are performing today. Hopefully, we can show that all of them are engaged and trying to commit to the club."
However, Cifuentes failed dismally to get a tune out of a squad containing several players still on Premier League wages and the Catalan coach was dismissed in January with Leicester 14th in the table. Results have only worsened since then, while the atmosphere has turned toxic. Consequently, playing at home is no longer an advantage for Leicester; with the supporters enraged by a perceived lack of effort from the players.
"I can't understand that they don't give more," former Leicester striker, Matt Piper, told BBC Sport. "Leicester have had some shocking teams over the years and some really poor players - and I've been part of those squads so I'm not excusing myself - but what I will say is that even when we were really poor, you still had players that pulled on the shirt and gave it everything."
"The thing that highlights things most with this group is that there are some really talented players. We have been massively underachieving with the group of players we have and it would be a disaster of a season even without the six-point deduction."
They then started to slide - and it has got worse since the turn of the year.
In 2026 so far, Leicester have won just two of their 19 Sky Bet Championship matches. Gary Rowett took over on 18 February, almost a month after Cifuentes was sacked, but has been unable to arrest the slump.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the club lost their appeal against a six-points deduction, imposed for breaching Premier League Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR) in the 2023-24 season. It was the first such punishment in their history.
Without that, they would still be only three points and one place above the drop zone. With it, they are eight points adrift of safety with three to play. Defeat to Portsmouth last time out left them on the brink.
The stats that define a nightmare season
- Leicester have won one of their last 17 Championship games (D7 L9).
- The Foxes have lost six of their last eight home Championship games (W1 D1).
- Gary Rowett's side are the top scorers in the bottom half of the Championship with 54 goals, but only Sheffield Wednesday have conceded more goals in the division.
- Leicester have dropped 17 points from winning positions in home league games - the joint-most in the top four divisions.
- They have dropped 28 points from winning positions this season - only Sheffield United (29) have dropped more in the top four tiers.
- The Foxes have opened the scoring in 13 of their 21 home games - but won only six of those.
- Leicester were fourth in Championship prior to the reverse fixture vs Hull, which was exactly six months ago, on October 21.
The demise that has them on the cusp of dropping back to the third tier a decade on from being crowned English champions and just five years after lifting the FA Cup, has been alarming.
It would be their second relegation in as many seasons and third in four years, having previously yo-yoed between the Premier League and Championship.
Defeat by relegation rivals Portsmouth on Saturday has the Foxes eight points adrift of safety with just nine points left to play for.
The situation is dire and has Leicester fans angry - with one exchange with supporters provoking Leicester's former England international Harry Winks to return a foul-mouthed verbal volley at supporters, external as he boarded the bus back from Fratton Park at the weekend.
The hope was that the arrival of former Foxes full-back Gary Rowett as Cifuentes' permanent successor would help provoke a response out of his struggling side but the 52-year-old already sounds like a broken man.
"The 10 games I've had here has felt like 40," Rowett confessed last week - and that was before Leicester lost a match at Portsmouth that he admitted that they simply had to win to have any chance of survival.
Almost inevitably, there were ugly scenes after the 1-0 defeat at Fratton Park, as midfielder Harry Winks was involved in an expletive-laden exchange with some irate Leicester supporters; while there were further calls to "sack the board" and for Srivaddhanaprabha and Rudkin to resign.
Of course, the Foxes aren't mathematically down yet and Rowett is still trying to impress upon his players the devastating financial and human cost of relegation.
"I don't think getting the tea lady crying in front of the players necessarily is going to have the desired effect," he told BBC East Midlands Today. "But you are just trying to give the players the enormity of the situation.
"It might not affect you as a player, that is a reality but what it certainly will do is affect quite a lot of people at the club. And it will affect a lot of fans who pay their hard-earned money and who have got behind the team brilliantly well in a tough period for the club. We have got to give them more."
Foxes goalkeeper, Asmir Begovic, speaking to BBC Radio Leicester without knowledge of his team-mate's confrontation outside the ground, said he "can understand the frustrations" of supporters.
The former Chelsea, Bournemouth and Stoke City goalkeeper says frustrations about this season are "shared" by the players - although acrimony among fans runs deeper than dismal results produced by a squad with one of the biggest pay packets in the division.
Begovic says Leicester "will keep fighting" and argues that "everything is still possible" with three games left.
"The belief is still there," the former Bosnia and Herzegovina international said. "It's a big game against Hull, and if you win that, things can look a lot different. Of course we need a bit of luck and a bit of fortune on our side, but we keep pushing as much as we can."
Begovic's defiant words about relegation could be interpreted as fanciful for a side that could have relegation confirmed in four of the next five days.
To simplify what they need to stay up, Leicester - a side that has won just one match in three months - have to win all three remaining games and need a multitude of results to favour them in the next 12 days.
Leicester City fans have feared for a while now that the Foxes would be going down.
The six-point penalty the club was hit with this season for historical spending breaches has undoubtedly hurt the side but even without the punishment; they would be in the bottom three.
There have been protests from sections of supporters for owner, Khun Aiyawatt 'Top' Srivaddhanaprabha, to sell the club and for sporting director, Jon Rudkin, to leave but it was the players who bore the overwhelming brunt of criticism at Portsmouth.
Chants of "You're not fit to wear the shirt" rung out from the travelling fans at Fratton Park.
A number of supporters said the club should turn to its youngsters to see out the season and argued that a number of high-earning, high-profile players should be moved on in the summer.
Foxes fan, Nimesh Patel, said: "This is the worst I've seen them play in a long time," when asked what he thought of the latest defeat. "I don't know who they are," he continued. "There is no soul, no compassion, no urgency and no real play or creativity. And for us to come hundreds of miles to watch this is atrocious."
At this stage, though, Leicester beating the drop would be even more miraculous than their 2016 title triumph - which is both staggering and saddening. The Foxes were once a fairy tale; now they're a cautionary tale, a shocking example of how not to run a football club.
I am quite shocked at the state of the club. I never expected this to happen. Things definitely need to change. If this doesn't happen, things could get even worse.