But the heady highs of the title win brought in its disadvantages as well. The big clubs started to circle like sharks around the Leicester players ultimately leading to exit of key players like N Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez. Only the talismanic Jamie Vardy remained with the club till the very end but with age catching up, even he could not prevent the Foxes from going down.
We did our job on Filbert Way today, but our latest Premier League chapter comes to an end.
— Leicester City (@LCFC) May 28, 2023
In the aftermath of the title win, Leicester still produced and moulded talent, some brought from other leagues while others nurtured. The rise of Youri Tielemans, James Maddison, Wesley Fofana, Harry Maguire and Harvey Barnes is further proof of that.
The club would still do well in the seasons before the relegation as well qualifying for Europa League in the 2020-21 and the 2021-22 season. They would also go on to win the FA Cup final in 2021 after defeating Chelsea 1-0. The moderate success was there and that makes the relegation even more baffling.
One of the main reasons that might have brought the downfall might be the sale of Fofana to Chelsea for £75m. It weakened their defense while his replacements did not quite play up to the mark. They also bought Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard but not one of their new signings clicked. That led to a knee jerk reaction of firing manager Brendan Rodgers in the middle of the season which in hindsight turned out to be another blow to their survival. Not to mention their curious decision to sell Premier League winning keeper Kasper Schmeichel to Nice for a paltry £1million. Danny Ward was deputized between the sticks but he was just a shadow of the former keeper.
A little over 2 years after their historic title win, the Foxes fans and the club also had to cope with a personal tragedy. Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, their owner, was killed in a helicopter crash just outside the King Power Stadium shortly after taking off from the pitch. Even though his son, Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha oversaw Leicester win the FA Cup, his father’s presence has been sorely missed.
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Vardy, the only remaining player of that 2015-16 title winning campaign, has looked anonymous for most of the season but showed some flickering of life towards the fag end scoring in matches versus Leeds and Everton. But that searing pace which once haunted Pep Guardiola in his nightmares was gone and those goals were just a footnote at the end of a 6-month drought.
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As the Foxes go down in the Championship along with Leeds United and Southampton, only time will tell when we can next see another club “do the Leicester” again. But till then, leave the memories alone.
