Racked by a cocktail of fury and apathy, Leicester struggle to halt slide

For all its many forms and faces, failure often looks remarkably similar. I last visited the King Power on Easter Sunday 2025 to watch Leicester City’s second Premier League relegation in three seasons be confirmed. Returning just under a year later, a they are a division lower but still racked by a cocktail of fury and apathy, little had materially changed.

Even on a bank holiday the stadium was, charitably, 80% full for what became an entertaining 2-2 draw with Preston North End defined by ineptitude. Two defensive calamities allowed Patson Daka to score his fourth and fifth league goals of the season on his 35th appearance, while Preston’s second came from Ben Whiteman being totally unmarked from a corner. Leicester have now won one of their past 14 league matches, although they’ve only lost two of eight under Gary Rowett, hired in February until the end of the season having been sacked by fellow relegation contenders Oxford United in December. Hampered by a six-point deduction for breaching EFL profitability and sustainability rules which was fortunate not to be 10, but which the club are nonetheless appealing, they sit 22nd, one point from safety, although Portsmouth above them have a game in hand.

Much recent coverage of the Leicester omnishambles has legitimately focused on executives and the ownership, on the failures of recruitment and modernisation and financial management. And yet the squad’s decline has been so dramatic and all-consuming that it is sometimes written off as entirely inexplicable, a divine aberration.

Luke Thomas was on the 2021 Fifa Golden Boy shortlist, alongside Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham and Jamal Musiala. Harry Winks started in a Champions League final and has 10 England caps. Oliver Skipp cost £10m and has played more than 100 Premier League matches. Abdul Fatawu was once called “arguably the best African prospect of his generation”, and although he started the season positively, has scored once in his past seven matches. Stephy Mavididi scored 12 goals and assisted six more in the Championship two seasons ago but has two and two this campaign. None of these players are older than 30 and yet all look, at best, imitations of their former selves.

Paul Heckingbottom, the Preston manager, said that Leicester’s players are “fighting for their careers, fighting for their club”, which feels both untrue and part of the problem. These players have been infected with grand delusions about their own abilities and performances, not willing to understand that being in bad form for long enough just means you’ve got worse. A significant group has openly pushed to leave since last summer, which former manager Martí Cifuentes tried and failed to combat.

A grim undercurrent has been fan division over protest, disagreeing on the appropriate way to criticise executives while supporting – but also criticising – the players. On one forum fans have advocated for everything from capital punishment to surrounding the ground after a match to trap the owners inside. Supporters boycotted en masse against West Bromwich Albion in January, but plenty believe this should be kept away from matches.

After recent protests, on Thursday Rowett asked fans to “get behind us”, which they largely seemed to. A plane booked to fly a banner over the game never appeared.

The recent overhaul of the football staff, appointing ex-City Group director of player development James McCarron as sporting director and finance director Kevin Davies as chief executive, is at least a delayed recognition that change is necessary. Although the widely loathed Jon Rudkin became chief football officer, this technical promotion should take him further from daily decision-making.

Even as the squad’s value collapses, Fatawu should still bring in £15m, while Winks, Daka, Ricardo Pereira and Jordan Ayew’s inflated ­contracts expire in the summer. The ­academy has produced seven players who were selected for England’s age-group teams in the recent international break. Even better, they visit Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow for their turn at the free three points dispenser.

But any semblance of positivity is contingent on the Srivaddhanaprabha family’s continued willingness to haemorrhage cash, having lost £71.1m last season, with more to come. Relegation would guarantee at least one year without the benefit of parachute payments. Not being immediately promoted would almost guarantee further points deductions.

Overhauling the management team and finally moving on from some of their rankest recruitment failings provide nascent shoots of optimism. But is it too late for them to have any effect?

Photograph by Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty