From Premier League title to yo-yo club - Leicesters unforgettable decade

On the 10-year anniversary of Leicester Citys title triumph - 2 May 2026 - the Foxes will face another Premier League title winner in the form of Blackburn

Triumph, tragedy and turmoil.

The past decade at Leicester City has had it all.

It started with a season that delivered the most unlikely - and previously unfathomable - Premier League title to King Power Stadium in 2016.

Two years later, the stadium was also the site of the clubs most shocking tragedy, as owner and chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died alongside four other people in a helicopter crash outside the ground.

Now, in a season where Leicester will mark the 10-year anniversary of their greatest sporting moment - which Vichai was instrumental in creating - the club finds itself back in Englands second tier after a second relegation from the Premier League in three years.

And this time they have dropped into the Championship under a cloud of uncertainty, the threat of a points penalty hanging over the club for allegedly breaching spending rules when they were promoted from the division as title winners just over a year ago.

"Its been an emotional rollercoaster," said lifelong Foxes fan Kate Blakemore, a regular Leicester contributor for BBC Sport.

"Weve had tragedy thrown in there with the passing of Vichai, and winning the FA Cup is not something I thought Id see in my lifetime, let alone the Premier League.

"We have had some amazing highs this past decade and yet here we are feeling rather glum that we have been relegated for the second time in three seasons and things seem a little bit unsettled at the club.

"We are rounding out the decade with a very different feeling to how we started it, and its quite tough to take for the fans really."

The departure of talismanic striker Jamie Vardy, the last of Leicesters Premier League-title winning side, and the clubs failure to spend to bolster the squad this summer, emphasises just how this latest relegation marks the end of a golden era for the Foxes.

The years that were bookended by Championship football in 2014 and 2023 are the greatest in the clubs history.

It started with the Foxes returning to the Premier League after a 10-year absence, included a relegation great escape under Nigel Pearson, a Premier League title masterminded by Claudio Ranieri, a Champions League quarter-final, then winning the FA Cup and Community Shield during Brendan Rodgers reign as boss.

Leicester even reached the semi-final of a European competition for the first time in 2022, losing to Italian side Roma in the Europa Conference League, a year before they became the most expensive and highest-paid squad to suffer Premier League relegation.

"You cant predict anything with Leicester City and you cant assume you are on any kind of trajectory, positive or negative, because they always scupper your expectations," Blakemore said.

"Going from winning the Championship title to the Premier League title two years later, to the era of Champions League quarter-finals and getting our best, most sought-after manager in Rodgers, you could only think we were looking odds-on to be a constant top-eight kind of team.

"Then the wheels just fell off really. And its difficult to get your head around how its happened or why, because there is no single reason."

The £80m Manchester United paid for Harry Maguire in 2019 remains Leicesters record transfer fee received

Attempting to keep the books balanced is undoubtedly top of the list.

In his final season in charge at the King Power, Rodgers bemoaned Leicester was not the club "it was a couple of years ago" after a frustrating summer transfer window.

It was the first sign of the difficulties the club was having trying to comply with spending rules.

Flipping talent for huge profits – be it Harry Maguires £80m move to Manchester United in 2019 or Riyad Mahrezs transfer to Manchester City for £60m a year before that - had helped the club establish itself as a top-10 Premier League side.

Big-money exits of recent years, however, have been timed to help their case off the field, having twice been charged with alleged breaches of profit and sustainability rules (PSR).

A club-record loss of £92.5m was made in 2021-22, followed by an £89.7m deficit a season later to take their losses over three years to £215m.

They successfully argued their way of trouble with the Premier League last season, but are now under investigation by the English Football League.

Mike Stowell was Leicesters goalkeeper coach for 16 years from 2007 to 2023, in which time they went from winning the League One title to conquering the Premier League and reaching the knockout stages of Europes biggest competitions.

To Stowell, Leicester City are "family". One with which he experienced "amazing times" but freely admits it was "never a smooth ride".

He left the club following relegation two years ago, and says dropping out of the top-fight twice in three seasons is the main factor behind Leicesters lack of investment.

But he also adds that is nothing new.

It is among the reasons that relegation very nearly followed their Premier League title win, and what contributed to Ranieri losing his job just nine months after the clubs crowning achievement.

"Look at Liverpools investment this pre-season, its over £200m, and they have just won the league," Stowell said.

"And if you look back at when we won the league, our investment was very minimal.

"The Champions League was a fantastic journey, but we were turning the same team out for Premier League and Champions League games and the reality was that we werent big enough and strong enough to be in that pool and to sustain it.

"We managed to stay up, but we were behind again and trying to play catch-up.

"To sustain anything near what they achieved then, you really must invest massively again. Nobody stands still. If you stand still in football, you go backwards."

Mike Stowell (second from left) was part of the Foxes coaching team that won the FA Cup in 2021, along with now Birmingham boss Chris Davies (second from right)

It is little wonder Blakemore described being out of the Premier League even for one year as an "eternity", with the East Midlands club quickly left behind as the level of spending by top-flight sides continues to reach new highs.

And here the Foxes are, back in the Championship, having finished 13 points adrift of safety last season only a year after clinching the second-tier title with 97 points under Enzo Maresca.

"With PSR they couldnt invest, they gave big contracts to those players who got them back up to the Championship, but took them down from the Premier League," Stowell said.

"Realistically they hadnt learned from their mistake, and the team that went down and took them back up, took them back down again.

"Now, there is no reason why it cant go up again. It would be lovely to think that 10 years on from winning the Premier League, they get back [there]."

Marti Cifuentes is the manager Leicester have turned to as they attempt to again yo-yo their way back up.

The former Queens Park Rangers head coach is seen as a boss in the mould of Maresca - the manager who got the Foxes promoted last time, before leaving for Chelsea where he has since lifted the Club World Cup and Europa Conference League - with a desire to see his side press high and dominate possession.

Cifuentes arrival, the awkwardly long wait it took the Foxes to sack predecessor Ruud van Nistelrooy and the uncertainty around the clubs ability to spend also has echoes of the chaotic nature in which Ranieri came into the job 10 years ago.

Predecessor Pearson had been sacked despite overseeing seven wins and one draw in their final 10 games to achieve Premier League survival.

Ranieri picked up the pieces - and with a shrewd summer recruitment drive that brought in influential players such as NGolo Kante, Shinji Okazaki and Robert Huth - transformed Leicester from a relegation escape-act into 5,000-1 heroes.

Cifuentes is now picking up the pieces of a relegated side, and has so far only manged to sign free-agent goalkeeper Asmir Begovic.

The void left by former England striker and Foxes great Vardy remains unfilled, and while Cifuentes has remained coy about what he can and cannot spend, he explained to BBC Radio Leicester he is well aware of what he has signed up for.

"The fact that 10 years ago this club managed to achieve what I would say is one of the most amazing achievements in the last years of any sport, says a lot about a lot of people that are here," he said.

"I like to be at places where the expectations are high because that means there is ambition. There is also pressure to deliver, and Im ready for that."

Marti Cifuentes (right) has Premier League winner Andy King (left) among his backroom team at the King Power

Cifuentes says having Andy King, a member of the Premier League-winning team, on his coaching staff, and a number of academy graduates around the squad is vital in keeping the Foxes tethered to past glories and the identity it helped the club forge.

Homegrown defender Ben Nelson knows the Foxes pedigree more than anyone, having been a ball boy during that memorable season.

He was stood on the pitch when world-renowned Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli sang in front of a packed King Power Stadium on the iconic day they lifted the Premier League trophy.

"Being around the centre circle when Bocelli was singing and all those big moments are ones that stick with you forever," said 21-year-old Nelson, whose only first-team appearances for Leicester came when they were last in the Championship.

"I would have been 10 or 11, ball-boying week in, week out in the Premier League, watching all the stars play, dreaming and hoping one day Id be on that pitch and able to recreate some of those moments.

"Its definitely a reset now, and we have to take it one step at a time and focus on this season first."