A draw and a defeat to start their League One season. One victory in 11 league matches. A player exodus. A new manager already under pressure. And the club up for sale.
These are, to put it mildly, not happy times for anyone connected with Leicester City.
The club are in a very different place than they were a decade ago, when they were basking in the joy of being the Premier League’s most unlikely champions.
Celebrations marking that 10-year anniversary throughout the year are unlikely to offer supporters much respite. The reminder of those glory days might even pour more salt in the wounds.
Soon after the Foxes were relegated from the Championship, King Power Stadium hosted a 10-year anniversary match which was billed as the 5,000-1 celebration – their initial odds for winning the league in 2015-16.
Players from that Foxes squad faced an All Star XI managed by Tony Pulis and in scorching conditions in front of about 5,000 fans, it finished 0-0.
Sixteen days later, Russell Martin was appointed manager. He joins with his reputation under the spotlight as he faces the task of turning around the Foxes’ downward spiral to the third tier for the first time since 2009.
Since May 2024, when he led Southampton to the Premier League through the play-offs, Martin has won just two league games in charge of Saints and Rangers, whom he managed for just 123 days.
Leicester have started the league season with a draw at Notts County and a 2-1 defeat at home to Burton Albion.
That result led to a number of bets being placed on the club to drop even further – into League Two. Their odds of a third successive relegation are now 33-1.
Leicester’s alarming start to the season is amid a backdrop of uncertainty off the field, with Thai owners King Power seeking to sell the club after 16 years in charge.
An eight-page sales booklet has been produced to help attract potential buyers, but no official announcement about the sale has come from the Srivaddhanaprabha family, who run King Power.
Concerns about Leicester’s ownership have grown since 2022, when they invested heavily in the transfer market but then failed to qualify for European football.
The Foxes’ accounts revealed they lost nearly £100m in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, resulting in a six-point deduction for breaches in profit and sustainability regulations in 2025-26.
Leicester finished last season in 23rd place in the Championship, five points adrift of safety.
Martin was given a three-year contract when he joined in June and while the personnel in the squad will change before the transfer window closes, the first four competitive games of the season have brought doubts about the suitability of his style.
“He was not a popular choice with the fans,” says Lynn Wyeth, a member of the Foxes Trust.
“We’re not particularly enamoured with the ‘tippy tappy’ passing football. That doesn’t work if you’ve got players who can’t do it, and you put yourselves under pressure at the back.
“But maybe he’ll get his new boys being able to play how he wants them to.”
Funds have been generated this summer with the sales of Abdul Fatawu to Ipswich Town and 17-year-old Jeremy Monga to Manchester City.
However highly paid players remain from Leicester’s Premier League days, with the former Tottenham midfielder Oliver Skipp sent off against Burton.
The latest signing is 19-year-old Finnish defender Ilari Kangasniemi, a ball-playing six foot six inch centre-back who many in his home country hope will develop into the next Sami Hyypia.
Playing out from the back is a key part of Martin’s philosophy and Leicester had 73% overall possession in the defeat to Burton.
On Saturday they travel to face MK Dons, where Martin began his managerial career and where his reputation for patient, possession-oriented football was first established.
Foxes fans are used to seeing that kind of style – with mixed results – having watched teams managed by Brendan Rodgers, Enzo Maresca and Marti Cifuentes in recent years.
“I worry that it’s a team that doesn’t look as if it’s got enough fight in it for a League One battle,” Phil Holloway, of Leicester Fan TV, told the BBC Leicester podcast, When You’re Smiling.
“I’m not here calling for Russell Martin out, although a lot of fans have already done that. I just feel like we want to change the style of football as a fanbase. But it’s not going to happen under Russell Martin.”
Martin’s time at Rangers marked a particularly low point in the 40-year-old’s management journey. Their only Scottish Premiership victory was thanks to an added-time winner against Livingston. He was sacked in October 2025.
There were, though, signs of progress for Leicester in their 3-1 defeat to Ipswich Town in the Carabao Cup. After testing Premier League opposition, Martin felt his squad was turning a corner.
“The team is so young,” he told BBC Radio Leicester.
“We haven’t been together very long. We’ve signed a lot of players, there’s been a lot of change. The energy at this club has been really difficult for two years – that takes a lot of energy to shift that energy round.”
It is 17 years since Leicester City last played in the third tier of English football. At times, that period has felt like the most precipitous football rollercoaster.
Promotion to the Championship in 2009 was followed by defeat to Watford in the 2013 play-off semi-finals, a game made famous for a late winner scored by Troy Deeney.
Leicester reached the Premier League the following season, famously survived relegation and then won the title.
Anniversary celebrations for the 2015-16 Premier League champions continue into October but that exhilarating summer now feels like a distant memory.
The decade that has followed has included a Champions League quarter-final, an FA Cup win, one promotion from the Championship and three relegations.
In the latest chapter in the story of their post-title win, Leicester fans will hope the early season problems are the result of a young squad adjusting to new methods, rather than a sign their club could fall even further.
