Back in my teens and early 20s, when the outcome of Leicester City matches would make or break my weekends, I could never have foreseen a future where a result would be met with a shrug.
I’ve been through long periods where it would get me down if Leicester lost a pre-season friendly. I hated it when the Under 21s lost. When Leicester City Women emerged into the WSL, I started following them too. A fox on the crest and I was all in. From an early age, this football club meant everything.
The last time I felt truly invested to the extent I’d been accustomed to for decades, gripped by every kick, shivering with nerves, was 23rd February 2024. Leicester led for more than an hour at Elland Road that night, wasting chances to extend the lead before collapsing late on and conceding three times in the final fifteen minutes. Over the weeks that followed, there were some tense moments but nothing of the same magnitude.
Since the Championship title was secured at Deepdale just under two years ago, Leicester have taken 70 points from 78 league games and seen 6 of those deducted. When a team is so nakedly uncompetitive, emotional investment begins to slip. It’s a natural reaction to safeguard against crushing disappointment. If we were talking about a team fighting against the odds and a club doing all it could to reverse the decline, things would feel very different. But this is the most highly-paid squad in the division sitting 22nd in the league table.
Sheffield Wednesday, the only team with fewer points after 39 games, may only have the same total as Leicester were deducted but it’s still hard to know which club has had more of a nightmare season. At least Wednesday kicked off on Filbert Way with the mere aim of still having a club to support at the end of the season. With every new piece of financial news that comes out of our own club, the more we begin to think in similar terms.
When Leicester made it back to the Premier League at the first time of asking, there seemed to be two possible routes for the club to take. Having learned the lessons of relegation in 2023, they could gamble, spending big and to hell with the consequences while the TV money kept rolling in. Alternatively, they could take the cash as an opportunity to reset and ensure the club got back on an even footing, even if it meant failing to be remotely competitive that season.
While the outlay wasn’t huge, it felt a bit like we got the worst of both worlds. Tens of millions of pounds were wasted on fees and wages for Oliver Skipp, Caleb Okoli, Jordan Ayew and Odsonne Edouard to help create a team that won 4 of the 33 games prior to relegation. A squad somehow valued at £200million by the board will be decimated this summer by necessary sales, youngsters poached and expensive contracts coming to an end, and it’s unclear what will be left to start next season in a league yet to be determined.
The nature of the financial rules means we’ve reluctantly been forced to revisit past decisions made by the club in the past few weeks. Last month, that involved looking at the money spent in the 2023 summer transfer window after a long-awaited points deduction was finally enforced.
Now, following Friday’s publication of the 2024/25 accounts, we’re wondering how a club that had lost £201million in the previous three years could have allowed itself to lose a further £71million over the following 12 months while the squad value and standard of football continued to decline sharply and no senior figures in the football operation were held to account.
Those are the numbers and the decisions that led to them but I’m more interested in the emotional consequences. Stealing a quick look at my phone at my brother’s wedding a couple of weeks ago, the news that Leicester had let a one-goal lead slip to lose 3-1 barely caused a response, let alone the brick to the stomach that each Leeds goal had felt like two years ago.
That’s the effect of an unlikeable, uncompetitive team watched from the padded seats by a clueless and complacent club leadership. Where once my pride would have seen me defensive of the club against any jibes from supporters of other clubs, now I find myself laughing along at how ridiculous the situation has become. To me, Leicester City have become “them”, not “us”.
This inevitably leads to feelings of sadness and guilt. But as we head into the season ticket renewal period, my overriding feeling is that I can’t justify giving my football club more money to waste. My £457 is a drop in the ocean for them and still, somehow, reasonable value when benchmarked against other clubs. But it’s also a statement of faith I’m struggling to make. The decision is not final but it’s going to take something special to envisage dragging myself along every other week for another season after what’s happened in the past few years.
It’s all a far cry from the feeling of connection everyone involved with Leicester City had previously enjoyed. Last month, Danny Simpson talked about the class of 2016 arranging their own reunion in the absence of anything organised by the club. This seemed damning but inevitable. One of the primary emotional tragedies here is the effective loss of the most memorable ten-year anniversary this club will ever know. This season has been played out a decade on from its greatest achievement, but you would barely know.
All it would have taken was a vaguely competent season this time around and we could have basked in the memories of that famous triumph. Instead, the clock ominously ticks down towards 2nd May and the parallel storylines of what happened on that day in 2016 and what could happen on that day in 2026 are beginning to occur to neutrals and the national media.
There are those of you who will read this and wonder why some fans can’t back the lads through the good times and the bad. There are others for whom every word will resonate.
All I can say is that I, and many others, are easy to win back. We can be won back through regaining the hope of winning. That has been lost over the past two years as we’ve pushed our way through the turnstiles already resigned to watching our team slump to defeat.
This club have done things I’ve vehemently disagreed with over the past few years but I’ll still be there for the final few games of this season in the hope that the horrible feelings of anxiety and tension return. However long it takes, I know one day I’ll be on the road back to being in love with Leicester City again.
The Fosse Way 