Disheartened Leicester City fans are turning to non-league clubs for meaning, connection and joy, as their own club grows distant, detached from its roots, its community, and those who once felt proud.
In the past week I’ve been to watch Brackley Town’s promotion-clinching final game of the season and a play-off semi-final between Kettering Town and Harborough Town that ended in penalty shootout heartache for the Leicestershire side.
Leicester City was still the theme of both days for me.
At Brackley, I checked for updates from Molineux and felt absolutely nothing as the number next to the word Wolves changed from zero to one, one to two, two to three.
At Kettering, I bumped into Leicester fans I’ve known for decades and seen all over Europe following our club and the consistent narrative was that Leicester City “doesn’t feel like my club any more”.
The stories were familiar ones, which will strike a chord with many. They haven’t been to as many Leicester games this season. There’s less and less reason to go, from the lack of competitiveness or entertainment on the pitch to feeling like they’re being treated badly or taken for granted off the pitch.
And non-league is a more enjoyable experience, for the reasons many of us have heard for years: you can have a pint while watching the game, there’s room for the kids to run around, the team you want to win scores a goal every now and then.
I’ve never really thought these arguments would hold. The pull of your first club, your real club, is too strong. But when Leicester fans start to think “it doesn’t feel like my club any more”, then they will drift away to clubs that make them feel more welcomed and valued. This week, that’s started to feel less like a vague concept and more like reality.
Yes, non-league looks more attractive when the sun’s out and promotion is on the line. But these are also the times where bonds are forged that hold in years to come, because players, staff and even the clubs themselves are easier to identify with.
The way this dismal Premier League season has gone is obviously the primary reason for the current gloom. But you also can’t underestimate the sense that Leicester City have loosened their connection to the local communities in the surrounding city and county as they first chased global appeal and then sat and watched as bold ambitions crumbled all around them.
The lack of regular, or frankly any, communication from the club to the fans as unwanted records have tumbled supports the theory that the club have become lazy and complacent.
One thing that seems clearer and clearer with every passing week is how much more the club values its players than its supporters.
The players get Seagrave. They get trips to Thailand – or Monaco. They get hundreds of thousands of pounds a month, even a week in some cases.
This trend has taken a weird new turn this season. They can decide the pressure’s too much and take the rest of the season off, they can bring their dog to work or sip Aperol Spritz in the sunshine rather than turn out on a Saturday afternoon. You still see all of these players in the club’s social media photos of training sessions, they’re just not available for selection in a team that loses every week and still doesn’t seem to change significantly.
In fact, the club’s social media approach is coming under closer scrutiny with every passing defeat. It feels like living in a parallel universe where, instead of getting relegated, Leicester City “confirm their place in the Championship”.
Ahead of kickoff against Wolves last Saturday, the club posted a video of a few fans standing around while the players went through the motions in their pre-match preparations and used the caption “Charging up”. They post photos of almost universally loathed players because the only other option is nostalgia and pretend the comments section doesn’t exist.
There’s no emotion or realism behind any of this, no acknowledgement that they’re just treading water until they can post the “It’s another defeat” graphic and head home. This may seem a minor issue but actually, as people are drifting away to find something else to do on a Saturday afternoon, they’ll refer more to social media than if they were attending the games.
And it all looks so bland, fulfilling a quota of posts, a contractual obligation. This, in the absence of anything else, is the public face of the club, which does at least accurately reflect how dead it all feels at the moment.
The funny thing is that while Leicester City fans are judged by neutrals and the media to be ungrateful after the unprecedented period of success we’ve had over the past decade, it’s actually an open goal for the club. We’ve seen it all in that time. Given the nature of the subsequent decline, we’re no longer demanding to compete at the top table.
This is easy.
Play the kids.
Stop giving out huge contracts.
Make playing for Leicester City look and feel like a privilege rather than a chore (or an optional extra).
Reconnect with the local community.
Show you value the fans who want to stay with you.
Be more open.
Sack people who aren’t good enough at their job.
Tell everyone what the club’s identity is going to be, on and off the pitch.
Stick to it.
Foster anything at all that will improve the atmosphere at home games.
Talk more to fan groups and be transparent about those conversations.
This summer presents an opportunity. Tear it all down and hit restart. With safe standing and the chance to be a big fish in a small pond, the club has the chance to properly reconnect. Last time Leicester came down from the Premier League, the big reset was a mirage.
Players were still being overpaid and pampered, there was still an underlying willingness to ban supporters for minor or unstated misdemeanours, there were still people at the club who would – as soon as the big league demands hit again – sign off on disastrous transfer policies or sponsorship from an unregulated crypto casino. It’s all well and good strolling around the pitch with a trophy. You’ve got to back that up with a long-term strategy to set up the club for the future and restore faith among the fans.
Now is the time to do it properly. Before it’s too late and we’re all dotted around the county watching other teams.
The Fosse Way 
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