Football fans are known for being optimistic in the face of the worst adversity.
When Liverpool lost 3-0 to Barcelona in the first-leg of their Champions League semi-final campaign in 2018-2019, for example, the supporters still believed, bringing a great atmosphere to Anfield that resulted in a 4-0 win on their way to the club’s sixth European Cup.
Still, even the most optimistic of Leicester City supporters struggled to give the club much of a chance of doing anything bar surviving relegation in the 2015-2016 season, which is why the Foxes were given odds of 5,000/1 by bookmakers to win the title.
Here is the story of what happened next.
The Season Before
In order to get a true sense of just how momentous Leicester City’s title win in the 2015-2016 season really was, you first need to understand what had happened to the club the year before. It was the first time that the Foxes had been in the English top-flight for a decade, which showed when the results that they put on the board during the early stages of the campaign were not good.
In fact, they hit the bottom of the table by the November, having won just two of their opening 18 fixtures. By the time March hit, that had been improved to four wins, but their 18 defeats and seven draws meant that many thought they’d be going down.
Remarkably, the club managed to put together a run of wins from the start of April until the end of the season, beginning with a 2-1 win over West Ham United and culminating with a 5-1 victory over Queens Park Rangers on the final day of the campaign. It meant that they ultimately finished 14th on 41 points, coming above Newcastle United and ending up six points clear of the relegation zone.
In spite of the turnaround in their fortunes, Nigel Pearson left the club in the summer and was replaced by Italian Claudio Ranieri, whose appointment was greeted with scepticism by many, largely thanks to his lack of success as an international manager.
Changing Fortunes
Although Ranieri boasted plenty of experience when he arrived at the King Power Stadium, the Italian was still considered by many in England to be something of a busted flush. The club’s escape the previous season was thought of as being little more than delaying the inevitable, so the majority of people had them as amongst the favourites to be relegated at the end of the campaign.
In fact, such was the extent to which the Foxes were not fancied to do anything of note during the forthcoming season, bookmakers gave them odds of 5,000/1 to win the Premier League title, which was similar to the chances of Elvis Presley performing at Glastonbury.
@ronan.lcfc We won’t forget 5000/1 Leicester city #5000/1 #fyp #jesusisking #viral #llh @Cdm.Logan.11✝️✝️ @dillion @Isaac @𝗆𝖺𝗂𝗇🐬✰’ @Abdulfatawulover432 ♬ original sound – ŘØŃÂŃ
Unlike in the previous season, when it took until September for Leicester to rack up back-to-back wins, it took even longer for the club to register its first defeat in the 2015-2016 season. That came at the hands of Arsenal, with the Foxes then winning eight out of their next ten games and drawing the other two.
In fact, it took until the Boxing Day before they tasted another defeat, this time at the hands of Liverpool at Anfield. Leicester were top of the table when Jürgen Klopp’s men beat them 1-0, keeping their position thanks to Arsenal’s 4-0 loss to Southampton later that day, meaning that they remained two points clear of the Gunners.
A Remarkable Achievement
When Leicester City lost to Liverpool in the Christmas period, the majority of people were assuming that they would then fall away. Three draws in their next four fixtures suggested that that would indeed be what happened, but instead the club put its foot down and won 11 of their remaining 16 matches.
Not that even those that had placed the 5,000/1 bet had much faith in them achieving the impossible, however. One bettor turned to Sky Bet and put a £20 each-way wager on the Foxes at the start of the season, but in the April decided to cash it out for £108,703/41. Obviously not a bad win, but not as good as the £133,000+ he would’ve won.
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The extent to which bookmakers thought the very idea of Leicester City winning the title at the start of the season cannot be underestimated. Simon Cowell becoming Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II having a Christmas number one single and Kim Kardashian being elected as the President of the United States of America were all things that were considered to be more likely to happen, based on their odds.
As if to prove the point, Leicester gradually fell away in the seasons that followed, winning the FA Cup for the first time in 2020-2021 before being relegated to the Championship two seasons later, concluding a remarkable chapter in football history.