Leicester City

It really is happening isn’t it. A footballing Apocalypse is on the horizon.

We all said that Leicester could not do the unthinkable last season and in winning the Premier League they only went and did it making complete fools of us in the process while making modern day rent-a-quote Gary Lineker strip to his “pants” on the opening episode of this season’s Match of the Day.

It’s fair to say that it’s been a very topsy turvy season for Leicester after an opening day defeat to Hull no-one really expected their defence of the title to be that bad. Perhaps a repeat of last season was asking too much but it was as if they had to reverted to type as The Foxes slipped further down the table.

A slide which as we all know cost Claudio Ranieri his job, it was a very unceremonious sacking but right now it looks as if the decision made by the club’s Thai owners is the correct one. That’s because with the appointment of Craig Shakespeare their winter of discontent now seems to be at an end – yeah, we went there.

Back to back wins in the Premier League has seen them move out of the bottom three but it’s not just positive results on a domestic front, their European adventure continues and ladies and gentlemen be warned, it really is going to happen, Craig Shakespeare is going to be lifting the Champions League trophy in June.

With the Quarter Final draw to follow at the end of the week it is a draw full of European heavyweights, you could argue that there perhaps is not a harder bunch of seven teams that Leicester could potentially be paired against.

There’s no relative minnow such as Schalke or Deportivo La Coruna from years gone by, I guess and this is no disrespect to Leicester they are this year’s minnow but you get the feeling that they are going to absolutely revel in that underdog status.

When Leicester lifted the Premier League title last May their fans would have dreamed about playing the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid and that dream is very close to now becoming reality after their victory over Sevilla on Tuesday night.

You get the feeling that they have perhaps used some form of witchcraft over those two matches against the Europa League holders. Kasper Schmeichel saved a penalty in each of the ties and Craig Shakespeare probably used some form of Ranieri shaped voodoo style doll to ensure their path to the Quarter Finals.

But Leicester fans will not care one iota as to how they progressed, they’ll just be looking forward as to who they will be facing and when the name does come out of the hat the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet will then be under a deluge as Foxes fans book their flights for a European jolly.

There are eerie parallels to Chelsea’s 2012 campaign a sacked manager mid campaign and scrapping through the knockout stages before getting to the final and pulling off a miraculous win over Bayern Munich at The Allianz Arena when no-one gave them hope.

Perhaps Leicester were not given much hope previously but now people will be sitting up and taking notice and if they do go all the way just imagine the pantheon of great managers who have won this trophy – Jock Stein, Bob Paisley, Sir Alex Ferguson, Craig Shakespeare. The mind truly does boggle sometimes.