Leicester City relegated amid miserable season

Leicester Metropolis had been relegated from the Premier League on Sunday, confirming what has lengthy regarded like an inevitability amid a depressing marketing campaign.

The Foxes’ 1-0 loss to Liverpool formally despatched them straight again all the way down to the Championship after just one season.

Leicester, authors of a miraculous title triumph lower than a decade in the past, dug themselves an early gap this season and by no means recovered. They gained the second-tier Championship final yr to earn automated promotion again to the highest flight, however issues started to emerge virtually instantly from there.

Steve Cooper changed Enzo Maresca as supervisor after the Italian’s departure for Chelsea final summer time. An unpopular rent with the Leicester followers attributable to his ties with rivals Nottingham Forest, Cooper lasted solely 12 video games on the bench. He was fired in November with the membership sitting seventeenth and two factors above the relegation zone after successful simply two matches.

His alternative, Ruud van Nistelrooy, hasn’t fared any higher.

Leicester have misplaced 17 of their 21 league matches since appointing the Dutchman to interchange Cooper, successful solely twice in that span. Final week’s 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion was the membership’s first level since January.

Ipswich City, promoted to the Premier League this season together with Southampton and Leicester, are all however assured of additionally making a swift return to the second tier.

Their impending relegation would sign the second consecutive Premier League season wherein all three promoted sides drop instantly again all the way down to the Championship.

“I feel you see among the many promoted sides it is such a mountain to climb to remain within the Premier League,” Van Nistelrooy mentioned afterward.