Leicester City have looked like a club sliding faster and faster down a slippery slope this season.
Years of mismanagement and poor decisions have left the Foxes in a Championship relegation battle they are ill-equipped for and seemingly destined for League One.
What has happened to Leicester City?
The Foxes are 23rd in the Championship and have three games left to find a route to safety, starting with tonight’s visit of sixth-place Hull City.
It is one of 12 matches across Tuesday and Wednesday night on the final slate of midweek action of the second-tier season, with some huge fixtures at both ends of the table.
For Leicester, though, it may already be too late. If they fail to beat Hull this evening, they will be relegated to the third tier with two games to spare.
The Foxes are on 41 points, eight adrift of 21st-place Blackburn Rovers, who travel to Sheffield United tomorrow, so to stay up they would have to win their last three matches of the season and hope for plenty of favours elsewhere.
If Leicester do take maximum points from all three games, they would still be relying on two of the following sets of results over the final 12 days of the season: Oxford United picking up no more than six points from their final three games; Blackburn and West Bromwich Albion, who are above Rovers on goal difference, taking no more than a point from their remaining matches; and 19th-place Charlton Athletic losing all three of theirs.
However, even if the Foxes did win tonight, a victory for West Brom against Watford, coupled with Blackburn triumphing and Charlton getting a point against Ipswich Town tomorrow would see their relegation confirmed by 10pm on Wednesday.
The thought of Leicester winning even one game will probably seem fanciful to Foxes fans who have witnessed their team’s downfall this season.
Despite failing to sign a single outfield player last summer following their second relegation from the Premier League in three seasons, the amount of quality in the squad suggested they could still challenge towards the top of the table under new boss Marti Cifuentes.
Leicester lost just one of their first 10 Championship fixtures, but a 4-1 defeat at Queens Park Rangers on December 20 – in which they were 4-0 down at half-time – was a warning sign.
Results really began to turn in January and Cifuentes was sacked after a 2-1 home defeat by Oxford, with the Foxes 14th and only six points off the play-off places.
Leicester’s slide gathered pace when they were deducted six points at the start of February for breaching EFL spending rules, which left them outside of the drop zone only on goal difference.
They appointed experienced Championship manager Gary Rowett almost two weeks later, but the former Foxes player has failed to change their fortunes, winning just one of his 11 games in charge.
The latest low point was a 1-0 defeat at fellow strugglers Portsmouth last Saturday, which ended with a furious away end berating the players at full-time. By 10pm tonight, the club could have hit a new low.
