In terms of underperformance, Leicester City in 22/23 is one of the worst Premier League relegations of all time

[Les-TA-Jon]

*This was initially written for an external audience

 

As a Leicester fan I’m perhaps a little bias, or have a narrow perspective, but I was wondering just how bad our relegation was. It felt pretty bad from where I was standing. As someone born in 1990, I missed the first third or so of the PL era, so I did a little analysis to benchmark things and see just how much of an underperformance Leicester’s relegation truly was.

 

31 seasons PL seasons gives us 93 relegated teams in total. I looked at each one and how they performed in the season before their relegation.

 

Here’s the chart of all relegations categorised on previous season’s performance

 

 

In summary:

• Most relegated teams are promoted sides (40 out of 93 relegations or 43%)
• There’s a slightly higher incidence of finishing bottom half, rather than bottom 5, before a relegation (26% compared to 18% of all relegations)
• The outliers are those finishing top half and then being relegated the following year, which has only happened 12 times or in 13% of relegations
• Blackburn (98/99) and Ipswich (01/02) are notable exceptions as the only 2 examples of a relegation following european qualification in the previous year.

 

So on first look Leicester’s is fairly bad, being one of 12 relegations following a top half finish, but perhaps not quite as bad as Blackburn’s 4 years after being Champions or Ipswich’s immediately after finishing 5th and qualifying for Europe.

However when you account for longer term performance and squad quality and cost, Leicester’s must surely be right up there amongst the very worst relegations of the Premier League era.

 

Leicester’s relegation came:

• 7 years after winning PL
• 2 years after winning FA Cup
• 1 year after getting to a European Semi-Final

 

Also note that this is biggest ever wage bill (£180m) to be relegated and the largest ever squad price (£400m) to be relegated.

 

Subjectivities

I’ve tried to stick to just the stats but also note, some more subjective things that add to the disasterclass of corporate negligence that is Leicester City in 2022/23:

• The hubristic idea that the club could afford to make ZERO signings are not feel the affects of it.
• Newly in post Head of Recruitment Martyn Glover was on gardening leave and didn’t formally start until after the summer window closed
• 8 players playing on the final year of their contracts, with a further 9 players with only 1 year left by the end of the season
• Letting a player of Schmeichel’s ability and leadership leave the club, simply to save on wages, with no replacement. Ward brought in despite hardly playing for 5 years and Iversen (albeit without PL experience) played every game of the season on loan at Preston and won player of the season was overlooked
• Other weird decisions like finally getting a new winger in (Tete – who turned out to be poor anyway) and then letting immediately letting Albrighton and Perez leave, so they were at a net loss of wingers…
• Simply not playing their best players – Ward was given 26 games, despite looking awful. Amartey was played instead of Soyuncu because Rodgers had a personal issue. Iheanacho was woefully underplayed despite being their best forward.
• Whether or not it was the right decision to sack Rodgers, the club certainly sacked him at the wrong time. Brentford 1-1 before the international break in March should have been his last game if they were ever going to sack him. Then whoever comes in gets the international break to bed in and 3 additional games. I find it hard to believe Leicester would have taken ZERO points from Palace, Villa and Bournemouth had they done the above.
• Also note, that when Smith was appointed he needed to win 3 games to stay up. Given the fixture list included Man City Away, Fulham Away, Liverpool Home and Newcastle Away, he only had the Wolves, Leeds, Everton, Fulham and West Ham games to realistically target.
• So Smith was essentially tasked with getting one of the worst teams in the division to win 3 out of 4/5 games. A tall order indeed...

 

Conclusions

Leicester were relegated after 5 consecutive top half finishes – this is only the 3rd time ever that a team has gone down after consecutive top half finishes, after QPR (95/96 three in a row) and Forest (96/97 two in a row) – with Leicester now boasting an unwanted record far in excess of that.

• Finishing 8th last year and then 18th this year is the 3rd largest ever drop of places from one season to the next - Only QPR (11 places) in 95/96 and Ipswich in 01/02 (13 places) have had a larger year to year drop in rankings
• Only 3 times has a team finished higher than Leicester's 8th place finish and then got relegated following year. Ipswich 01/02 (5th), Blackburn 98/99 (6th), West Ham 02/03 (7th)
• And only Leeds 03/04 and Blackburn 98/99 have been relegated with a higher 5-year average finish than Leicester. But both spent a year in the bottom half before their relegation.

 

In other words, no team has ever been relegated immediately after such a long period of sustained success

Edited 2 June 2023 by Les-TA-Jon

[urban.spaceman]

We ****ing know.

[Father Ted]

No it’s not! Remember we have been overachieving, as Rodgers continually kept telling us. And don’t forget we were in League One 13 years ago so therefore we are still overachieving.

[Dan]

Very good summary. I really think it's probably the worst and I think the moves the players get off the back of it will raise even more questions. I think because we were the upcomer and not historically as big as the likes of Everton it goes a bit under the radar quite how bad it is. I also think the fact Chelsea have had probably their worst season too in the same year overshadows it.

 

To me it would be like Brighton having another 2/3 years like this, winning a couple of trophies within that and then just getting relegated like that. Yet again though because it's only Brighton it wouldn't get the stick it deserves. I think given how long the idea of us going down was ridiculed we should be getting proportionate criticism off the back of it.

[st albans fox]

Can’t compare wages and squad values from 2000 and now 

 

[urban.spaceman]

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

[Les-TA-Jon]

7 minutes ago, Father Ted said:

No it’s not! Remember we have been overachieving, as Rodgers continually kept telling us. And don’t forget we were in League One 13 years ago so therefore we are still overachieving.

[filbertway]

1 minute ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

That is absolutely satire, another person absolutely tired of mouth breathers like Lineker and the "Perspective" lot, who ironically, are the ones lacking any kind of perspective of the situation.

 

You and @The Doctor are always good for some statistical posts  

 

[Mickyblueeyes]

11 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

While I get this comment really hurts right now, it has nothing to do with our relegation. 
 

The PL did nothing which our owner, his board didnt. It’s self inflicted, entirely. 

[shailen]

It's definitely the worst when you consider this squad finished 5th, 5th and 8th in the three seasons before. The West Ham squad were talented in 02/03 but imo we are miles ahead of that team with players in their prime. 

 

What has happened here is a travesty and I think real questions need to be asked of Rodgers, the board, Top and the players for how it got to this stage. 

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 minute ago, shailen said:

It's definitely the worst when you consider this squad finished 5th, 5th and 8th in the three seasons before. The West Ham squad were talented in 02/03 but imo we are miles ahead of that team with players in their prime. 

 

What has happened here is a travesty and I think real questions need to be asked of Rodgers, the board, Top and the players for how it got to this stage. 

Yeah this whole thing came about because all season I've been saying conversationally 'If we go down, surely it's got to be one of the worst ever relegations' - so I did the analysis and it turns out that you can quantify that and, yep, we're right up there. 

[fox_up_north]

Royal cock up. We don't deserve to come back up, either. With greater distance from it, I'm now just annoyed at the leadership. This is YOUR money, not mine. How can you let it happen? 

[jock2612]

My big concern is that with the money from the prem already accounted for to pay for the loan, the transfer funds will have to come from sales mostly to prem clubs that operate on a slower time scale ( later season start & holding out knowing the urgency) which will inevitably impact on the early season and rebuild.  

[Foxxed]

I wonder if this gets in Whealan and Rudkin's end of season review.

 

I suspect Rudkin will say but this just proves that we'll bounce straight back.

 

It's shocking Top, Rudkin and the fans let this go on for so long.

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 minute ago, Foxxed said:

I wonder if this gets in Whealan and Rudkin's end of season review.

 

I suspect Rudkin will say but this just proves that we'll bounce straight back.

 

It's shocking Top, Rudkin and the fans let this go on for so long.

Surely no one at the club can seriously think we can bounce straight back? 

 

We've got 2 months to appoint a manager, a whole new coaching team, and probably 15-20 players going in and out of the club. It's way too much change at once, the club has already lost tons of income, now compounded by relegation, most of the parachute payment will be swallowed up by loans being called.

 

And this is a club that had 2 terrible summer windows in a row. I'm not confident. There's more chance of us going down next season than being promoted.

[Happy Fox]

Honestly we should be reimbursed for our season tickets..

Edited 2 June 2023 by Happy Fox

[Stadt]

The potential value of this squad was nuts. In 2020 or 2021 Maddison, Ndidi, Barnes, Tielemans and Soyuncu alone could have reached £200m. The talent we possessed is ridiculous, Barnes and Maddison had 33 goals & assists between them, Wolves' whole squad had 40.

 

Edited 2 June 2023 by Stadt

[Swarles Barkley]

“relegated immediately after such a long period of sustained success, you’ll never sing thatttt”

[Foxxed]

1 minute ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Surely no one at the club can seriously think we can bounce straight back? 

 

We've got 2 months to appoint a manager, a whole new coaching team, and probably 15-20 players going in and out of the club. It's way too much change at once, the club has already lost tons of income, now compounded by relegation, most of the parachute payment will be swallowed up by loans being called.

 

And this is a club that had 2 terrible summer windows in a row. I'm not confident. There's more chance of us going down next season than being promoted.

With Rudkin overseeing Brendan's destruction and Top doing nothing, I'm not relying on sensible, hard-headed thinking from either of them until I see evidence to the contrary. Perhaps Whelan will bang some heads together but then she's not involved with the footballing side so who knows. The board give me little reason to be optimistic.

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, Dan LCFC said:

Very good summary. I really think it's probably the worst and I think the moves the players get off the back of it will raise even more questions. I think because we were the upcomer and not historically as big as the likes of Everton it goes a bit under the radar quite how bad it is. I also think the fact Chelsea have had probably their worst season too in the same year overshadows it.

 

To me it would be like Brighton having another 2/3 years like this, winning a couple of trophies within that and then just getting relegated like that. Yet again though because it's only Brighton it wouldn't get the stick it deserves. I think given how long the idea of us going down was ridiculed we should be getting proportionate criticism off the back of it.

But I think they'd also have to be on the champions League, have the 7th biggest wage bill etc. Plus they're a smaller club than us.

 

That's not to say that I don't agree with what you're getting at as the perception of them won't shift when they fail but I'd be staggered if anyone even comes close to the abject failure of this season.

[coolhandfox]

Classic case of complacency and believing we are too good to go down by the club and players.

 

Like Stoke (8 years in PL ), Fulham (13 years), and Blackburn (11 years) we made the mistake of seeing ourselves as an established PL force and stopped doing the right things and got lazy.

 

Being in the PL is not a right. You have to earn it. 

[Stadt]

11 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Classic case of complacency and believing we are too good to go down by the club and players.

 

Like Stoke (8 years in PL ), Fulham (13 years), and Blackburn (11 years) we made the mistake of seeing ourselves as an established PL force and stopped doing the right things and got lazy.

 

Being in the PL is not a right. You have to earn it. 

It's incompetence rather than laziness imo.

[coolhandfox]

3 minutes ago, Stadt said:

It's incompetence rather than laziness imo.

Laziness or overconfidence can be a common cause of incompetence in the workplace. 

 

But I think we could think of loads of negative words that fit. 

[Bezzanator89]

I know we, as human beings, are always curious to find new ways of showing the same information, or how to portray it in a different light. Kinda done with this now. 

 

We massively underachieved, we know. We will be having a mass exodus this summer, we know. We have been relegated, we ****ing know. Enough with the analysis, telling us things we already know!

[Legend_in_blue]

Well...

 

We are where we are.

 

Great analysis though.  Without going into details however, knowing that all 3 promoted sides also finished above us this season proves how inept Rodgers has been.  

 

Although I'm not sure inept is the word, I reserve that for the likes of Taylor and Hollowhead.

 

I think negligent fits Rodgers better, and for that alone he is the worst manager ever to be in charge of the club imo.  Negligence of the highest order.