Leicester City relive 5,000-1 Premier League title ten years on as Foxes prepare for League One
A decade on from the impossible
Ten years ago Leicester City were preparing to defend their Premier League title and play in the Champions League. Now, after back-to-back relegations, the Foxes prepare for League One under new manager Russell Martin, who will be expected to take the club back to the Championship at the first attempt.
The 2015-16 triumph remains the benchmark for improbable success. The title was mathematically secured on 2 May 2016 without Leicester kicking a ball, after nearest challengers Tottenham Hotspur could only manage a 2-2 draw with Chelsea.
The secret celebration
The next day the media wanted one group of men. They were hard to find. Crowds gathered at the club's former training ground at Belvoir Drive, with journalists and fans waiting while one cameraman filmed from a neighbour's bathroom window.
The press were eventually directed to King Power Stadium, but only eight reporters received a secret invitation back to Belvoir Drive. Ushered into the family room to the right of reception, they were met by manager Claudio Ranieri, who received an impromptu standing ovation and gave a 45-minute audience to the handpicked writers.
Pizza, trust and counter-attacks
Ranieri had been a left-field appointment, returning to England for the first time since leaving Chelsea in 2004. He considered double training sessions, an idea nipped in the bud with the help of assistant Craig Shakespeare, who stayed on after Nigel Pearson's sacking.
Off-field changes mattered too. After the first clean sheet of the season against Crystal Palace in October 2015, Ranieri took the squad out to make their own pizza.
"It sounds funny - we're keeping a clean sheet and gone for pizza but you then end up speaking to someone in the squad you probably wouldn't have spoken to at training because there's 25 of you," says former centre-back Robert Huth. "You train, but you don't really know the guy. How's he functioning? Does he like me to shout at him? Does he want me to just be quiet?"
Huth added: "You talk and go through the game where maybe you wouldn't mention things, like a problem that you see on a pitch, if it's like, a stiff environment. If you're out and about, and you go: 'When the ball's here, I prefer if you do this' - just like tiny little things and you take criticism on differently when you talk in a social environment. You don't want to sit in a meeting room being told what to do."
The approach allowed winger Riyad Mahrez to flourish and Jamie Vardy to plunder 24 league goals, with Ranieri comparing his counter-attacking forwards to the RAF.
Party and hospital
Vardy had invited the squad to his house to watch the title-deciding Spurs draw, though some players needed to wait at the local police station because of crowds outside.
Not all team-mates were there. Winger Nathan Dyer was in hospital with wife Laura after the birth of their second child, Shea, two days earlier.
"I had the laptop out watching the game in hospital, the boys were at the party. I wasn't able to make it but I'd never miss the birth of my child," he says. "It was a strange feeling. It was surreal, like it wasn't real at the time but it was."
Dyer had arrived dramatically that season, joining on loan from Swansea on deadline day and being flown to Leicester in former owner Khun Vichai's helicopter to beat the deadline. "My wife was pregnant, we'd just moved into a new house, so everything was in boxes, it was a wild day," he recalls.
City-wide fever
Leicester lifted the trophy after a 3-1 win over Everton at King Power Stadium and finished ten points clear of Arsenal. The run-in saw lookalikes and novelty products emerge, including a sausage named after Ranieri.
Local butchers W Archer & Son created the Ranieri from Packington free-range pork, fennel, garlic and chilli. It won a Great Taste award and at one stage the shop was shifting 12kg a day. Owner Sean Jeynes recalls: "It was surreal that day. How did that ever happen? We were making sausages two or three times a day, smelling of garlic, smelling of fennel, but it was just a crazy time. It really was a crazy time - you can't quite comprehend what it was like."
"It had a massive effect on the city, it had a great effect on everybody. Everyone was much happier," Jeynes added.
The bet that paid off
Foxes Trust co-chair Lynn Wyeth stuck £2 on the club at 5,000-1 at the start of the season.
"Thanks to Leicester City it meant I could retire at 55 instead of 67," she says. "It was actually really stressful. A first world problem, isn't it? It was stressful enough, watching them get closer and closer thinking, oh my god, can we do it? But knowing that there was £10,000 riding on it as well, was like, 'oh, no, I almost wish I'd cashed out earlier'. When I won, I had my account shut for money laundering, I had to prove it was me and that I'd won it."
The 'pinch-me' moments live on for those who were there, even as the club now aims for an immediate return to the Championship from League One.