It may cause some distress for Leicester City fans to discover that in other Championship boardrooms, it is an open discussion as to whether their club could become the next Sheffield Wednesday.
The comparison between a club that won the Premier League nine years ago and the FA Cup in 2021 with one that is currently in administration with a ground deemed not safe to open in full at the start of the season may seem alarmist – but it also illustrates the speed and extent of Leicester’s decline.
The parallels are there for those willing to look. Just as Wednesday were earlier in the season, Leicester are also facing the prospect of an imminent points deduction, while the domestic business problems experienced by their Thai owners have seriously curtailed both clubs’ spending power.
While Wednesday’s combined points deduction of 18 points for entering administration and the persistent late payment of wages has effectively condemned them to League One next season, Leicester could also be plunged into a relegation depending on the outcome of their hearing for alleged Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) breaches, which concluded last month.
Sources with knowledge of the case expect Leicester to be docked between six and nine points as they have been charged with two additional breaches on top of overspending; failure to submit their accounts on time and to cooperate with the Premier League.
Much like Wednesday, who paid their players late in five months out of seven earlier this year, there is a sense that having reported combined losses of over £200m in the last three years Leicester have finally run out of road.
The club avoided a points deduction last season, after being charged with breaching PSR rules during the 2022-23 campaign, when an independent commission ruled that as they relegated at the end of that season Leicester were not in the Premier League when they submitted their accounts on 30 June 2023.
The Premier League and EFL responded by aligning their rulebooks so that financial rule breaches in one competition can now be punished by sanction in another. Having avoided punishment for their 2022-23 breaches it seems inconceivable that they will escape again, even with Nick De Marco KC fighting their corner.
While last weekend’s impressive home win over Ipswich took Marti Cifuentes’ side up to eighth in the Championship, just three points outside the play-offs, losing nine points would be a serious dent to their promotion hopes and in a congested league would spark concerns about a potential relegation battle in the second half of the season.
Being a yo-yo club between the Premier League and Championship is one thing, but bouncing around League One and the Championship is quite another.
Leicester narrowly avoided a PSR charge for the 2024-25 season, but have little headroom so Cifuentes will not be given significant funds to strengthen his squad next month. Raising his own transfer kitty through player sales is also unlikely.
There are few players in his squad who could command a fee and Cifuentes will want to keep hold of those that fit into that category, particularly 21-year-old Ghana forward Abdul Fatawu. The wages being paid to unwanted fringe players such as Harry Winks, Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard also means that Leicester will struggle to offload them even on free transfers.
Leicester’s predicament has led to widespread suggestions that their owners, the Srivaddhanaprabha family, would like to sell, particularly given their concurrent business difficulties in Thailand. While there is an acceptance at Leicester that all clubs in the Championship are for sale at the right price, club sources insist that there have been no substantive discussions to date and that majority owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha remains committed to the club.
However, Srivaddhanaprabha – more widely known as Khun Top – has his hands full in Thailand, having presided over a major restructure of King Power earlier this year which culminated with him taking the role of Executive Chair.
King Power have been facing financial challenges since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic due to the impact of the declining number of Chinese tourists on the duty-free market, with the result that they were forced to renegotiate their contracts with the state-run Airports of Thailand in October.
AOT agreed to accept reduced payments rather than re-open the tender for duty-free licensees at the country’s three main airports in Bangkok and Phuket, bringing a temporary respite for King Power.
Top is an infrequent visitor to Leicester, but given the uncertainty facing the club has attempted to adopt a more hands-on approach in recent months, albeit from afar. Following the resignation of chief executive Susan Whelan in October, Top took on the role of interim chief executive which will involve spearheading a major restructuring of the club’s operations, including appointing a permanent chief executive, a new commercial director and technical director to take charge of the club’s recruitment.
In another significant change, long-serving director of football Jon Rudkin has been moved to a different role following repeated criticism from fans, but he is close to Top and will stay at the club in a board level advisory role.
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Top attempted to allay fans’ concerns by conducting a rare interview recording from Thailand with the club’s in-house media channels last month – the first major interview given by a clun executive for over a decade – although his overriding message that it will take time to turn things around was not particularly reassuring.
“We’ve had a lot of difficult times, that’s clear,” he said. “I’m not going to let this situation go on and on. When it’s difficult for fans, I have to manage difficult things too.
“It’s not easy, the situation we have. It’s going to take time. In sport, it’s not easy to change in one, two, three years.”
With the Premier League’s verdict imminent, more difficult times are likely to lie ahead – if not the doomsday Wednesday scenario predicted by some of their rivals.
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