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Seven years ago last weekend, Wes Morgan lifted the Premier League trophy.
Jamie Vardy had broken the top-flight record for goals in consecutive matches, Claudio Ranieri was manager of the year, inside Leicester’s centre circle, Andrea Bocelli famously sang ‘Nessun Dorma’, the club’s owners led the lap of honour round a raucous King Power Stadium, as the footballing world hailed the most unlikely of heroes.
The talk in 2016 was of making such celebrations a more regular occurrence. But now, with three games of the 2023 season to go, Leicester are a shadow of the club they so recently were, and they’re odds-on with the bookmakers to join Southampton in the final relegation places.
Leicester’s player wage bill is one of the eight biggest in the whole of the Premier League.
Extending the salary spend was a calculated plan by Leicester’s bosses in recent years, to try to bridge the gap and compete with the bigger clubs, and to try to help retain their best players. One of the results of that increased spend was the record loss of £92.5m announced by the club in March (caused partly because the sale of Wesley Fofana to Chelsea hadn’t come through in those accounts).
But that salary investment hasn’t been matched by performances on the pitch.
The club’s owners, King Power, were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic as their duty-free business suffered a huge downturn. That has stabilised since, as has been emphasised by the chairman, Khun Aiyawatt, announcing in February that he had written off £194m of debt that the club owed to its parent company.
There is no question about their commitment to the club going forward, whichever division Leicester are in next season.
Having been in the Premier League for so long, they would at least receive some healthy parachute payments if they were to drop down to the Championship: 55 per cent of the value of the broadcasting rights each Premier League club receives in the first year, 45 per cent in the second and 20 per cent by the third.
That currently means Leicester will get more than £100m extra in revenue compared to most of their Championship rivals, should the worst happen.
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