It's natural as a fan of the Premier League to pigeonhole certain teams into categories that we tend to keep in until something really unusual happens.
We class Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham as the 'top six' even though they are rarely all in the top six at once. The likes of Norwich, Middlesbrough, West Brom, Bournemouth and Fulham are seen as 'yo-yo clubs' who move between the Premier League and the Championship regularly.
West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa and Newcastle (until this season) are viewed as pretty big clubs who with the right investment can find themselves in the European places, but they can also find themselves heading into the Championship.
One club from the past decade is much harder to place into a category, and that is Leicester City. The Foxes have really seen it all over the past few years and they might be about to experience something they have not felt for a while; relegation.
When did Leicester come up to the Premier League?
Leicester City had been in the Premier League for a handful of seasons before but they are currently on their longest spell in the top flight ever.
They were promoted in 2014 by winning the Championship under the guidance of Nigel Pearson. The top scorer for the Foxes that year was David Nugent who grabbed 20 goals in the Championship. The team broke multiple club records along the way such as the most points in a single season with 102, most league wins in a single season (31), most home league wins (17), most consecutive league wins (9) and many more records.
It was their first promotion to the Premier League since a sole season in 2003/04. This 2022/23 campaign has been Leicester's ninth consecutive season in the top flight, and it's fair to say they have had a good time.
Leicester's highest Premier League finish
This is the reason why Leicester are quite hard to pigeonhole. In the Foxes' first season back in the Premier League they finished 14th, which is a great result for a newly promoted team.
In the next season, and there's no way to dance around this, they won the Premier League.
It was the most unexpected title win the Premier League has ever seen and ever will see. Claudio Ranieri was in charge as they won the whole thing, with Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy, N'Golo Kante, Wes Morgan and Robert Huth being the key stars of the team.
They were 5000-1 with the bookmakers to win the Premier League title when the season began, but Arsenal and Tottenham could not reel the Foxes in. They ended up securing victory on May 2 2016, thanks to Tottenham's draw at Chelsea. Spurs had to win in order to keep the chase alive.
The ridiculousness of the team is that they were almost relegated the following year with Ranieri being sacked in February 2017. Yet in later years they have been in the fight to finish in the top four and still have players the best teams in the land want to buy.
Current Premier League table, top scorers & upcoming fixtures
Leicester's Premier League finishes since promotion in 2014
Leicester City's 2022/23 Premier League campaign
As the table shows, Leicester have been in the top half of the Premier League for the past five seasons and while they haven't reached the Champions League since 2015/16, they have been in the conversation for at least part of the campaign almost every year.
In 2022/23 though, the situation has changed and suddenly everyone has been reminded of how they used to view Leicester before they won the league. They have had a terrible campaign in the Premier League and are in the bottom three with three games left to play, two points from safety.
The chances of going back down to the Championship with a squad made up of players that many clubs have been willing to bid huge sums for in the past. The likes of James Maddison, Youri Tielemans, Wilfried Ndidi and Harvey Barnes have been linked with huge moves but if Leicester go down, they will likely have to sell them for much lesser sums.
This article was originally published on 90min as How long have Leicester been in the Premier League?.