Any Leicester fan would have bitten your hand off at the offer of being third in the Premier League with six games to go before the start of the season.
However, there’s a really uneasy feeling among the Foxes faithful ahead of their clash at home to Crystal Palace on Saturday – a match you can listen to LIVE and exclusively on talkSPORT 2, kick-off 3pm.
They’re so close to getting back into Europe’s premier club competition but their dreadful form has them nervously looking down at their top four rivals.
At the halfway point of the season, Brendan Rodgers’ men were even being talked up as title contenders but they’ve been in free fall since the turn of the year.
So what’s gone wrong at the King Power Stadium?
Leicester suffered a Boxing Day massacre at the hands of an on song Liverpool, who have since gone on to become Premier League champions, the game finishing 4-0 to the Reds.
That opened up a 13-point difference between first and second and most started to accept that the league was in the bag for Liverpool.
But Leicester bounced back very well – victories at West Ham and Newcastle saw them consolidate their place in the top four. They were 14 points clear of fifth-placed Manchester United and were still ahead of then-reigning champions Manchester City.
And better still, they had a Carabao Cup semi-final to look forward to with relegation-threatened Aston Villa all that stood in their way for a date at Wembley.
However, things didn’t go to plan for Leicester as a 1-1 draw in the first leg was followed up by a last-gasp 2-1 defeat.
Self doubt would naturally creep in but Leicester were no doubt affected by Wilfred Ndidi’s absence with a knee injury in January. He missed five Premier League matches and the first leg but three of those league matches he was absent for came after the second leg, suggesting he wasn’t match fit.
By the time their most important player returned, which was in a bad defeat at bottom side Norwich, Leicester had a nine-point cushion inside the top four.
Things were beginning to get uncomfortable but Rodgers suggested that’s what makes his players thrive.
Before they played Villa in the Premier League in March, he said: “There may have been a subconscious feeling among the players that we were in such a great position with the gap and the distance. You’re not thinking about it, but it can naturally be there. That can happen to any team.
“You don’t want to rely on [the top-four cushion], you still need to be uncomfortable. I think you have to always feel that edge, that competition.”
Leicester responded by crushing the Villans 4-0 but just when it looked like they’d rediscovered their old form, coronavirus halted the season for three months.
Since the restart, Leicester have drawn twice and lost once, all against teams that Champions League hopefuls should be looking to beat (Watford, Brighton and Everton).
The first game at Watford saw Ricardo Pereira sustain a cruciate ligament injury – more bad luck with injuries.
The form of striker Jamie Vardy should also be mentioned too. He fired 16 goals in his first 16 games with a conversion rate of 39 per cent.
However, since Leicester had an eight-match winning run ended in December, Vardy has netted just three times in twelve outings.
These have all contributed to just three Premier League wins since the turn of the year and Leicester’s top four rivals in Chelsea, Manchester United and Wolves have all hit form.
So if the worst happens, could Leicester lose some of their best players?
Well history tells us that they have become a selling club. Since winning the Premier League in 2016, they’ve let N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater, Riyad Mahrez and Harry Maguire leave, albeit for good prices.
And with the likes of James Maddison and Ben Chilwell being heavily linked with a moves elsewhere there’s a genuine risk that what Rodgers is building at the club will be undone.
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Rodgers suggested that just one little thing in their favour could turn things around.
He said this week: “We’re just waiting for that moment in the game where we get that early goal that can really give this young team confidence.”
That moment ought to come sooner rather than later and against Palace would be a great place for it to start.
