Ex-Nottingham Forest man slams Leicester City after relegation with Ipswich Town comparison | OneFootball

Leicester City will be playing League One football next season, and pundits were severely critical of them as their relegation was confirmed.

Leicester City will be playing League One football next season following their 2-2 draw with Hull City, and pundits haven't held back in their criticisms of the team.

So, the unthinkable has happened, then. Ten years after causing one of the biggest upsets in the entire history of English football by becoming the champions of England, Leicester City will be playing League One football next season.

Two goals in three minutes at The King Power Stadium against Hull City seemed to have given them some sort of lifeline. Liam Millar had taken advantage of a horrendous mistake by the Leicester goalkeeper Asmir Begovic to take a half-time lead, but goals from Jordan James and Luke Thomas gave fans hope before an equalising goal from Oli McBurnie left the home side an insurmountable seven points from safety with two games to play.

With relegation confirmed upon the final whistle, the inquests over what has gone wrong at Leicester this season began almost immediately, and one pundit in particular has already been highly critical of their players.

Lyle Taylor lambasts Leicester players as "playing well below their level"

Speaking on BBC Radio 5Live during the second half of the match at The King Power Stadium, former Nottingham Forest striker Lyle Taylor didn't hold back on his criticism of the Leicester City players by saying that "Ipswich's squad is no better than Leicester's squad".

This was met by an immediate reply from fellow pundit Tommy Smith, who said: "I think that Leicester's squad is an aging squad. They've not got the desire, which is why they are where they are", before reeling off a list of the stars who've been playing for Ipswich this season and saying, "You cannot tell me that Leicester City matches that squad".

Taylor's response to this was to say: "If you look at those players on paper, I genuinely believe that the players at Leicester are as good man for man as the players at Ipswich. Now, for whatever reason, I believe they're playing well, well, well below their own levels. But I think if you look at those players, I think it's a disrespect to them to say that they're not on the level of those Ipswich players, and I also think if you were to ask them, I think they'd say, 'Yeah, we may be on the same level'."

Asked, "Do you feel they get the respect they deserve and the adulation of football fans and their own fans with the way they've performed?" Taylor replied: "Absolutely not. They deserve all the pelters that are going to come their way because of what they've done over a 43-game season so far, because the table doesn't lie at this point."

Leicester City's relegation has come about because of a conflation of factors hitting at the same time

Leicester City's relegation from League One is one of the biggest shocks in the Championship this season. While they were relegated from the Premier League with room to spare at the end of 2024-25 and with potential sanctions for breaching PSR already hanging over their heads, few expected them to struggle to the extent to which they have this season.

The six-point deduction that followed only offers a partial explanation for this. The deduction was confirmed on the 5th February. At that point, the Foxes were pushed down to 21st place in the Championship table, separated from the bottom three by goal difference only. But this award certainly didn't seem to do the players any good. They've won just one match since, and as their position has become increasingly desperate, they haven't been able to rise to the occasion and pull themselves back out of trouble.

Whether Ipswich's squad is "no better" than Leicester's or not is a question that can only reasonably be answered by looking at the Championship table. Ipswich are in the play-off places and closing in on a possible automatic return to the Premier League. In terms of the only metric that counts, Ipswich are light years ahead of Leicester.

There's a ton of pedigree in the Leicester squad, and while it's true to say that some of their players are "aging", they only have the tenth-highest average age in the Championship. Furthermore, Ipswich have the fourth-oldest average squad age in the division.

The difference between the two is that Ipswich's squad is clustered around what would conventionally seem to be their players' 'peak' years, while Leicester's average comes from a mixture of younger and older players; to put it another way, players who may be past their peak and those who may not have reached it yet.

There remains a slender possibility that Leicester's season could yet be saved. West Bromwich Albion are expected to find out their fate over their own PSR breaches by the 2nd May, and if the Foxes can pick up points from their last two matches they could find themselves saved by the same rule that pushed them into the relegation positions in the first place.

But this is far from assured. For one thing, West Brom have already claimed that they have fully complied with the rules, and for another, without picking up those points, whatever happens to their Midlands rivals would be academic anyway. Were West Brom to be deducted six points without Leicester picking up at least three from their last two games, both clubs would find themselves playing League One football next season, with Oxford United being the beneficiaries of an Albion points deduction.

Having failed to win any of their last seven matches and with Albion having recovered impressively since replacing Eric Ramsay with interim manager James Morrison, this backdoor means of salvation seems at best unlikely. Given the financial issues that their owners have faced in recent years and a high managerial turnover since Enzo Maresca left for Chelsea in the summer of 2024, with four having assumed the position permanently since then, there's plenty of blame to be spread around at The King Power Stadium, as this troubled club prepare for life in League One.