Nobody expected to see the heights from last season by defending champions Leicester and with very poor away form all campaign and much lower form shown by the big stars Mahrez and Vardy the Foxes quickly found life difficult in the Premier League. Just four wins in the opening 18 rounds and no away success put pressure on the squad, but at least in the autumn the fans enjoyed their first ever Champions League experience as Leicester topped their group in this competition.
Vardy was particularly underperforming for the Foxes and he scored just 5 goals in the opening 25 rounds, three of which came in the same game, with Mahrez not much better as he was distracted all summer by possible transfers to much bigger clubs. Still the trust in Ranieri remained high come Christmas, but things changed quickly after Leicester won a single point from their first six matches in 2017 and also suffered an early exit in the FA Cup against a lower league team.
Despite this poor run nobody expected that the most successful manager in the club’s history would be sacked, but this happened after round 25. His assistant Craig Shakespeare took charge on an interim basis, but after guiding the squad to five consecutive league wins and the quarterfinals of the Champions League he was allowed to stay in charge for the rest of the season. Vardy suddenly woke up once Ranieri was gone and it was his goals that helped the Foxes to move up the table and come the end of April to be not just safe, but also challenging for a top ten finish.
Unfortunately Leicester fell just short of the top half of the table in the end, mainly because of their inability to defend set pieces that hurt them a lot all campaign and also because of their very poor away form. The Foxes won just 2 of their 17 games on the road this season.
