With the 10th anniversary of Leicester City's Premier League title triumph coinciding with their descent to a new low, one question has been asked repeatedly over recent days and weeks. Would their supporters, if posed the question back in 2015, have accepted claiming their first top-flight championship in exchange for hitting rock bottom a decade on?
The knee-jerk response is yes, without a doubt. The more considered response is that it's a pointless question. There was no Faustian pact. Success and failure don't necessarily arrive as a pair.
This isn't simply a case of football's natural ebb and flow, where lean spells are bound to follow golden eras. Leicester made a string of costly errors to squander the strong position they had built.
Nobody anticipated a title defence, yet there was every opportunity for the club to cement itself as a consistent contender for European football. They've thrown it away spectacularly. Their 10-year plunge from top-flight champions to the third tier is the second fastest in English football history, behind only Derby's nine-year collapse.
Nevertheless, there's little value in dwelling on that squandered opportunity. Nothing will change the fact that Leicester will be lining up in League One next season.
What Does the Title Mean Now?
The real question that needs addressing is: what does being the 2016 Premier League champions actually mean for Leicester City now they find themselves in League One? Viewed through a pessimistic prism, it could become a millstone. It's the ultimate peak, never to be surpassed by City or any other club. No bookmaker will ever again offer odds of 5,000-1 on a Premier League side to claim the title.
Regarded as this insurmountable moment, it could become a burden that weighs the club down. The summit has been reached. What's the point in pushing for more?
However, look at it differently and couldn't it serve as a wellspring of motivation? This is arguably the greatest feat in English football. Why not harness that?
A Source of Inspiration
As you can witness in our new documentary, 5,000-1: The Leicester City Fairytale, that season was enchanting. Whenever the tale is revisited, the feelings come rushing back. Watching the strikes, hearing Claudio Ranieri's press conference quotes, imagining the atmosphere inside the King Power Stadium and across the city during those nine months, they send waves of euphoria through your system.
Looking back on episodes from the campaign, whether crucial to the championship triumph or intimate and individual, can help supporters break free from the despair and negativity.
Yet they don't want their happiness to purely be about looking backwards. They want to live through positive times alongside those recollections. But perhaps the narrative of the title victory can galvanise future generations of Leicester squads.
This is the club and the city where the unattainable was attained. This is the venue where the impossible transformed into reality. Why not have faith in the optimal result when there's evidence they can deliver it. For next season, they're back to where the title-winning journey began.
Where It All Started
There's a case to be made the road to glory started when Ranieri took charge. Maybe it was Andy King's late winner against West Ham in the opening match of the great escape. Some might argue it was Robert Huth's loan arrival from Stoke in January 2015. King Power's takeover could be the true beginning. But trace it right back and the real starting point was the club dropping into League One for the first time in their history.
Leicester City's Premier League title win was the upset that no one expected. Following a string of lower-half Championship finishes, relegation offered the opportunity to tear everything up and begin afresh. They'd been treading water. It was time to reshape, reorganise, reconfigure. And that's exactly what they did.
So eight years after a goalless draw at Stoke sent them down to the third tier, Andrea Bocelli walked onto the King Power Stadium pitch to perform Nessun Dorma and Wes Morgan lifted the Premier League trophy aloft.
It's a tale to be immensely proud of and it's a tale that can keep the fire burning. It's a tale that can inspire, that can ignite belief, that can help defy the odds. Because this is where it all unfolded.
As Leicester prepare for life in League One and a sense of despair looms over the club, it's worth taking stock of that Premier League title triumph. Not in terms of what followed and the missed opportunities but in terms of what can be achieved from such an improbable position.
They find themselves back where it all started. The greatest heights can still be scaled from here. There's living proof of that in Leicester, after all.
