Leicester's Double Trouble: Foxes Face Women's Relegation Scrap After Arsenal Mauling
Just when you thought Leicester's season couldn't get any worse, their women's team serves up a 7-0 capitulation to Arsenal and a date with relegation destiny.
If misery loves company, Leicester City have got themselves a proper house party going. Hot on the heels of their men's team's tumble into League One obscurity, the Foxes' women have decided to join the relegation party with all the grace of a one-legged cat in a sandbox.
Wednesday's 7-0 shellacking at the hands of Arsenal was the cherry on top of what can only be described as a catastrophically inept cake. Nine consecutive defeats in the Women's Super League tells its own story, but when you've managed just 10 goals across an entire campaign, you're not so much playing football as participating in an elaborate form of performance art titled 'How Not To Score'.
The Gunners' seven-goal avalanche was less a football match and more a public service announcement about the perils of defending like traffic cones. Arsenal, to their credit, did what any sensible team would do when presented with such generous opposition – they filled their boots and probably their second-choice boots too.
Now Leicester face the indignity of a relegation play-off on Saturday, May 23, travelling to face the WSL 2 third-place team with all the confidence of a chocolate teapot. It's a lifeline of sorts, courtesy of the league's expansion from 12 to 14 teams before the 2026-27 season, though calling it a lifeline is rather like calling a soggy biscuit structural support.
The timing couldn't be more exquisite if Leicester had planned it with military precision. Having your men's and women's teams both facing the drop in the same period is the kind of achievement that deserves its own special trophy – perhaps a golden shovel for digging holes.
What makes this particularly galling for Leicester supporters is the sheer consistency of it all. While other teams might stumble into relegation battles through bad luck or controversial decisions, the Foxes have approached theirs with the methodical determination of someone following IKEA instructions. Nine defeats on the bounce doesn't happen by accident; it requires a special kind of dedication to defensive chaos and attacking impotence.
The play-off represents Leicester's final chance to avoid joining their male counterparts in lower-division purgatory. Whether they can summon the spirit that once saw them claim the most unlikely Premier League title in living memory remains to be seen, though on current evidence, they'd struggle to claim a free newspaper from a rack.
For a club that once dined at football's top table, having both teams potentially relegated simultaneously would represent rock bottom with a basement attached.