Promotion secured - Do Leicester City have the most valuable squad in Championship history?

This week saw Leicester City claim the English Championship title, following a 3-0 win over Preston. Just one week after securing promotion to the Premier League next season, Enzo Maresca’s side are now on course to secure 100 points before the end of this current campaign, having raced to the top of the English second tier at the start of the season with 13 wins from their first 14 league games. Despite a huge dip in mid-February, which saw the Foxes win just four from 10 and almost throw away their title challenge, the club have now completed their return to the English top-flight in remarkable fashion 12 months after being relegated. 

Despite a relatively straightforward march to the league title, Leicester faced some tough opposition in their quest to win promotion. Not only did they get relegated with two other big clubs in Southampton and Leeds United, but Maresca’s side have also had to contend with the remarkable rise of newly-promoted Ipswich Town, who are likely to join the Foxes in the Premier League next season. With so much quality on show between the four clubs, there’s little doubt that the standard of football in the Championship this season is as high as it ever has been. And the market values of each side certainly suggest as much.

Naturally, clubs relegated from the Premier League will tend to have much higher market values than established clubs in the Championship. And that was certainly the case this season. All three of the relegated Premier League clubs arrived in the second tier with record-breaking squad market values for the division. Leeds United’s squad had a combined market value of €262.2 million at the start of the season, which was only bested by Leicester City’s squad market value of €310.8m and Southampton’s squad value of €380.7m. That is a remarkable €96.8m more than the previously held record prior to this season, which was held by Watford in the 2020/21 season, when their squad market value stood at €214m.

Of course, the aforementioned squad market values have changed dramatically since the start of the season to coincide with star players dropping down a level or leaving the clubs entirely. As a result, Leicester’s squad market value has dropped by a remarkable 27.9% since the start of the season and now stands at €211m. This is more than the drop in Leeds United’s squad value, which has dropped almost 12% to €205.6m, but far less than the 50.1% Southampton’s squad has lost in market value over the course of the season. The Saints’ squad market value now stands at €189.9m. This now means that Meresca’s squad will finish the league campaign as the most valuable team in the Championship.