da doce： Enzo Maresca's side have played some lovely football this season, but their on-field performances ceased to be the story some time ago

da dobrowin： Leicester City are back in the Premier League. Leeds United's 4-0 loss to QPR on Friday confirmed as much, as the Foxes sealed their return to the top-flight at the first time of asking. Under normal circumstances, this would be cause for hopeful celebration.

The Foxes' relegation last term might have been shocking, and their current squad may be the best – and most expensive – in the Championship by a distance, but there are plenty of recent examples of ex-Premier League sides finding themselves marooned in the second tier for far longer than they would like.

Leicester have just about prevented their names being added to this list, though, recovering from a recent wobble to re-establish themselves in the top two, and they remain favourites for the title. So why isn't the mood more euphoric?

Well, not for the first time in their history, the Foxes find themselves in financial bother. Below, GOAL takes a closer look at exactly why Leicester find themselves in such a predicament:

Getty ImagesKing Enzo!

Leicester's current problems couldn't have seemed further away in the first half of the season. Under the guidance of Pep Guardiola's former assistant Enzo Maresca, the good times returned to the King Power Stadium before Christmas.

The Foxes won 13 of their first 14 Championship games and had already racked up a remarkable 58 points by the halfway point of the season. An immediate return to the top-flight seemed certain and the team was likable once again.

The goalkeeping issues that plagued Leicester the previous year disappeared, with Mads Hermansen starring between the sticks. Jannik Vestergaard and Hamza Choudhury, both pariahs in the 2022-23 campaign, were back to their best too, while their strength in depth up front was scary – with new arrivals Stephy Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu looking electric.

In Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Leicester also possessed arguably the division's best footballer, and Ricardo Pereira was dominating in an inverted full-back position. Everything seemed to be falling into place perfectly.

AdvertisementGetty ImagesGigantic wobble

But things eventually began to unravel. The genesis of their downfall was a demoralising defeat to second-placed Leeds in February. Heading into the game, the Whites were nine points adrift of the runaway leaders, but that gap was cut by a third following an eventful evening at Elland Road.

Leicester created more than enough to win the game, and had a perfectly-good goal to make it 2-0 wrongly ruled out for offside, but a remarkable Leeds rally condemned them to a 3-1 defeat. Before that contest, Marseca had said: "[It's] a huge game for Leeds. For us? It's just another game," a comment some pilloried as arrogance.

And Maresca's words would continually be used as a stick to beat Leicester with as their title charge collapsed in quite spectacular fashion in the weeks that followed. The Leeds result kickstarted a run of just three wins in 10 Championship games, with a 1-0 defeat to Bristol City eventually resulting in them relinquishing top spot.

Leicester fans have seen collapses like this before, with their side foregoing significant leads in the race for Champions League qualification during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns, but at least they were underdogs in those tales. This time around, they were the Championship's big dogs, possessing a wage budget big enough to make rival owners' jaws drop.

Getty ImagesPremier League charges

This on-field collapse was made more painful by the concerning financial saga playing out in the background. After several months of rumblings, it was eventually announced that Leicester had been referred to an independent commission by the Premier League for an alleged breach of the competition's profit and sustainability rules.

"The alleged breach relates to the assessment period ending Season 2022-23, when the club was a member of the Premier League," a statement read. "Leicester City were relegated to the EFL Championship prior to the introduction of the Premier League’s new Standard Directions, which prescribe a timeline within which PSR cases should be heard. Therefore, the proceedings will be conducted in accordance with a timetable to be set by the independent commission, and its final decision will be published on the Premier League’s website."

The outlook for Leicester was only made gloomier when they released their accounts for 2022-23 at the beginning of April. These reported that the club had made a £89.7 million ($113m) loss for the period. Chillingly, it was the the fifth-consecutive year Leicester had ended up in the red.

Getty ImagesOnly themselves to blame

Leicester's account were accompanied by an ominous message from chief executive Susan Whelan, who blamed several factors, including the sacking of Brendan Rodgers and the club's lack of UEFA competition money, for the concerning figures.

“Having achieved finishing positions in the Premier League of fifth, fifth and eighth in the three preceding seasons, our targets and associated budgets for 2022-23 were entirely reasonable,” she said. “However, for a club such as ours, whose sustained sporting achievements have justified the levels of investment required to compete with the most established clubs and pursue our ambition, a season of such significant under-performance on the pitch presents financial challenges, particularly from the perspective of the game’s current profit and sustainability rules.”

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the accounts, however, was the jaw-dropping sums Leicester were spending on wages. As calculated by , the Foxes wage-to-turnover ratio was a brain-melting 116 percent. In other words, for every £1 that came in, £1.16 was going out paying a squad that floundered to an 18th-placed finish.

For that, Leicester have no one else to blame but themselves. Despite their attempts to pin their shortfall on relegation, even a cursory look at the actual expenditure breakdown reveals how feeble an excuse this is.

Over an extended period, it's clear the club overreached massively, handing out bumper contracts and shelling out exorbitant transfer fees, with their various European runs and exceptional record selling players for profit papering over the cracks.