The Season the Underdog Stopped Losing: Leicester City’s 2015–16 Numbers

What I could verify about Leicester's 2015-16 title, and what I couldn't

I set out to build a full numbers file on Leicester City's title: points pace, goals for and against, home and away splits, and the handful of matches that decided the race. I can't deliver all of it. One search tool failed twice, the Premier League's own season-review page returned a 404, and the two pages I could read did not give me the final table in a form I can quote. I would rather show you what I checked than fill the gaps from memory.

Both sources below are Wikipedia pages, which I read on 30 September 2026. They are secondary sources that cite contemporary reporting and Premier League data, and I have not opened those underlying citations myself.

What the sources support

The starting point was very low. The 2015-16 Premier League season page says Leicester had spent much of the previous season at the bottom of the table before rallying to finish 14th. It also says bookmakers offered 5,000-1 on them winning the title, and that many pundits had predicted relegation. Nigel Pearson had been dismissed, and Claudio Ranieri began the season in charge.

The finish. The same page says Leicester were confirmed as champions with two games to spare, for the first time in the club's 132-year history. The Leicester season page dates the confirmation to 2 May 2016.

The league around them. According to the season page, there were 380 matches and 1,026 goals, or 2.7 per match. Harry Kane topped the scoring with 25. Petr Čech kept the most clean sheets, 16. Chelsea, the defending champions, had the longest unbeaten run at 15 matches. No side won more than six in a row, and that was Tottenham. Nobody in the division had a dominant streak, which matters for the argument below.

Leicester's own individual marks. On the club season page, Jamie Vardy led the league scoring for Leicester with 24 goals. On 28 November 2015 he scored in an 11th consecutive Premier League match, against Manchester United, passing Ruud van Nistelrooy's record of 10. Riyad Mahrez became the first African and first Algerian player to win the PFA Players' Player of the Year award.

The early matches, as the club page tells them

The autumn is the part I can narrate from the source, and it is not a story of easy dominance.

• 8 August 2015: a 4-2 win over Sunderland on the opening day.
• 22 and 29 August: a draw with Tottenham, where Mahrez rescued a point after Dele Alli opened the scoring, and a late Vardy penalty for a point at Bournemouth.
• 13 September: trailing Aston Villa 2-0 at home, Leicester won 3-2 with goals from Vardy, Ritchie De Laet and Nathan Dyer.
• 19 September: 2-0 down at Stoke, they drew, with a Mahrez penalty and a Vardy equaliser.
• 26 September: a 5-2 home defeat to Arsenal, with Alexis Sánchez scoring a hat-trick.
• 17 October: 2-0 down at half-time to Southampton, they took a point through a Vardy brace.
• 31 October: a 3-2 win at West Bromwich Albion.

In these fixtures Leicester fell behind in several matches and still left with points. That is a real pattern in the source, and it cuts both ways. It suggests resilience, but it also suggests a side conceding early and relying on a few players to recover.

What I could not establish

I could not confirm the following from a source I actually read, so I am not stating any of it:

• Leicester's final points total and their points-per-game pace at different stages
• Goals scored and conceded across the season
• Home and away records
• Which specific results in the run-in decided the title race

Numbers for all of these exist, and the Premier League's records and the final-table section of the season page should contain them. I would rather leave them out than risk quoting one wrongly.

Conclusion: fluke or excellence?

With what I have verified, I can't settle this, and I suspect anyone who claims to settle it from headline figures alone is overreaching. What the sources do support is narrower:

1. The preseason 5,000-1 price reflects how the club was rated in August 2015. It says nothing about how good the team actually was, since the team that won was largely the one that had survived the year before under a different manager.
2. The league was not dominated by anyone. The longest winning run was six matches and the longest unbeaten run was 15, which is what a title race looks like when the usual contenders are uneven. That lowers the bar for a side that stays consistent.
3. Leicester's autumn shows a team that could recover from 2-0 deficits, but also lost 5-2 at home to Arsenal. It was good, not invulnerable.

My working view is that this was neither pure luck nor sustained dominance. It was a solid side meeting a weak field, with an unusually strong run of individual form from Vardy and Mahrez. But that is an interpretation, and the decisive evidence, the points and goals splits, is what I still owe you.

Something you can use

To finish the job yourself, open the final table on the 2015-16 Premier League page and check four things: the points gap to second place, goals conceded against the other top-four sides, the home versus away points split, and points gained after February. If Leicester's margin was large and their defensive record was the best of the top group, lean toward "excellence". If the margin was small and rested on a few results, lean toward "fluke". I will publish the completed version when I can read the primary data.