Leicester City's sorry demise will break the hearts of football fans everywhere, who fondly remember the ecstasy of the Foxes lifting the Premier League title, back in the 2015/16 season.
Leicester were a well-drilled, hard-to-beat team, who had just the right amount of quality to overcome whatever opponent they faced.
For all the Jamie Vardys and Ryad Mahrezs of the world, the Midlands side also relied on the brute force of Robert Huth at the back when they soared to an unexpected Premier League title to do all the ugly work required defensively.
Leicester certainly lacked a Huth-style figure this season, as they sleepwalked down to League One...
Huth's iconic status at Leicester
Gary Rowett would have been hopeful that picking up Jamaal Lascelles in January would be his Huth-like signing, as an experienced Premier League defender added more grit to the Foxes backline.
Instead, the ex-Newcastle United defender, while not completely useless, has just looked tired and lethargic, with relegation still occurring. In his defence, though, he did front up to angry home supporters at the full-time whistle of the relegation-confirming draw with Hull City.
Huth just feels like a one-of-a-kind presence at the King Power, looking back, for how dogged and determined he was throughout his 93-game stay at the club, with his initial arrival allowing Leicester to beat the drop under Nigel Pearson, before going on to head home three crucial goals the following season, to make the Foxes' dizzy Premier League dreams come true.
Tottenham 0️⃣ Leicester City 1️⃣@Robert_Huth with a huge goal in the title race #OnThisDay in 2016 🗓 pic.twitter.com/vqBPIm7C96
— Leicester City (@LCFC) January 13, 2021
As ex-Nottingham Forest player John Robertson wrote in the Guardian after Forest's near neighbours were crowned unlikely champions, the German behemoth was "formidable" in the heart of the club's defence, throughout that rollercoaster season.
The Berlin-born warrior has kept close ties with the Midlands club since he left in 2018, and the no-nonsense former defender delivered some home truths about Leicester's back-to-back relegations when recently speaking to TalkSPORT.
Huth's piercing home truths
While Leicester players of yesteryear, such as Huth, are still held in the highest regard, the current crop of Foxes players only generate apathetic reactions from the King Power fanbase right now.
Huth was quizzed on the general doom and gloom engulfing his former club, when speaking on TalkSPORT after the Hull draw confirmed their relegation to the third tier, with the German particularly piercing when it came to dissecting Harry Winks' post-Portsmouth outburst.
He said: "That's the most aggression I've seen from the squad, to be fair, him getting on the bus, so it's just a bit late.
"Listen, I think when you're in that position and you're bottom of the league or second from bottom, you expect a bit of grief from the fans, it's never really changed, you're always going to get it.
"Of course, it's nicer when you get your plaudits, but they've been getting it from the fans for a long, long time, and rightly so, because they haven't been performing.
"There's no point in you talking back, because you've got no leg to stand on. They looked weak, they looked soft.
"The players looked like they wanted to get out, they were waiting for the season to end. It's going to be a tough, tough way back."
The one-time Chelsea centre-back has summed up the general malaise around the King Power rather nicely here, with the whole atmosphere toxic, as the players looked to have downed tools, when their necks were on the line.
Hopefully, the players who take to the field next season are more pumped up for the challenge ahead, with performances more in keeping with Huth at his Foxes prime, seeing them immediately shoot back up to the Championship.
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