Leicester are not just a small club that got lucky, they are a genuinely great team.

I remember earlier in the season watching my team, Watford, play against Leicester. It was an even game where Leicester did just enough to earn a 2-1 win. In the return match, Watford played poorly and Leicester managed to grind out a 1-0. In both of those games I felt like I was watching a very good mid-table team, rather than the champions-in-waiting.

A lot of fans would have come away from their teams’ games against Leicester feeling the same.

At their best it seemed like Tottenham, rather than Leicester, were the outstanding team in the league. But they had a soft underbelly, perhaps due to all those years of failing to finish in the top four. When the chips were down and they needed wins against West Brom and Chelsea, they crumbled.

On the other hand, since their Championship season was ended in the most heartbreaking circumstances three years ago, Leicester have kicked on and never looked back.

They won the Championship at a canter, and the success of teams like Bournemouth, Watford and Crystal Palace in the Premier League are testament to how hard that is to do, then stayed up the following season when they looked completely out of their depth.

This was a squad that experienced failure and came back stronger, producing success after success, and nobody was going to tell them that the title was impossible.

Many would argue that Leicester’s achievement has only been possible because of the poor standard of the Premier League this season, but I honestly don’t think this season’s Premier League is worse than last season’s, when Chelsea won it by miles despite being hopelessly outplayed by ten men of PSG in the Champions League. More ridiculously still, Aston Villa managed to stay up.

Even if this year was the poorest Premier League in history, Leicester haven’t just won it, they’ve won it with two games to spare. Not even Man City, with all their riches, have done that. And when the last great underdog, Blackburn, won the league, they bottled it on the last day by losing at Anfield. Blackburn’s title was only won because Man United inexplicably failed to win at West Ham. Leicester had no such worries.

Can they do it in the Champions League? You wouldn’t dare write them off.