Leicester City earned promotion back to the English Premier League on Friday after nearest rivals Leeds United were beaten 4-0 by Queens Park Rangers, giving the Championship leaders an unassailable lead in the standings.

The result left second-placed Leeds's chances of automatic promotion from the second-tier Championship hanging by a thread.

They trail Leicester by four points with one game left to play and are only a point ahead of Ipswich Town.

The Foxes remain on track to amass 100 points.

Leicester can now claim the Championship title on Monday with victory at Preston if third-placed Ipswich fail to beat Hull City.

Ipswich can join Leicester in the league next season if they pick up five points from their remaining three matches.

When Leicester City dropped out of the league last term, it brought an end to a decade of unparalleled success for the Foxes.

Just seven years earlier they had won an almost unfathomable Premier League title under Claudio Ranieri, and in 2021 they lifted the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history.

It all started with promotion as Championship title winners in 2013-14, and now the decade has been bookended with another promotion.

Jamie Vardy was there 10 years ago as a gifted livewire, and now as a 37-year-old former England striker he has helped fire them back to the top flight.

But it took a fundamental shift in football philosophy to turn Leicester from the flailing Foxes that went down 12 months ago into promotion-clinching outfit.

Manager Enzo Maresca, a treble-winning assistant to Pep Guardiola at Man City last season, has stuck steadfastly to an approach that places patient, deliberate and possession-based football above all else.