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Leicester Aim To Seal Title At Old Trafford

Leicester City will secure the most unlikely and unexpected triumph of the Premier League era if they win at Manchester United this afternoon to seal the club's first-ever English championship.

Victory at Old Trafford would emphatically crown a remarkable season that has seen the 5,000-1 outsiders dominate the league.

Thousands of fans travelled from the Midlands hoping their team can earn the three points they need to ensure they cannot be caught by their only challengers, Tottenham Hotspur.

Thousands more are watching back in Leicester, with some gathering at the club's King Power Stadium, and many more in pubs across the city.

Leicester have three fixtures remaining in which to earn the three points they need.

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Should Leicester lose at Old Trafford and Tottenham win or draw, the title race will go on, and the Foxes will have the chance to seal it in front of their own fans at the King Power Stadium against Everton next Saturday.

If Leicester draw, Tottenham will have to win to extend the race.

The Foxes have never previously won the title in their 132-year history and just seven years ago were in the third tier of English football and in administration.

While they climbed back impressively to the Premier League, just a year ago they were among the favourites to be relegated.

As recently as last April, they were rock-bottom of the league.

What followed was an apparently miraculous revival in form to escape relegation, but even that appears mundane compared with their feats this season.

Should they win the league it would be perhaps the greatest success in English football history, rivalled only by Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest winning the league in 1978 - a year after being promoted.

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It may have few rivals beyond English football too, given the financial might of the teams they have left in their wake.

Their story has resonated far beyond the Midlands, with news outlets and journalists from all five continents drawn to the small city known previously for the textile trade, its extraordinary diversity and as the burial place of Richard III.

With a squad of respectable but apparently run-of-the-mill players drawn from the lower leagues, unfashionable overseas clubs and discards from other Premier League clubs, they have embarrassed the league's lavishly funded aristocrats.

The Manchester clubs United and City, both of whom spent more than £100m on transfers last summer, and reigning champions Chelsea have had no answer to a ferociously committed side led astutely by Italian manager Claudio Ranieri.

Algerian winger Riyad Mahrez has been named player of the year and centre-forward Jamie Vardy, who three years ago was playing at non-league Fleetwood Town, has scored 22 goals and won a place in the England team.