Jamie Carragher has claimed that Leicester City's 2015/16 Premier League title win was more remarkable than Nottingham Forest's rapid rise from a second division side to English champions in the late '70s.

Leicester famously lifted the Premier League trophy during in May 2016, despite having started the season as 5000/1 outsides for the title, having only narrowly avoided an immediate relegation back to the Championship the season before.

Forest meanwhile, won the top division title in the 1977/78 season, after winning promotion from the second division in the previous campaign, and would then go on to win the European Cup - now the Champions League in each of the next two campaigns.

Writing in his Daily Telegraph column four years on from Leicester's triumph about that success, Carragher said: “Liverpool’s record this season is worthy of comparison with the best Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal sides. But to me, none of these clubs are the most extraordinary Premier League champions.

“Whenever that list is compiled, Leicester City’s 2016 title stands alone as the greatest achievement, certainly in the Premier League era.

"At a time when money talks at the top, and the top six have such a financial advantage over everyone else, Leicester’s win was such a shock and an anomaly I am not sure how it can be beaten."

“Of all the Premier League wins, Leicester’s is the only one no-one could have predicted. You would have to go back to Nottingham Forest in 1978 to find a club that so rapidly emerged from being recently promoted to champions."

Comparing the feats of Forest and Leicester in achieving their respective title wins, the former Liverpool and England defender added: "Forest’s win was also astonishing, but even then the economic gap between those competing at the top and those coming from the old second division was not as extreme as today.

“Every other Premier League winner was a contender before the start of the season, including Blackburn Rovers in 1995.  Leicester were relegation candidates. In 2015, they finished 14th, six points above the bottom three with 41 points with 19 defeats."

“A year later they won the title with only three defeats having virtually doubled their points tally. That kind of improvement defies history and logic, especially as the club spent so modestly in the preceding summer."

The season after their Premier League title triumph, Leicester would finish 12th in the top-flight table, and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League, where they were beaten 2-1 on aggregate by Atletico Madrid.

The Verdict

I'm not sure I completely agree with Carragher here.

Leicester's title win in 2016 was unquestionably one of the most unpredictable and spectacular of all time, and it is one that may well never be repeated again.

On the flip side to that however, it could be argued that what sets Forest's success apart from that of Leicester's, is that they were then able to follow it up with not one but two European titles, an additional taste of success that Leicester themselves have as yet been unable to achieve.