Leicester City: Out of administration to Ferguson's favourites - Foxes fans are dreaming of the title

Back in August, the vast majority of Leicester fans wished for a quiet end to this season: mid-table safety assured before the final few games. Now, even former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson says we will win the Premier League title with three games to spare!

But you will hear few Leicester fans at this stage shouting that the title is ours. We have been brought up on a diet of last-minute disappointments. Leicester after all are the only team to have reached the FA Cup Final four times and never won it. In the 1990s, a series of Championship play-off final defeats became the norm, including going 3-0 down against Swindon Town, restoring parity, before then losing to a late controversial penalty; the highs and lows of being a Leicester fan encompassed in one Wembley game.

However, the new millennium was when the club – which was formed in 1884 – reached its historic lows. In footballing terms, that low point was reached at the end of the 2007/08 season, when the club were relegated into the third tier of English football for the first time. Off the field, in 2002 Leicester's journey almost came to a sticky end.

The club was one of many that were hit hard by the collapse of the television rights deal with ITV Digital. This was compounded by relegation from the Premier League and the cost of a newly-built stadium. As a result, the club were plunged into financial administration.

Few fans realise how close the club came to being wound up. That fate was avoided due to the efforts of a consortium of 40 individuals and the newly-formed Foxes Trust, who combined to raise £6.4m. I can remember the sense of pride when it was announced that the consortium had been successful, with the Supporters Trust investing a total of £151,000 and owning 2.5% of the club.

The hope was to stabilise the club after its near-fatal experience. Surprisingly, the club managed a brief appearance in the Premier League a year later, but otherwise continued to be a mid-table Championship team. Prospects didn't improve once the consortium took the reluctant decision to sell to businessman Milan Mandaric.

A step-change took place when the owners of King Power (the Thai-based Srivaddhanaprabha family) bought the club with the aim of building an elite top flight side. They ploughed money into the club, initially as loans and then following the introduction of football's Financial Fair Play rules, by converting over £100m of loans into equity.

Confidence quickly grew in their regime. There was a significant upgrading of the training ground and the introduction of high tech sports science which has been material in the club's fitness and speed throughout recent seasons. The team won the 2013/14 Championship title with relative ease.

The 2014/15 season was in some ways as remarkable as the current one. Despite playing well throughout the season, the club looked certain for relegation, before winning seven of the last nine games to pull off the 'great escape'. The momentum of that late run hasn't been lost, which meant that during the early part of this season, when we went behind in games, the players and the fans had the confidence we could pull the game back, which we did repeatedly – with manager Claudio Ranieri consistently making game-changing substitutions.

More recently, under the Italian's guidance, we seem to have perfected the art of the narrow 1-0 victory, but as the realisation that the title is within our grasp kicks in, the natural mind-set of the Leicester fan – 'it's all going to go wrong' – has returned. A growing sense of nervousness can be felt within the crowd.

Logic suggests that the squad – the bulk of which convincingly won promotion and survived relegation – are those who convincingly won the Championship and then survived relegation – they are used to handling pressure at the end of a season, but when did logic rule the mind of a football fan? For those who spent many long hours saving the club from extinction 14 years ago, the sense of pride a Premier League title would bring is surely way beyond that of any former champion. We dare to dream.