ENGLISH football has not known a season like this since Brian Clough instigated a revolution at Nottingham Forest and may never experience another like it again. Leicester City, relegation battlers just 12 months ago, were last night crowned English champions, a phrase that still seems surreal despite it becoming increasingly apparent over the last few months that this was a side whose bottle wasn’t going to crash.

When their charismatic manager Claudio Ranieri lifts the Barclays Premier League trophy above his head, only those with the coldest of hearts will not allow a smile to creep across their faces.

It has been the most unlikely and uplifting football story for many a year. Little wonder they’re going to make it into a movie.

It feels like night and day to those who toiled away manfully in a Leicester shirt during a previous, largely unheralded era. After signing from Elgin City for the princely sum of £30,000, Ian Wilson would go on to make more than 300 appearances for the East Midlands club between 1979 and 1987, a period where they went up and down between the top two divisions of English football like a yoyo. There were pockets of success in that time – the 1980 Division 2 title and promotion in 1983 – but nothing anywhere near the scale of what has been achieved this term. With a Thai owner, a relatively new stadium and the team preparing for Champions League football, it almost feels like a different club entirely.

Some links with the past remain, however. Wilson’s photo is one of several to adorn the walls inside the King Power stadium and he remains in touch with several of his old team-mates like Ally Mauchlen, Gary McAllister and Alan Smith who shake their heads collectively whenever they convene to chat about a season that none of them could ever have foresaw. When a Leicester team can travel to Old Trafford, be disappointed with only drawing, before being applauded off the pitch by the Manchester United fans then it can safely be said that we are well and truly through the looking glass.

“It’s been a phenomenal story,” said Wilson, who was at Old Trafford on Sunday and will travel to Leicester this weekend to see them take on Everton, another of his former clubs. “As Ranieri keeps saying it’s been like a dream and now it’s turning into a reality. When we played at Leicester there was a big gap financially between us and the leading clubs and I think with all the money in the game now it’s an even bigger feat by Leicester. It still feels a bit surreal.

“If you go back to the start of the season Ranieri was one of the favourites to be the first manager sacked. It wasn’t a popular appointment in a lot of ways but he’s taken a team that was on the brink of relegation and made them champions. But I think a lot of credit has to go to the previous manager, Nigel Pearson, too. He signed a lot of these players, many of whom were largely unheralded when they arrived. And now Ranieri has taken that another step forward by getting the best out of them. They’ve been great to watch as they play without any hang-ups or fears. There are no Big Time Charlies in there. They’ve all been in it together all season and it’s that togetherness that has helped make all this possible.”

When Wilson helped deliver the second-tier championship to Leicester 36 years ago they marked the occasion by travelling around the city on an open-top bus. So many will want to get on board for the forthcoming parade this time around that they’re going to need a bigger float.

“Leicester has always had a great set of supporters,” added Wilson who still runs a fleet of soccer schools in his native Aberdeenshire. “Even back in my day when you were doing well they would come out to Filbert Street in great numbers. The old stadium only held around 27,000 and it was full just about every week. I remember when we won the league we went to the town hall for a banquet and had the bus tour around the city and it was terrific. I’m sure the celebrations will be 10 times bigger this time around. So this is great for those fans who probably could never have envisaged this happening to their team. The away end at Old Trafford was packed and they could probably fill the King Power five times over this weekend.”

Others are watching on from afar. Both of Wilson’s children were born in Leicester, with his son eagerly following events from his home in Houston, Texas while his daughter is now in Doha, Qatar.

“My son was up early on Sunday morning to get to the pub for 8am to watch the game, while my daughter is three hours ahead so caught it at her dinner time. My little granddaughter is nearly four and she was watching it with her King Power strip on. So it’s a story that’s caught everyone’s imagination.”