It should feel like an achievement – it is an achievement – but it can often represent an end, rather than a beginning. The players who are good enough to finish fifth are often good enough to play for the teams who finish above them, and so the club in question become more of a transitory destination.

Not many of Rodgers’s players in recent weeks have looked like potential top-four departures. He has eight absentees among his senior players out with injury, Covid-19 or other illnesses including the likes of Wesley Fofana and Kelechi Iheanacho. For others, such as Caglar Soyuncu, it has been a question of form in a defence that has not kept a clean sheet in the league since the first day of the season. Only three teams have conceded more in the Premier League and the defence, as with this week in the Europa League elimination, feels like the itch that cannot be scratched.

The same problem was there last season. Only Leeds United, among the top 11, conceded more. But it goes a little deeper than that. The eternal question facing a manager such as Rodgers is how a club like Leicester can be seen to make progress every year. Moving up the Premier League is difficult and, once you reach the top six, it is complicated by European competition. A Europa League place is considered of less importance until there is a bad elimination, as with Leicester this week, in which case it can add to general gloom.

As a club, Leicester have done everything that might be expected: a famous manager, a new training ground and careful investment in the squad. There will be no great push to break the elite – that story has been written already. The legacy of the Srivaddhanaprabha family’s ownership is safe forever.