LEICESTER City’s remarkable rise from relegation certainties to title favourites in the space of 12 months is the story that has captured the hearts and minds of football fans across the country.

And it is one that could yet rival the fairy-tale feat achieved by Blackburn Rovers 21 years ago when they upset the natural order to become top-flight champions.

There are similarities between the clubs and their ascension to the top of English football.

Both were taken over by wealthy businessmen – albeit it from very different backgrounds – when they were struggling lower down the Football League.

And both teams’ success was and has been built on a tightly-knit group of professionals playing to the peak of their abilities mixed with a sprinkling of bona-fide star quality.

If Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton were the double act of the unforgettable 1994-95 campaign, then Jamie Vardy and Riyard Mahrez are their equivalent in 2015-16.

The deadly duo ran title-rivals Manchester City ragged last weekend to send Leicester, who this time last year were bottom and five points adrift of safety, five points clear at the top.

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It is a lead they could extend further tomorrow if they cause another sensation and win at third-placed Arsenal in the lunchtime kick-off.

Mike Newell is desperate for his former club to do that and go on to become only the second club from outside of Manchester and London to be crowned Premier League champions. The first of course, was Rovers, another of his old clubs.

The Liverpudlian played a valuable back-up role to Shearer and Sutton as Kenny Dalglish’s side knocked Manchester United off their perch.

But without his match-winning penalty in the Second Division play-off final at Wembley in May 1992, against Leicester, which sealed Rovers’ place in the inaugural Premier League, then the club’s history could have been very different.

“I’m thrilled for Leicester because they’ve got good, workmanlike players who do a job week in and week out and don’t get the credit,” said Newell, who scored 26 goals in 96 games for the Foxes before moving to Everton in the summer of 1989.

“All successful teams have them along with a sprinkling of talent. Obviously Vardy and Mahrez have been exceptional but if you look back at any of the teams who have won the league they have always had players who did a job week in and week out and did not get recognised until they were injured.

“Liverpool had it in the days when they were winning everything, Manchester United have had it too, and we had it at Blackburn. And we were lucky that the star players like Alan Shearer would also work their socks off too. He would chase a crisp packet into a channel and fight people off to win his headers and be there alongside you when you’re winning your headers.

“So although we had top players like Alan they would also put it a shift and that’s what the likes of Vardy is doing for Leicester.

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“There are no egos. They’ve got a great manager in Claudio Ranieri who comes across fantastically well, pretty much like we had. We had a legend in Kenny but he was down to earth and never asked us to do anything we couldn’t do.

“He just asked us to do the same thing week in week out and that’s what Ranieri at Leicester seems to be doing. And it also helps when you’re picking the same team. It’s more difficult these days because of injuries and suspensions but they seem to have got a formula where they’re keeping players fit and where they’re just ticking over, which is what we did.

“People are astounded that Manchester United and Liverpool are not doing it with all the money they have spent but you cannot buy a team. You can buy good players but you can’t buy a team.

“If you spend £20m on 15 players you’re going to have problems because they all think they should be playing and it’s impossible to play them every week.

“I still think Kenny has not got the credit he deserved for what he did at Blackburn. People say he had an open cheque book and all that rubbish but he bought players who had not been recognised. Everyone had seen Shearer’s potential but if Manchester United had really wanted him they’d have pushed the boat out and they’d have got him before us.

“Kenny made sure he got him and, yes, while he paid big money for him, he also got people like Tim Sherwood and Graeme Le Saux for buttons.

“So I can see a lot of similarities between Leicester and Blackburn but I still find it astounding that this time last year we were talking about Leicester getting relegated and now people are actually believing they can win the league.

“But it’s going to be a test for them because people are now saying, ‘yes, they can win it’, and that’s where the problems will come for them.”

This is only the Foxes’ second season back in the top flight whereas Rovers won the title in their third as a Premier League club.

“The bonus we had was that we had finished fourth and we had finished second in the previous two seasons,” said Newell, who went on to score 48 goals in 177 appearances at Ewood Park after becoming the club’s first seven-figure signing when he joined from Everton for £1.1m in November 1991.

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“So we were progressing and people could see us doing something. Leicester haven’t been in that position. They avoided relegation last season and have gone from that to being in a position where everybody is going, ‘they can win it’.

“But I’d love to see them win it, as an old club of mine, and just to turn the Premier League upside down, like we did. That’s what it needed.

“It would be amazing if they did it but it’s really going to get tougher and tougher for them from now.”

But if the Foxes were to hold on, and see off the challenge of City, Arsenal and a resurgent Tottenham Hotspur, would it even eclipse what Rovers attained?

“It’s very hard to say,” said former Luton Town and Grimsby Town boss Newell, 51, who is thoroughly enjoying his coaching role at Accrington Stanley.

“Don’t forget that Blackburn came from the Second Division as it was, got promoted by the skin of our teeth through the play-offs, and went from that to fourth, second and then first. That’s some achievement, I don’t care what anyone says. And Leicester haven’t achieved anything yet.

“But, yes, I would say it would be up there with anyone’s achievement; what we did and what Nottingham Forest did under Brian Clough in the late 70s, going up out of the Second Division and winning the league.

“You’d have to put it up there in that bracket. In this day and age it would be a fantastic achievement.”