Ultimate underdogs Leicester City are in the top spot in this current 2015-16 Premier League season, a relatively unfamiliar territory.

But this unimaginable state of affairs is even more unimaginable if you considered the club's relatively unremarkable history.

Until now.

Leicester were the team every team beat

A dozen years ago, Leicester City, or the Foxes, finished in 18th position in the 2003-04 Premier League season and were relegated to the Football League Championship, also referred to as the Championship, or the second division of English football.

The next few years were spent struggling to retain a place in the Championship.

And after a disastrous 2007-08 season, they sank even lower to League One, which is the third division of English football after the Premier League and the Championship.

They spent their 2008-09 season there.

At their first attempt, the Foxes returned to the Championship from League One in the 2009-10 season.

In 2010-11 season, they were widely considered as favourites to win promotion back to the Premier League but didn't.

However, it was only in 2012-13 season, they finally qualified to secure a place in the play-offs for a promotion spot, but lost in the most incredible fashion to Watford.

In the semi-final of the play-offs, a two-legged tie, Leicester won the first match 1-0.

They went into the second match at Watford needing just a draw to gain promotion.

But as luck would have it, the match wound down to a 2-1 score to Watford, meaning that the aggregate for the two matches was tied at 2-2, with signs that both teams were going into extra time or a penalty shootout if the score was still tied even.

However, with few seconds left on the clock at the seventh minute of added on injury time, Leicester were awarded a penalty that would ensure their promotion if they scored.

Alas, Fortuna had other plans.

Not only did the Watford goalkeeper pull off a double save, Watford went on a counter-attack with 15 seconds of play time left and scored. The match ended 3-1. Goodbye, Leicester.

The Watford crowd went nuts and a pitch invasion followed.

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Following this heartbreak, Leicester came back stronger, finishing in first place in the 2013-14 season -- after their fifth consecutive season in the the Championship -- securing automatic promotion after 10 years playing outside of the top flight.

Their first 2014-15 season back at the Premier League started promisingly enough.

They not only beat Manchester United 5-3, but also accumulated a few initial decent results.

Then they tanked.

After months of terrible results, the Foxes were getting culled and sat rock bottom with only nine matches left to play.

It looked certain they were going to be relegated again and were heading back to the Championship.

Incredibly, Leicester managed to win seven of their last nine matches to secure what was one of the most miraculous escapes in Premier League history, finishing the season safely in 14th place.

Scandal then struck the club during that summer.

A sex tape of three Foxes players having an orgy in a Bangkok hotel room with some Thai women leaked out. The players shouted racist abuse, including "slit eye."

One of the players happened to be the son of Foxes manager Nigel Pearson. The manager and the three players were subsequently let go.

Replacing Pearson was Claudio Ranieri, which no one seemed impressed with.

Claudio Ranieri, the manager no one had expectations of

Ranieri, who had come to be widely regarded as a journeyman manager, had not managed any Premier League side since Chelsea in 2004.

Back then, he was booted out by new billionaire investor Roman Abramovich, who felt Ranieri wasn’t a sufficiently glamorous manager. Ranieri's replacement, was none other than the Enigma and Chosen One, Jose Mourinho.

Before this current Leicester stint, Ranieri had mixed success with various Italian teams.

But his most dubious honour was his most recent job as manager of Greece, which ended in disgrace after just a few months, following a humiliating defeat by the Faroe Islands -- a place with a population of 50,000 and which is not even a country.

Things did not look good for Leicester. Ranieri was the odds-on favourite to be the first to be sacked.

Their squad was made up of mostly unknown players that have been dumped from bigger clubs, including Robert Huth and Danny Simpson, discarded from Chelsea and Manchester United, respectively, for not being good enough.

Their most expensive signing of the summer was N’Golo Kante, brought in from France’s second division, Ligue 2 for £5.6m.

Given these circumstances, Leicester were favourites for relegation going into the current 2015-16 season.

Against all odds, Leicester beat practically everyone

Leicester came flying out in their first match with a 4-2 win over Sunderland, and went undefeated in their first six matches, the only Premier League team to do so.

After a 2-5 deflating defeat at home by title contenders Arsenal, their hot streak appeared to be over.

Undeterred, the Foxes ploughed on. They played extremely energetic and deadly counter-attacking football.

Well-organised at the back, winning the ball by dispossessing their opponents and getting it quickly into one of their devastating counter-attacks, they were sprinting across the pitch like a pack of foxes.

And three previously unknown players -- N’Golo Kante, Riyad Mahrez, and Jamie Vardy -- started pulling off astonishing performances.

As they continued winning week after week, the pundits picked up on a fascinating statistic: The 28-year-old goalscorer Jamie Vardy was about to become a record-breaker.

But first, more about Vardy.

Jamie Vardy, the ultimate underdog

Jamie Vardy, will go down in history as one of the most impressive rags-to-riches story.

Vardy dreamt of being a professional footballer, but at the age of 16, he was released from the youth academy of Sheffield Wednesday, a team now playing in the Championship. He wasn’t cut out for it.

But this setback was not enough to keep a good lad going.

Vardy kept playing semi-professionally for minnows Stocksbridge Park Steels, a team in the seventh tier of English football.

He would spend seven years there, working 12-hour shifts at a factory to support himself and playing on the weekends for £30 a match.

After some impressive displays, he was signed by Halifax town, a team then in the sixth tier. He finished as the league’s top goalscorer and helped his team win promotion.

He then signed for Fleetwood Town, now in the fifth tier. Again he finished top scorer, and again he helped his team win promotion.

His impressive performances got him a call from Leicester. Finally, in 2012, at the age of 25, when most players would expect to have a few years of experience behind them, Vardy could call himself a pro.

Vardy’s first season was poor, but in the 2013-14 season he paid off, as his 16 goals helped Leicester to get back into the Premier League.

Early in the next season, in that outstanding 5-3 pounding against Manchester United, Vardy turned in a man-of-the-match performance.

He scored one goal and set up the other four.

Unfortunately, along with the rest of his team, he would fail to make a mark for the rest of the season, but came to life at the crucial moment, playing a key role in Leicester’s miraculous escape that season.

Like Leicester, Vardy has since got off to a blistering start to the 2015-16 season, scoring in the first match of the season.

After failing to net in the next two games, he then scored again in the fourth match. And in the fifth. And in the sixth. Twice in the seventh. He scored again in the eighth. Twice in the ninth. And in the 10th. By the 12th match of the season, Jamie Vardy, who five years earlier worked in a factory earning just enough dough, was the top goalscorer of the most competitive league in the world, and he had now scored nine games in a row.

The Premier League record for most goals scored in consecutive matches was set in 2002 by Manchester United legend Ruud van Nistelrooy, one of the greatest attacking players since the new millennium.

But could Vardy match the great van Nistelrooy?

As hell he can.

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Vardy scored in his 11th consecutive Premier League match by netting his 13th goal to shatter a 13-year record on Nov. 28, 2015, in the 1-1 draw against Manchester United.

Read this statement again: Jamie Vardy became the first person to score in 11 Premier League games by breaking a 13-year record held by a former Manchester United player by scoring against Manchester United.

Even Newcastle fans have applauded Vardy this season for scoring against them:

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And he did all of this while nursing a broken wrist.

By the end of 2015, Leicester had made history: They were the only team to ever go from being bottom of the league on Christmas Day one season to top of the league on Christmas Day the next season.

Sweet revenge for Ranieri against Mourinho

Meanwhile, Ranieri got his revenge over Abramovich and Mourinho: Leicester City's victory over Chelsea on Dec. 14, 2015, was the final straw in a uncharacteristic dreadful season for defending champions Chelsea.

Jose Mourinho, the glamorous manager brought in 12 years ago to replace the unfashionable Ranieri, was fired from his second stint at the club that catapulted him to superstardom.

Sceptics then thought Leicester's reign will be short-lived. It was surely time for the fairytale to end. These plucky underdogs would start to feel the pressure and fall apart at some point?

The true test then came on Feb. 6, 2016: Leicester faced title favourites Manchester City.

Manchester City, until very recently, were a club very much like Leicester in terms of their accomplishments and titles: Mediocre, to say the least.

In 2008, the club was purchased by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private equity company owned by Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Overnight, this once middling team was one of the richest in the world. A slew of huge money signings brought a wealth of talented players, finally translating into first place success in the league in 2012 and 2014.

Manchester City became many a symbol of everything that is wrong with the hyper-capitalist world of football: Forget the youth academy, the club philosophy, the team's history and core values.

All you need is a lot of money, and the success will come.

In comparison, this is what the gap in resources looks like between these two teams: Leicester’s starting line-up cost a grand total of £22.5 million.

Last summer, Manchester City brought in Raheem Sterling for a reported £49 million.

One of Manchester City’s players cost more than twice as much money as Leicester’s entire first team put together.

Final score? Manchester City 1 Leicester 3.

Leicester brought the fight to title contenders Manchester City

Did that matter? As Hell it didn't.

Leicester put in a vintage hardworking man's performance: Good organisation combined with sublime fast counter-attacks.

They took the fight to the richest team in the country, and carved them apart, repeatedly, in front of their fans, on their own turf.

Player-of-the-season Riyad Mahrez tore through the Manchester City defence with a brilliant goal.

N'Golo Kante contributed hugely in midfield, charging down the ball and starting counter-attacks.

Robert Huth, the Chelsea reject, scored two goals.

Leicester now sits five points clear in first place. They are well over the halfway mark. The talk has gone from how much longer can they keep this up to what are the odds they are going to win the league.

This Valentine's Day Sunday, they travel to London to take on title contenders Arsenal, one of only two teams that have beaten the Foxes (the other being Liverpool) early in the season.

Everyone's watching.

Because it could be heartbreak for one team.

Story adapted from Reddit

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