Leicester City will be contenders for promotion again next season, believes former striker Dion Dublin.
Dublin, who was born in Leicester and played for the club between 2004 and 2006, said Nigel Pearson's men should draw confidence from how close they went to reaching the play-off final last season.
Dublin also thinks City can do even better in the coming campaign.
They kick off the new season with a trip to Middlesbrough on August 3, followed by the visit of Leeds to the King Power Stadium a week later, and Dublin believes City must make a good start
"I am certainly confident that Leicester can continue on their good form from the back-end of last season," he said.
"It can take a whole summer to recover from the heartache that Leicester suffered at the end of last season.
"The players will be disappointed but, when you get so close to achieving, you know you are good enough.
"The players will still have that belief and they will go into the season thinking that, if they don't drop their standards, they will at least get to where they were last time.
"If they can up their game early on, they will find themselves doing even better.
"Really, they should have gone up automatically, they were in a situation in the middle of the season when they were doing fantastic and they fell away."
Sandwiched between the opening two league games is a first trip to Adams Park to face Wycombe in the first round of the Capital One Cup, and Dublin believes a good cup run will help City's cause.
"It is nice that the Capital One Cup is so open and that everybody has got a chance," said Dublin, who was speaking on behalf of credit card company Capital One, sponsors of the League Cup.
"All you need to do is put a run together, get the players clicking at the right time and you get your best players performing at the right weekend and anything can happen."
Meanwhile, Hull's interest in Kasper Schmeichel is over after City refused to budge in their insistence that the 26-year-old goalkeeper was not for sale.
A final bid did not come in from the Tigers, but it is understood they did make one final approach to see if City were willing to negotiate.
City refused and insist it is the end of the matter.
Soured relations between the two clubs since Pearson's departure to join City for a second time more than 18 months ago have made any deals between the two clubs incredibly difficult.
