What is it about Leicester City and players over 30?

The player who's scored most Premier League goals after his 30th birthday is Jamie Vardy, with 108 (and counting).

The player who's scored most goals in the top flight after his 30th birthday is Arthur Chander, with 189 (all of them for Leicester City).

The player who's scored most goals in any of the four divisions after his 30th birthday is Arthur Rowley, with 216 (for Leicester City and Shrewsbury Town).

The story of each of those legends contains several pre-Leicester chapters. Of the three, it was Chandler who joined us latest. Rowley was 24, Vardy 25 and Chandler 27. The tale of Channy's early career has never been told in any detail, but with QPR here at the weekend, it's a good time to put that right. Especially as the highlights of his early years came in the FA Cup.

Rangers Fan

This is where the teenage Arthur spent his Saturday afternoons:

The ground, designed by Archibald Leitch, opened in 1907 when Arthur was 11. Rangers were in the Southern League at the time, and this was their first real home, after years of nomadic existence. 

The ground's accessibility was its great advantage, as you can see here:

For Arthur it would have been especially convenient. He lived near Paddington Station, the terminus you'd reach if you traveled a couple of miles down that track. Several decades before the famous bear from Peru turned up, you would regularly find the young Arthur on the station . His first job was at Wyman and Son's, the bookselllers who'd taken over the stalls at London's main stations when WH Smith fell out with the railway companies in 1906. 

His father was a sportsman  -  a racing cyclist. But Arthur loved football. He was playing for local sides in his late teens, and you can imagine his excitement when Rangers spotted him and invited him for a trial. But then the war intevened, and he would have to wait for his chance.

Arthur was 18 when hostilities began, and he spent much of the war in France, where he would turn out for the British Army XI.

In 1919 he was back home in Paddington and playing for one of London's top amateur sides Handley Page, the Middlesex League club attached to the aircraft manufacturing company. They were nicknamed 'the aeroplanists', and for games in the FA Amateur Cup several thousand would turn out to watch them at their ground in Cricklewood. 

Arthur was soon getting noticed. This is from the Globe newspaper:

Arthur's form earned him a call-up for the Middlesex League against the Athenian Legaue at Highbury in April 1920, and the match report gives an early indication of his power. The game was played on a pitch that was more puddle than grass, and Arthur 'sent in a terrific shot that rushed forward and stopped dead a yard in front of the keeper, drenching him'.

QPR scouts were at that game, and after the match he was invited for another trial, six years after his first one at the club. A week later he was turning out for their reserve side at Chelsea in a 1-1 draw.

He started the following season, 1920/21, in terrific form for the reserves, but he couldn't dislodge regular centre forward Jack Smith from the first team. This was Rangers' first season in the Football League, in the new Division Three South, and they were playing at a new ground called Loftus Road, their old home at Park Royal having been taken over by the army during the war. 

Just after Christmas, winger Bert Middlemiss broke his leg and Arthur was called up to a reshaped forward line, playing inside left at promotion rivals Crystal Palace. That finished 0-0, but just a week later came an ever bigger fixture - an FA Cup tie at home to Arsenal.

This was the golden age of the competition, and fans from all over the capital headed for Shepherd's  Bush::

Arsenal were two divisions higher than Rangers. but it didn't look like it. The breakthrough came when Chandler and Smith switched positions, and Arthur was back in his favourtite central striking role. He put Rangers ahead, then Smith added another and the biggest giant-killing of the day was complete.

Here he is in action that day (on the right of the picture):

When the draw for the next round was made,  Rangers couldn't have got a tougher opponent. Burnley were then in the middle of a record breaking unbeaten top flight run of 30 games (which stood until Don Revie's Leeds broke it in the late 60s). They were out of sight at the top of the League, and in the previous round they'd been at Filbert Street, handing Leicester an historic 7-3 trouncing that City fans would still recall with awe decades later.

There wasn't much chance of an upset at Turf Moor, but Rangers fans were out to enjoy it, and 'their mascot, a monkey, entertained the crowd with its antics on the goalposts'. Burnley won 4-2 and everyone thought they'd win the double (but they lost 3-0 at Hull in the next round, one of the all-time great FA Cup shocks).

The following season,  Arsenal must have shuddered when at the first stage of the FA Cup they were drawn against - QPR.  This one was at Highbury, but again the top flight side couldn't break down the Third Division defence. It finished 0-0 and once more the crowds flocked to Loftus Road for the replay. Arsenal finally won through that day, though if Chandler's late effort had gone in instead of hitting the post it would have gone to extra time.

In his third season, the FA Cup once again provided the highlights. Rangers beat Crystal Palace 1-0,  then faced a trip to Division Three North side Wigan Borough. The home side were 2-1 up when Channy scored a freak goal - 'a yard from the touchline his low cross seemed to roll right up the keeper's body and over his head'. Rangers went on to win 4-2.  

Next they hosted Division Two side South Shields, and their comfortable 3-0 win took them into the quarter finals, just two games away from appearing in the first ever Wembley Final. 

March 10th 1923 was an historic day in the FA Cup. Four London sides had made it to the last eight, and two were from the Third Division. While QPR had had a fairly easy route so far, Charlton Athletic had beaten three top flight sides and now hosted another - Bolton Wanderers. Rangers were also at home to First Division opposition - Sheffield United. Here's great footage of those two games, starting at Loftus Road. 

He was playing inside left, but it's a bit difficult to pinpoint him definitively.

There were no more giant-killing acts that day, and Arthur's Wembley dream was over. Bolton, victors at the Valley, went on to lift the Cup in front of an estimated crowd of 200,000.

Three months later, Leicester manager Peter Hodge decided to bring Chandler to Filbert Street, and in 1925 he would star in another memorable Cup run (which is about to unfold over on the 100 year anniversary thread). 

When he arrived at Leicester, Channy was 27. In that era, most players knew that at that age they only had three or four years left at their peak. But Arthur would enjoy a full decade of top level football at Filbert Street, with that astonishing haul of goals after he turned 30. When he retired, he would stay at the club in a variety of roles for another 35 years, seeing us reach four FA Cup Finals, and only retiring in 1969 at the age of 73 when the club finally had to tell him that nobody can go on forever. 

Looking sharp: Channy at Rangers in the early 20s:

Still sharp. Channy with his retirement gift in 1969:

Neville Foulger's passing has brought quite a powerful reaction from Leicester fans. So many posts on the RIP thread here say how he was ‘the soundtrack to my early life’ or ‘the voice of my childhood’. I thought it would be nice to take a look at Neville’s own life, and present a few of the high points.

In a distinguished career he covered pretty much every major Midlands club  -  but he left the best till last, not moving to Leicester until he was nearly 50. Here are six stand out moments:

1)  I Could Play A Bit Myself, You Know

Neville was brought up in the Gedling area of Nottingham, and he was a decent footballer. Before his by-line ever appeared on a column in the sports pages, he made the news himself:

The Gedling Road Methodist Youth Club is in the grip of football fever and the reason is they are in the final of the national Methodist Association Youth Clubs five-a-side competition, and will meet Asquith Road Youth Club from Hull at the Royal Albert Hall next Saturday. The lads have bought new red shirts, similar to those worn by Forest, and are likely to be well supported. The game will be played before a 6,000 crowd as part of a special programme. The five are Geoff Hodge, Brian Hodge, Dick Sims, Ray Birch and Neville Foulger.       Nottingham Evening News, May 12th 1958

A week later, the result of the final was reported:

Gedling Methodist Youth Club won the match 1-0, the winning goal coming from Neville Foulger, who captained the team.

2)   Too Bad To Be True

Neville's first job was sports reporter at the Nottingham Evening Mail, and in his ten years at the company he would cover a huge variety of events. In his early days he was the paper's Mansfield Town correspondent, and in that capacity he was sent to Filbert Street for the first time in October 1960 for a League Cup tie. It was Leicester City's first ever game in the competition:

Neville was especially taken by the form of a young Scot:

Notice the fellow playing outside left for Mansfield that night:

Neville was soon covering the games of bigger clubs. Perhaps his own proficiency as a player was the reason, but he was never afraid to dish out criticism. Here's one example:

No-one from Portsmouth would have read that report,  of course. It was written for Derby fans.  But Neville wasn't scared of using the same language about local teams.  Here he uses exactly the same phrase:

He covered a lot of Forest games too, and in the 1962/63 season fans in the region were getting excited about the prospect of an all-East Midlands FA Cup Final. Forest, then in the top flight, were drawn at home to Second Division Southampton in the Quarter Final, while Leicester faced a trip to another Division Two side, Norwich City. This was how Neville looked forward to the big Cup weekend:

He wasn't so confident about Leicester, though, despite our famous 'Ice Kings' team being the darlings of several other football reporters:

Far from cruising through, Forest were held to a draw by Southampton then hammered 5-0 in the replay at The Dell. Leicester made it all the way to the final, with Mike Stringfellow, that man we signed from Mansfield, scoring fine headed goals at Norwich and against Liverpool in the semi. 

As we shall see, predicting FA Cup results was a skill Neville would develop later in his career - in quite spectacular fashion.

3)   The Greatest

Boxing was a sport Neville often covered, and he was sometimes dispatched to Leicester to report on bouts at the Granby Halls or the Belgrave Club. In 1963 he had the chance to talk to a young heavyweight from the USA who was making a few waves. 

"Man", he said, for something like the twentieth time, "I'm the greatest!".  

He was certainly an impressive figure. You could almost see his muscles rippling beneath his sports coat, and brightly coloured shirt. He paused to take a rare lungful of air and I dived into the gap to take an equally rare chance to ask a question.

"Why are you the greatest?"

"Because people are talking about me not only when I'm in the ring, but out of the ring as well.  I'm a personality".

This is just a brief sample of the Cassius Marcellus Clay talk-down given on a trip to Nottingham.

Neville went on to talk about how football could do with a few more personalities like Clay.  Here you can see the great man outside the Town Hall:

He paid a visit to the Nottingham Ice Stadium, arriving during a welterweight bout involving Leicester's Joe Falcon. Many in the crowd lost all interest in the fight, swarming round Clay to get autographs.  

He was in the UK to fight Henry Cooper, predicting, as you can see in the picture, that he would win in five rounds - which is exactly what happened.

The following year,  another man not known for his modesty rolled into town. In the 1964 Ashes Test at Trent Bridge, a young Geoffrey Boycott made his England debut. Neville was there to report:

4)   Wherever I Lay My Hat

Neville moved to the West Midlands in 1967 to take up a similar role at the Birmingham Mail and Sports Argus.  He would cover a different club each week, and in his reports you can trace the post-Leicester careers of two Filbert Street folk heroes of the 1960s:

The Doog report is from 1968, the Dave Gibson headline from 1971.

This was perhaps the highlight of his six year stay in the second city - 16 year-old Trevor Francis' spectacular four goal display against Bolton:

Neville was living the dream  - watching top class football every week and getting paid for it. But it was a different club every week - whichever press box he was sent to, that was his temporary home. What he really wanted was to settle down - at a club he could call his own. Soon, he would get the chance.

5)    Sky Blue 

 In September 1973 the 'Neville Foulger' by-line appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegraph for the first time. Over the next 14 years, he would adopt the Sky Blues as his own club, and Coventry fans would take to him in return. 

He arrived at an exciting time. Two weeks into his new job, Coventry made the short trip to Filbert Street. Gordon Milne's Sky Blues were lying third in the table after eight games, with Jimmy Bloomfield's Leicester in fifth. It was the top game of the week in England, and this was Neville's report in the Saturday evening sports paper:

That took Coventry up to second place, but the 'champion' tag was soon looking a bit far-fetched. They plummeted down the table and ended up just above the drop zone. 

The battle against relegation was the continuing theme of those years at Highfield Road. Gordon Milne kept them up year after year before his move to Leicester in 1982 (the switch coming in July when Neville was away on his summer holiday).  Shortly after, he was back to report on the shock player exchange between the two clubs:

In 1986/87  Neville told his bosses at the CET that he would move on at the end of the season.  His could not have imagined that his last ever report for the paper would be the biggest game in the club's history - their first ever FA Cup Final.

David Pleat's Tottenham were favourites at Wembley, but Coventry won a dramatic game 3-2. 

And that wasn't all. In his preview of the game in Friday's paper, Neville had written this:

6)   The Voice of Leicester

Neville became a freelance writer and broadcaster after that, and one of his roles was match commentator for Radio Leicester. That's how everyone on this forum remembers him, and the comments on the RIP thread show just how people felt about him. 

At home games, he would commentate from a box low down in the old Main Stand. This is how he described it:

A hot water pipe ran through it, so in winter it was the warmest spot in the ground. Sadly, the windows always steamed up, making it the worst view.

He also published a fine history of Filbert Street, which is beautifully illustrated. This shot from the early 1920s shows the press boxes of the three local papers of the time, the Mercury, the Mail and the Post, where the Neville Foulgers of the era would have worked:

And that ends this very brief run through of a distinguished career.   

RIP Neville.

So many great books have been published about Leicester over the years. But which are the must-haves - the ones that should be on every City fan's shelf?

Here's a personal top twelve.

Before we start, a word about what's in and what's out. The book has to be predominantly about Leicester City to qualify, which means some fantastic reads are omitted. So no place for these:

Steve Claridge - Tales From The Boot Camps

Mark Bright - From Foster Child to Footballer

Martin O'Neill - On Days Like These

Gordon Milne - Shankly, My Dad and Me

Right, let's go:

12)  Jamie Vardy - From Nowhere. My Story.       Jamie Vardy with Stuart James, 2017  

A fine account of his career up to the title win in 2016.  What we really need now is an update, with the full story of all the dramas of recent seasons.

11)  Here, There and Everywhere - The Steve Walsh Story.   David Joss Buckley, 1996

Steve Walsh wasn't one of my favourite players, but I loved every page of this. The quality of the writing helps it to rise above the standard footy fare.

10)  Lineker - Golden Boot.    Rob Hughes, 1987

The definitive Lineker biography has yet to be written. This is a slim volume, written fairly early in his career, which means a good proportion of it is devoted to his time with us. It’s Rob Hughes’ way with words and his coverage of Lineker’s family history that make this a must-have for City fans.

9)  Minding My Own Football Business.   Barrie Pierpoint with Matthew Mann, 2020.

I was in the anti-Pierpoint camp during the battle of 1999, but I have to admit, this is a really impressive piece of work. Telling the story of his nine years at Filbert Street, it is pretty one sided, but you get a great feel for what the club was like in the nineties. I really wanted Martin O’Neill to tell his side of the story in his book, but he barely gave it a mention, so Barrie’s version lies unchallenged at the moment. The best Leicester book published in the last five years (just beating the Rowley Brothers story).

8)  Fearless - The Amazing Underdog Story of Leicester City.     Jonathan Northcroft, 2016

Of all the books published in the wake of our title win, just two really stood out. One was David Bevan’s ‘Unbelievables’, written from the perspective of a City fan. But I can’t be handing out these gongs to friends, so let’s give it to the other candidate, Jonathan Northcroft, who took time to tell the story in real depth.

7)  O'Neill - Crest of a Wave.     Geoff Peters, 1998.

As mentioned, Martin’s recent autobiography is disqualified from this list, but instead, here’s a beautifully written tale of his first two years at Filbert Street. It followed a similar book, ‘Starting A Wave’, by Brian Little, which might have been included here had the prose style not been so faithful to Little’s less-than-inspiring manager-speak.

6)  Muzzy - My Story.    Muzzy Izzet with Lee Marlow, 2015

Neil Lennon, Muzzy Izzet and Robbie Savage were the heart of Martin O’Neill’s team, and their autobiographies should be side by side on every City fan’s bookshelf.  Muzzy’s story just shades it here. 

5)  Gibbo - The Davie Gibson Story.      Dave Gibson with Chris Westcott, 2013

Most City fans who recall the glory days of the early 60s pick Gibbo as their favourite player, and this book tells his story with real style. Of others from the ‘Ice-Kings’ era, Frank McLintock’s ‘True Grit’, despite being aimed mainly at Arsenal fans, gives you great insights into those times, and Gordon Banks’ autobiography 'Banksy' is also worth getting hold of.

4)  Can't Buy That Feeling.   Simon Kimber and Gary Silke, 2018

Full of little nuggets of LCFC history, this collection of interviews from the Fox Fanzine is beautifully edited and illustrated. A simple idea perfectly realized.

3)  One Hump or Two?    Frank Worthington, with Steve Wells and Nick Cooper, 1994

Of 1970s City players, you’d think it would’ve been perfectionist Peter Shilton who published the classic, and free-wheelin’ Frank who put out the rush-job. In fact, it’s the reverse. Shilts’ autobiography feels half-finished, while this rollicking read satisfies on every level - backing up the wild stories with a wealth of footballing detail. Not far behind this is another candidate from the Bloomfield years – Keith Weller’s highly recommended ‘White Tights and Bright Lights’.

2)  Bring Back The Birch.     Alan Birchenall with Paul Mace,  2000

Birch’s achievements on and off the pitch deserved celebrating in a high-quality publication – and this did the job splendidly. He says at the start that he wants it to be about all the special people he’s met rather than a game-by-game review, but the scrapbooks he gave Paul Mace to work with were so well stocked that each stage of his career is covered more than satisfactorily. 

1)  Of Fossils and Foxes.  The Official, Definitive History of Leicester CIty FC.         Dave Smith and Paul Taylor. 4th edition,  2016

This is so far ahead of the field it’s untrue. It’s not only the best Leicester book, it’s the best history of any club I’ve ever read (and I’ve got a shelf full of them). No doubt you already own a copy, but do yourself a favour and dive into some of those player profiles you’ve never read before – each one condensing hours and hours of research into a punchy mini biography. The other parts – the season-by-season narrative, the line-ups, the stats section – are similarly authoritative. Don’t try looking for any factual errors – you’ll have more luck finding a needle in a haystack.

So that's the top twelve.  It should be pretty easy to get hold of all the books mentioned here.  abebooks.co.uk is good for second hand stuff.

Well, I said it was a personal selection, and I'd love to hear some other views.

Like many others on here, the more I look into Steve Cooper's history, the more optimistic I feel about next season. Forgive me though if I don't write the usual retrospective. With Forest featuring so prominently I'll give it a miss this time.

Instead, here's something a little different - the story of Keith Cooper - Steve's father, who was a top level referee. It's a tale  @ADAMSKI97 and @Golden Fox  have already alluded to, and as we'll see, it climaxes in a remarkable evening at Filbert Street in 1994.

1) Playing Career Cut Short

Keith Cooper was brought up in the Welsh town of Rhydyfelin, on the eastern bank of the River Taff. His dream was to be a professional footballer, and in 1965, he was well on his way:

He was at Ninian Park at the same time as future Leicester right back Peter Rodrigues, and he played in the same Cardiff youth team as John Toshack. But an anke injury forced him to give up the game in the late sixties.

He took up the whistle, and quickly made a name for himself in the local leagues around Pontypridd. No doubt his experience at Cardiff helped him build a rapport with players, and he made it on to the Football League list in 1975, when he was just 27:

He was quickly promoted from running the line to being the man in the middle:

Neil would soon have a brother.  On Monday December 10th 1979, Steven Daniel Cooper was born. 

Welcome to Leicester

Keith made his first visit to Filbert Street just after Steve's third birthday, on December 18th 1982. We were playing Oldham Athletic in a Division Two fixture, five months into Gordon Milne's reign at the club. 

On that day, Keith had a big decision to make before the game even started. The pitch was frozen, and both Milne and Oldham boss Joe Royle thought the game ought to be postponed. But Keith gave the go-ahead, and the 'lottery', as Bill Anderson in the Mercury called it, kicked off as scheduled.

Ten minutes into the game, Royle shouted over to Milne in the home dugout - 'Let's call this off. We'll flip a coin for the points!'  Perhaps he'd already noticed that Leicester were adapting better to the conditions.

We won the game 2-1, though according to Anderson, the winning penalty from Kevin Macdonald was a bit lucky, 'referee Cooper failing to take into account the surface' when he judged that Paul Ramsey had been fouled. 

Milne was delighted with the points, but said: I had to tell them to forget all they had been taught and just keep knocking the ball up field all the time. The match was as good a case for summer soccer as I have seen.

We had been down in 15th place at the start of the month, but the Oldham game was the third win in a row, taking us up to 6th. That good form continued, and Milne's side clinched promotion on the last day of the season.

Up The Football League We Go

Keith Cooper's career was heading in the same direction. In March that season, he achieved his ambition of taking charge of a game in the top flight. He was chosen for the game between Coventry and Spurs, and the Pontypridd Observer marked the occasion by sending a reporter to accompany him on the trip, setting off for Coventry before sunrise. His wife Gill did a fine job getting the kids up and dressed for the photo. You can see young Steve holding her hand. 

When the game started, 'the man from Ponty had an eventful opening ten minutes. Coventry's Gary Gillespie was the first to go into the book, and team-mate Mark Hateley was given the same punishment for dissent. Then, midway through the half, Coventry's Jim Melrose was sent sprawling in the penalty area. Keith instantly pointed to the spot, as Spurs keeper Ray Clemence gave him a rather pained look. Steve Hunt confidently dispatched the spot kick'. 

Melrose had recently been half of the swap deal that took Tommy English from Coventry to Filbert Street. Here he is action that day:

The game finished 1-1 - the first of hundreds of top flight matches Keith would take charge of in the next 15 years.

He was quite a star in his home town. Since the demise of Pontypridd AFC (they played in the Southern League and came close to being elected to the Football League in the 1920s), fans of the round ball game hadn't had much to shout about. Cooper's presence at the highest level of the Engish game was some kind of substitute. The Observer would regularly report on his upcoming schedule, and often do in-depth features on his life as a referee. 

In one such feature, Keith talked about taking charge of the first game at Anfield after the Hillsborough tragedy:

Under The Spotlight

In another interview in January 1990, he said that an ambition of his was to be chosen for a game on live TV. That chance soon arrived. He took charge of Everton 4 Nottingham Forest 0, featured on ITV's 'The Match' in April 1990, with Tony Cottee scoring twice.

In May 1994, he was given the honour of refereeing the League Cup Final, with Aston Villa beating Man U 3-1.  Shortly after that came another big game - the second leg of the play-off semi-final between Leicester and Tranmere, which was quite an explosive night.

This is a poor quality clip, but it shows David Speedie's winning goal, which came from a free kick Tranmere thought should never have been awarded.  Shortly after that, it all kicked off:

Keith sent off both Tranmere keeper Eric Nixon and David Speedie, who thus missed the play-off final against Derby.

Just five months later, Keith was back at Filbert Street, and the drama was unrelenting. Having beaten Derby in that play-off final, we were now in the Premier League, and Sky chose our game against Coventry for their Monday Night Football slot.

Here's the key moments:

Gary Gillespie, you'll recall, was the first player Keith ever booked in a top flight match. 

After the game, the two managers both said it was time to introduce video replays. Coventry boss Phil Neal said; We should do what cricket has done - stop the game so the ref can see a vital incident again'. Brian Little agreed: 'Both players were unlucky. Videos are used to show things that refs miss, and perhaps that sort of evidence should be used to highlight incidents like this'. 

But it wasn't those comments that caused the fuss:

Birch told us what happened next in his book:

Sure enough, a few days later a letter dropped through the Filbert Street letterbox informing that the FA were considering charging me for bringing the game into disrepute. What a load of nonsense. I was hardly in a mood to back down, but against my better judgement I allowed a letter of apology to be submitted to the FA. As a result of this letter, no further action was taken against me.

Now, what would Steve Cooper have made of all that? He was still at school at the time, approaching his 15th birthday. His classmates knew all about his dad's job, and, well, you know what schoolkids are like. This is what Steve said when asked whether he'd ever considered becoming a ref like his dad:

The morning after that Leicester v Coventry game may have been the worst it ever got.

It's good that he can laugh about it. But now that he's at Leicester, what would happen if his dad and Birch met up in the hospitality area before a game? Would it be awkward?

Birch isn't the sort to bear grudges. And nor, in fact,  is Keith. How do we know? Well, look what happened after the very last game he took charge of - Blackburn 1 Arsenal 1 in April 1996:

Heart warming stuff, huh?

Welcome to Leicester, Steve. And best wishes to your dad.

It looks like we're going to make history on Monday night. And there's no better place to do so than Preston.

This is for those of you heading northwards tomorrow. If you arrive early, you'll have the chance to follow the Leicester History Trail around the streets of the city.

It's not something you'll find on any official tourist guide, but it's what I'm calling it here.

For a football fan, and a Leicester fan, Preston is full of historical landmarks. 

Let's take a look at them:

1)  Preston Guild Hall

Gary Lineker's debut for Leicester was on New Year's Day 1979 in a 2-0 win over Oldham at Filbert Street. He didn't have a great game, and Jock Wallace didn't pick him again until April - for a trip to Preston. Deepdale was the first away ground he played at.

It was a disaster. City crashed 4-0, their third defeat in four days over Easter, leaving them perilously close to a drop into Division Three. Thankfully we lost only one of the last five and stayed up.

Lineker, as you know, was best mates with Willie Thorne. Gary was best man at Willie's wedding in the spring of 1985, a ceremony held on a Wednesday because Gary was somehow always busy on Saturdays.

Six months later Willie was on the verge of the greatest triumph of his career.

Over the weekend of November 30th and December 1st, he faced Steve Davis in the final of the UK Championships at the Guild Hall in Preston (a place you'll pass on the walk from the Station to Deepdale). Gary wanted to be there to watch him. 

There was a slight problem. Everton had an away game down at Southampton on Saturday, so he wouldn't even make it for the evening session. 

But despite being 250 miles apart, they were both enjoying themselves. Just as Lineker was putting Everton ahead at The Dell, Willie was compiling a break of 112 to give him an early advantage at Preston. Everton went on to win 3-2, and Willie finished the day 8-6 up against the World Number One.

On Sunday, Gary made the short trip from Liverpool to Preston to see if Willie could see it through. He won the first four frames of the day to lead 12-6. At the end of the afternoon session it was 13-8, and he needed just three more frames for victory. 

Then came the key moment. In the first frame of the evening session, Willie was clearing the colours to go 14-8 ahead when he missed an easy blue. 'It's a ball I would have sunk 99 times out of 100', he said, 'But I had a brainstorm'. 

Davis said, 'I was just sitting in my chair, waiting for the crowd to applaud as Willie cleared the table. If he had won that frame, it would have finished 16-8 to him'. 

Davis took that crucial frame to make it 13-9, and slowly clawed back the deficit. He won it 16-14 , and as he lifted the second most prestigious trophy in the game, there were actually boos from the crowd inside the Guild Hall.

'People don't like someone who looks arrogant and wins all the time', Davis said. 'The more they boo me, the harder I get'.

Abuse from the crowd was something Gary Lineker was getting used to that season - from Liverpool fans at least. They had a special chant for him - suggesting that he and Willie Thorne were more than just friends. It wouldn't have bothered Gary - and he had a pretty emphatic answer anyway. When Everton went to Anfield that season, he scored in front of the Kop to seal a 2-0 victory. Shortly after that came World Cup glory and the move to Barcelona.

It wasn't quite the same for Willie Thorne.  After that collapse in Preston, he never won another big title in his career.

2) If you stand outside the main entrance to the Guild Hall and look across the road you'll see Preston Crown Court. It was here in 1895 that one of the most sensational trials in the history of English football took place.

We need a bit of background first. I'm not sure yet whether, if we win at Preston, we'll be presented with the trophy after the game. Perhaps it'll be held over until the Blackburn game. Either way, Jamie Vardy looks like getting his hands on that historic piece of silverware pretty soon. 

It's the trophy that used to be presented to the true Champions of England - the winners of the First Division. That is, until the Premier League was set up in 1992. That trophy was the idea of Mr. William Sudell, manager of Preston North End in the early days of the Football League. Preston were champions in the first two seasons, and Sudell thought the best team in the land ought to receive some tangible recognition of their success. The Football League agreed, and so from the following season, 1890/91, the champions received that beautiful trophy.

Preston came very close to a third title on the trot, but Everton pipped them on the line - and so became the first team to receive the pot. Preston kept trying and trying - but they were fated never to win the League again. Quite an irony.

Sudell was desperate to get his hands on what he may have considered 'his' trophy, and went to extraordinary lengths to do so. In 1895 it became clear just what he'd been up to. He was the manager of the John Goodair cotton mills, and in that position, huge quantities of cash passed through his hands. Sudell embezzled large amounts of that money to pay for expensive signings for Preston North End, and to cover their wages. 

Sudell appeared at Preston Quarterly Sessions on April 10th 1895. In court, 'he appeared to feel his position most keenly, keeping his face hidden in his hands'. He was charged with embezzling over 5,000 pounds - a huge sum at the time, ten years before the first four figure transfer fee. The prosecution said 'No doubt the prisoner will call witnesses to his character. But they are all good characters until they are found out'. He was found guilty,  handed a three -year jail term, and was 'greatly affected by the evidently unexpected severity of the sentence'.

3)  A quiz question:  In his career with Leicester, Everton, Barcelona, Spurs, Nagoya Grampus Eight and England, which manager did Gary Lineker play most games for? The answer is Gordon Milne. And he is the subject of two fascinating locations very close to Deepdale. The first is the tennis courts on Moor Park, just over the road from the ground. It was there, in the mid-1950s, that Milne was enjoying a knock-about with teammate David Kerry. Gordon takes up the story:

We were playing tennis one night - two young footballers so we think we’re the bees’ knees, poncing around. We saw these two girls playing on another court, and as you do, we were having a look and saying ‘They look alright!’ and their names were Edith and Barbara. It led to two weddings. David and Barbara were still together until a few years ago when he sadly passed away. 

You can see the courts here:

And top right on that map, between the ground and the church,  is another key location in the Milne story. His father Jimmy was a Preston player, and Gordon was brought up in a house owned by the club. In a similar house on the opposite side of the road lived his teammate Bill Shankly. When Gordon was just a toddler, Shankly used to play with him in the street. Jimmy later told Gordon that Shankly would look out of his front room window to check when the young lad came out to play, so he could rush out and join him.

The Milne house is marked on the map below. It's 6, Lowthorpe Road, with Shankly's house directly opposite:

Two decades after those kickabouts in the street, Shankly signed Gordon for Liverpool, and together they helped the Reds to lift Sudell's trophy - the one that, all being well, we'll be lifting shortly:

4) Heading For The Last Round-Up

Of all these places,  Fishergate, the main street in the centre of Preston, would be my personal choice for a blue plaque, though that's down to a fascination I have with chants and songs of bygone eras.

It's incredibly difficult to find details of what fans used to sing on the terraces in pre-war days. But we know that there was vocal backing, because newspaper reports quite often make reference to it. What is so frustrating is that those reports very rarely tell us details of what was being sung. 

One exception was  March 3rd 1934, when Leicester City traveled to Preston and did somethig they'd never done before - win an FA Cup Quarter-Final.  Arthur Chandler, aged 38, hooked in the winning goal and Leicester fans could be seen celebrating all the way back to Preston Station.  The Lancashire Evening Post's reporter told us how, on Fishergate near the station, he heard fans singing:

Get along Leicester City, get along Leicester City, get along Leicester City, get along.

I'm heading for the last round-up. 

The Last Round-Up was the big hit of the year, and the line 'heading for the last round-up' could easily be taken as a 'Journey to Wembley' reference. That interpretation quickly caught on, and led to headlines like this:

The real lyrics are:

Get along little doggie, get along little doggie, get along little doggie, get along

I'n heading for the last round-up

It seems to have become our song that year, for two reasons.

a) Of the four clubs in the semi-finals, we were the only one that had never reached that stage before. Cup fever in Leicester was greater than anywhere else. 

b) The words 'little doggie' can be so easily changed to 'Leicester City'.

So, the places covered so far form a trail from the station to Deepdale. But there is an alternative route to the ground which takes in a whole different set of locations.

5)   Seven Different Places - All In Preston

It so nearly happened. When the Football League were looking to find new headquarters in the late 1950s, they had their eyes on a place in Leicester. But the move fell through (I haven't been able to establish exactly which place they were after). They ended up instead in Lytham St. Annes.

From 1902 to 1959, the home of the greatest League in the world was Preston.  Not always at the same place, mind. You can see on this map the SEVEN different locations, with Deepdale visible top right:

They are, in chronological order: 

Notice how you can't see a white circle on a white background!

They're all pretty much in a line on that map, aren't they? With Deepdale at the end. And if any of you follow that route, perhaps you could check something out for me. For despite the Football League being one of the truly great ideas of Victorian Britain - one that has spread round the world, and led to the current situaiton in which the Premier League is the most popular sports league on the planet - as far as I know, there is not a single blue plaque at any of those seven locations. 

In Preston you can see such plaques for Dick Kerr's Ladies Team, and for Arthur Wharton, the first black player in the Football League, both of which are fully merited. But for the League itself? Nothing. How bizarre.

There are two additional places to mention, and you'll see both of these at the ground itself. 

Make sure you have a look at the Tom Finney statue, based on this famous photo:

It was taken at Stamford Bridge on August 25th 1956, in a game Preston lost 1-0. That was the game in which manager Jimmy Milne asked Finney to switch to centre-forward, a move that had huge repurcussions. It was from that central striking position that Finney led Preston on a glorious charge up the table that so nearly brought Sudell's trophy to Deepdale for the first time. In the end they couldn't quite overhaul the Busby Babes.

The other thing to appreciate is the ground itself - best viewed from over the road on the park. The story behind the modern Deepdale is fascinating. 

It started in the unlikely surroundings of a Manchester-based design consultancy, where lifelong Preston fan and graphics designer Ben Casey had been studying the 1990 World Cup stadiums in Italy. Frustrated by what he considered to be the dull designs being carried out post-Taylor report by most British clubs, he idly started sketching his own ideas of how Deepdale might be developed, based on the stunning Luigi Ferraris Stadium in Genoa. 

Casey then learned that Preston had not drawn up any of their own plans, and so humbly presented his. 

(from Simon Inglis, Football Grounds of Great Britain).

This is the Luigi Ferraris:

I wish I could be there tomorrow night.  I'd love it if you could take a few selfies at some of these places and put them on here.

The Clock Tower is a great place for a celebration. If you're there today, have a look around. Those buildings tell a lot of stories about the history of our club. 

Look at this this photo from the 2016 parade. Let's start with the three buildings marked:

1) First the one on the right. You can see below that it used to be called the 'East Gates Coffee House'. In the early days of Leicester Fosse it was, in effect, the headquarters of the club:

Back in the 1880s when Leicester Fosse played on Victoria Park there were, of course, no buildings at that site that belonged to the club. We were simply allocated an area of the park each week and we got on with it in front of a few dozen spectators, usually at the same time as a much larger crowd watched a rugby game on a neighbouring pitch.  

The place where club members sat down to discuss selection and tactics was that coffee house by the Clock Tower. There would have been crisis meetings there too. There were times in those early days when the future of the club was in doubt, due to the lack of interest from local people and the difficulty in attracting players. But thankfully, they always found a way to keep the club going. 

2) Next, the building just to the left.  It's now the entrance to Highcross, but back in the 1930s, a new music and furniture store called Kingstone's opened there:

It's not the clearest photo, and if anyone knows of a better one, please post it below. 

The mid-1930s was boom time for music stores, with the new gramophones taking off and sales of radios and records rocketing. There was fierce competition in the city centre, and the opening of Kingstone would not have been welcomed by Mr. Arthur Lochhead, manager of a music shop on nearby Loseby Lane. Lochhead was not in the shop every day becauase he had another job - he played inside-left for Leicester City.  Later, after the death of Peter Hodge, he took over as boss at Filbert Street. The directors thought his experience running the shop would stand him in good stead.

When Kingstone opened, their Managing Director Charles Keene decided to get some extra publicity by arranging an instore appearance by a famous musician from America who was touring the UK. In February 1934, the tour arrived in Leicester. Jazz lovers packed out the Opera House in Silver Street, less than 50 yards from Kingstone, to see the sensational Louis Armstrong.

He played the Opera House for six nights, and as you can see, one afternoon that week he was at the store to sign autographs and do a 'record recital'. What does that mean? Did he just play some of his recent records? Did he sing along to them?  Did he sing live without the records?  Did he have his trumpet with him? I'm not sure. But what we do know is that one of his recent hits was a track called 'When You're Smiling'. Whether he performed it or not at Kingstone, it's very likely he performed it every night on stage.

What a time to be alive. The man who's been called 'the most important musician of the 20th century' blasting out an early version of our song right in the centre of town. And on the day he first took the stage at the Opera House, the draw for the FA Cup Quarter-Finals gave Leicester City an away tie at Preston. We had never got beyond this stage before - but we won at Deepdale to take us into the semi-finals for the first time.

Louis Armstrong came back to Leicester twice after the War, and in 1959 we know for sure that 'When You're Smiling' was in his set. You might recall our old friend Bernie Henson trying to get Louis' autograph at the De Montfort Hall that night:

3) Now let's go back to the photo from 2016 and have a look at the building marked on the left:

Leicester City fans used to spend a lot of time in that building, or to be precise, queueing up outside. 

Why? Spot the clue on the wall:

Dean and Dawson's travel agents was the place in the city centre that sold tickets for Leicester City, and before FA Cup matches like those in 1934, this would be the scene:

That was before our Fourth Round replay against Brentford in 1948. 

4)  If jazz was the in-thing in the 1930s,  in the 1950s it was another import from America.

We know the precise moment that Rock'n' Roll mania hit Leicester. It was September 4th 1956. That evening, the film Rock Around The Clock was being shown at the Gaumont in the Market Place, and after reports of riotous scenes at showings in London, police were actually stationed inside the cinema. 

But that didn't stop people. As the Evening Mail reported, 'Teenagers crocodiled down the aisles, and several times the soundtrack was stopped to prevent the patrons getting out of control'. Then after the film 'they crocodiled round the Clock Tower'.

In the days that followed there was pantomime outrage in the local papers, with calls to ban not just the film but all rock'n'roll music. 

Something else was just beginning at that time - Leicester City's surge up the Second Division that took us to the top of the table, and ultimately the title.  Those two timelines of excitement - in music and football - went totally hand in hand that season, with the hits of the day being transformed into terrace anthems. That promotion story will be told in detail in a forthcoming thread.

5)  On the Clock Tower itself, looking down disapprovingly on those out of control teenagers in 1956, were the following:

a) Alderman Newton, whose money helped set up the school in St. Martins under the playground of which King Richard III's body was discovered.  

b) Simon de Montfort,  whose Hall we mentioned above.

c)  William Wyggeston -  most of those early Fosse members who met at East Gates Coffee House were former pupils of the school that took his name.

d)  Thomas White, known as a 'civic benefactor';  his money helping out a number of local organizations. Which puts him in the same bracket as...

6)  If the players on the balcony this afternoon look down to the left, they'll see the sporting statue. The story behind its installation is pretty familiar. Leicestershire won the County Championship in 1996, then the following year we won the League Cup and Tigers won the Pilkington Cup. 

Does anyone know if the City player was based on anyone? Or is it just a generic footballer?

It was Steve Claridge's goal in the replay that won us the Cup, four days after a 1-1 draw at Wembley. That match was a milestone in the life of Vichai Raksriaksorn, as he was then known. It was the first time he'd watched a football match in England. After that, well, he had that dream.

Please add any other Clock Tower related stories. There must be others.

It's all going so well, isn't it. Carry on like this and we'll break all the records, surpassing even 1956/57 and 2013/14, those other seasons when we cruised to promotion. But don't be surprised if it isn't quite that simple. For Leicester, promotion seasons are often less of a cruise, more of a rollercoaster.

Martin O'Neill has never forgotten the darkest hour of his promotion season, March 30th 1996 . 'The crowd became very restive', he quipped recently, 'in fact, more than restive - they were downright unaccommodating. It's a tale you're no doubt familiar with.

There's a similar story a bit further back in history. January 22nd 1983 - a date Gordon Milne has probably never forgotten. Given the circumstances, his eventual triumph was even more impressive than O'Neill's. But this is a story no-one knows - at least, not in any detail.  Because it's never been told before.

Time to put that right.

Not My Gaffer

Gordon Milne arrived in August 1982 after Jock Wallace suddenly quit, accepting a lucrative offer from Motherwell. Wallace's departure was a real shock - for the fans, who loved him, for the players, who would run through brick walls for him, and for the board of directors, who'd offered him an unprecedented seven year contract (only two years of which had been completed).

The contrast with Wallace handicapped Milne from the start. No City manager had ever had the rapport with the fans that Big Jock enjoyed. The team played with the 'battle fever' mentality he demanded - none more so than his fellow Scot at centre forward, celebrated in song on the Kop: 'He's here, he's there, he's every ***king-where, Alan Young, Alan Young!.  And that could equally apply to Wallace himself - his personality was stamped over every corner of the club, on and off the field.

Milne's style was very different. The fans took time to get to know him -  and many weren't sure they liked what they saw when they did. Just like Jock, the way Milne's team played reflected his personality. Less direct, more patient, more thoughtful.  After the Wallace years, many found the change hard to accept. It was just like Martin O'Neill in 1995/96, with fans pining for Mark McGhee, though in that case it was precisely the opposite form of nostalgia, with O'Neill's direct style seeming like a backwards step after McGhee's possession-based approach.

Another problem for Milne was his CV. He'd spent the previous ten years at Coventry City. Fans were wary of a man so steeped in Sky Blue - and that was before the season started. 

When the action began, all these points came together in a perfect storm.

First, Jock Wallace's key men departed. When you've been playing for a manager you respect so much, it can feel like a betrayal to suddenly switch your loyalties. Alan Young left for Sheffield United, saying he simply 'couldn't accept Milne as gaffer' (similar again to 95/96, when Steve Corica told Martin O'Neill that he wanted to go to Wolves because of how much he 'respected Mr. McGhee'.  

Next to quit was Jim Melrose, Wallace's other big money signing. This was the moment when things really started going wrong, so let's look at what happened in some detail:

Melrose and English 

City were lying ninth in Division Two on September 14th when it happened. This was the Coventry Evening Telegraph that day:

And this was the Mercury the same day:

Yes - an M69 swap. Melrose, hugely popular at Filbert Street, exchanged for Tommy English, a man whose relationship with Coventry fans could not be described in similar terms. Leicester fans suspected they'd got the worst of the deal, but Milne said everything would be OK. He promised that English, the man he'd developed at Highfield Road, would score more goals than Melrose.

Let's see how that went.

Melrose had a sensational home debut for Coventry, scoring a hattrick against Everton. Leicester were at home to QPR that day, with English in the side. We lost 1-0 - already our third home defeat of the season. News of the hattrick spread round the terraces, and the chant began: 'One Jim Melrose! There's only one Jim Melrose! One Jim Melrose! There's only one Jim Melrose!'

Milne must have loved that. And if that wasn't enough, the next roar from Pen 3 was: 'Jock Wall - ace!  Jock Wall - ace!'. 

The following week, Melrose scored again at Maine Road, while English was yet to get off the mark. That was followed four days later by a Melrose double in the League Cup at Fulham, while we were losing 2-0 at Lincoln City. 

The Coventry Evening Telegraph again:

So the score so far was Melrose 6 English 0.  'The worst fears of Leicester City fans over the Melrose-English swap are starting to come true', said the report. Melrose then decided to put the boot in: 'Gordon Milne must wince every time he reads the papers these days', he said.

Two weeks later, Milne signed Jimmy Holmes on loan. He was another ex-Coventry man. He made his debut at left back in a 2-0  home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday. The following week, it was Holmes' disastrous back pass that led to Cambridge United's clincher in a 3-1 win at Abbey Stadium. That was the last we saw of Jimmy Holmes - he never played for us again.

In early December, the team of the season (so far) arrived at Filbert Street - Fulham, managed by 'Supermac' - Malcolm Macdonald. They were second, behind QPR, and if they won their game in hand they'd go top. We were way down in 15th place. The idea that we could finish the season above them would have seemed ludicrously fanciful. 

Fulham were playing great football, never more so than in a devastating 4-1 win at St. James Park, a very special day for old Geordie hero Macdonald.

Watch the first 90 seconds of this video and see how impressively they tear Newcastle to shreds in the first half with a three goal burst:

Macdonald was only 32. He'd had to quit the game early due to injury, but now he was back in the limelight. The day before the game at Filbert Street, he signed a lucrative deal to write a weekly column for the Daily Mirror:

Looks pretty confident, doesn't he? With Fulham flying high, perhaps it was justified. But the season wasn't even half over yet.

The game at Filbert Street was still goalless with time running out when our season was rescued - by a divot.

A header from Alan Smith was about to be collected comfortably on the bounce by Fulham keeper Gerry Peyton. But the ball didn't bounce. It hit a divot and shot forward, rebounding off Peyton's shins to give David Buchanan the chance to put City ahead. 'The ball hit a hole and shot along the ground', Macdonald lamented afterwards. We then added another and Fulham's great run was over.

You can see that divot here - just to the right of Peyton:

And you can see the goal here:

Our second goal that day was scored by Gary Lineker. With Young and Melrose gone, he was developing a new striking partnership with Alan Smith, Wallace's last signing. Lineker had actually been dropped after a lack lustre performance in Milne's very first game (another home defeat - to Charlton), but he was now hitting form.

We followed up that Fulham win with two more, and there was talk of us getting back in the promotion race.

But then came January, and the darkest hours of Milne's reign at Leicester. To introduce what happened, let's take a short detour - on to the motorway that lies at the heart of this whole story:

The M69

Gordon Milne could be forgiven for thinking that the M69 had been planned and constructed entirely for his own personal convenience. When he became Coventry manager in 1972, he had a house built in Burbage, midway between Coventry and Leicester, and when the Sky Blues weren't playing he loved to watch games at Filbert Street, long before he took over as our boss. His route would take him along the A46 - part of the old Fosse Way. Milne was no doubt aware of the link to the origins of the club. 

In 1976, that journey was made easier when the first section of the M69 was opened - rolled out like a red carpet between the M1 and Burbage, very close to his house. Six months later, the second section opened - from Burbage to Ansty near Coventry -  and his daily commute was now so much more straight forward.

When he joined Leicester he joked that a 13 mile trip one way had now become a 13 mile trip in the opposite direction. 

That brings us to events late at night on Thursday, January 5th, 1983.

As is so often the case when calamity strikes, you can only fully understand what happened by looking at a whole chain of events.

This particular sequence started eight months earlier - at the biggest game of Jock Wallace's time at Leicester, the FA Cup Semi-Final against Spurs at Villa Park. Everything went wrong that day - players off form, Ian Wilson's own goal, and not least, Tommy Williams breaking his right leg in a challenge with Tony Galvin. 

It wasn't until December, just after that Fulham game, that Williams was ready to return to first team action. But then tragedy struck again. On the morning of January 6th during a routine training session, Williams was tackled by Dave Buchanan, and broke the same leg again. Buchanan's challenge was described as 'run-of-the-mill'. The injury was apparently a freak accident. But that was little consolation for Williams. He'd played just four games since coming back, and now it looked like his season was over.

'It's a terrible blow', said Milne, 'I'm so sorry for the lad'. 

Milne decided to offer more than just words of consolation. That evening, along with Commercial Manager Peter Hill, he drove round to Williams' house with a bottle of champagne.  The three shared the bottle between them, after which Milne headed down the M69 to his Burbage home. 

It was a freezing night, and around midnight, about four miles from home, Milne lost control of his Mercedes on the icy surface and skidded onto the embankment, the car striking a marker post and coming to rest in the snow. 

Milne got out of the car and a passing motorist, a Mr. Wilf Goss, stopped to assist him, giving him a lift the short journey home to Burbage.

Shortly afterwards, a police motorway control car passed the scene of the crash. PC Peter Jefferies, on finding the abandoned Mercedes, checked the number plate and phoned though to the national computer centre, who told him the owner's details. Jefferies then drove to Milne's Burbage address.

Milne at first denied that he'd been driving the car, and wouldn't say who had been. He refused to take a breathalyser test. PC Jefferies tried to arrest him, but Milne resisted, at which point Jefferies called for support. After what reports described as 'a struggle', Milne was placed in a police car and taken back down the M69 to Wigston Police Station, passing his abandoned Mercedes on the opposite carriageway along the way. At Wigston he gave a sample which revealed 182 milligrams of alcohol in 100 ml of blood - more than twice the legal limit of 80mg.

It's unclear what time he got home that night, or how he got into work the next morning. But when he did arrive he had a big decision to make. Who would replace Williams at left back in the FA Cup tie at home to Notts County the following day? Paul Friar was the obvious choice, having already played in 20 games that season, but Milne sprang a surprise by giving a debut to 18 year old Paul Brown. 

When the game started, County raced into a three goal lead, and two very late goals in reply couldn't disguise the reality of an easy win for the Magpies. He couldn't be singled out for blame any more than his teammates, but Brown never played for the club again.

We could now concentrate on the League. But the following week we lost at Charlton, and it looked like the season was already over. 

Was Milne regretting his move to Leicester? He had been in the job six months. From his own fans there was suspicion, verging on hostility. From ex-players there was rejection (Young) and ridicule (Melrose). And from the law there now came a summons to appear before Hinckley magistrates. The threat of a conviction for drink driving would hang over the remainder of the season.

And that wasn't all. Perhaps the biggest obstacle Milne had to overcome that season was financial. While other Division Two clubs made extravagant signings (witness the extraordinary arrival of two recent European Footballer of the Year Winners - Kevin Keegan at Newcastle and Allan Simonsen at Charlton), Leicester City didn't have two pennies to rub together.  When he took over, the board made the situation plain. There was no money to spend, and even if he sold players, the proceeds would go towards running costs. His main task, he was told, was to address 'the gross over-staffing at the club'. He had to make drastic cuts to the squad. 

Drastic cuts. Two words that sum up the economy of the UK in the early 80s. Drastic cuts that led to a deep recession, and soaring unemployment. The new figures had just been released - an unbelievable 3.1 million people were now out of work. 

Throughout January, the BBC was showing the Alan Bleasdale drama 'Boys From The Blackstuff', which told of the impact of unemployment on the people of Liverpool - including Yosser 'Giz a Job' Hughes. But it wasn't just in the north that unemployment was devastating communities. In mid-January, right here in M69 country, the anger was plain to see. And it was here that the two narratives converged, political controversy providing an illuminating counterpoint to events at Filbert Street.

It was two days before the Leicester v Blackburn game, the low point of the season. Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit,  'Thatcher's skinhead' as some called him, was visiting the Jaguar car plant in Coventry. That was the plan anyway. When news of his visit spread, the entire workforce of 3,000 threatened to come out on strike if Tebbit set foot inside the building. Union leader Bob Ainsworth said, 'Nearly everyone here has a friend or relative who has been put on the dole by Tory policies'. Tebbit was forced to change his plans. 

The following day, Friday, Tebbit headed up the motorway to Leicester. He visited an IT centre at the Magazine Workspace in Newarke Street, and there were protests here too. 60 people broke through a police cordon, and Tebbit was jostled and jeered outside the centre. Inside, 'trainees had lined the walls with posters conveying anti-government slogans'.

There were more protests in Leicester the following day - but this time the location was Filbert Street, and the source of anger was the austerity regime at the club. Milne had successfully addressed the 'gross over-staffing'. The big wage earners had gone, with not a penny spent on replacements. And just look at the results. We were out of the Cup, and seemingly out of the promotion race. In the Mercury, the club's policy was described as 'reminiscent of Thatcher's miserly monetarism''.

That afternoon, patience finally ran out, discontent spilled over and things turned ugly.

It started twenty minutes before kick-off. Tommy English hadn't played for two months, having been dropped in November. But when the team line-ups were announced, English was back as substitute. The news was greeted with a massive chorus of boos.

Blackburn took the lead after ten minutes, then City spent 80 minutes striving in vain for an equaliser, as the atmosphere inside the ground deteriorated. The 'Jim Melrose' chant was back, followed again by calls for Jock Wallace. When English came off the bench there were more boos, but the man who bore the brunt of the criticism, reported Bill Anderson in the Mercury, was Gordon Milne. 

That was it, surely. At the very moment Blackburn went ahead at Filbert Street, Robert Wilson scored for Fulham at Craven Cottage against Middlesbrough, and they too held on for 80 minutes to collect three crucial points. That left them out of sight of the chasing pack, eleven points ahead of fifth-placed Leicester in the race for the third promotion spot (for comparison, when O'Neill's side lost at home to Sheffield United in 1996, we were still just two points off a play-off place).

What could Gordon Milne do now? 

What he did was hold his nerve, and trust his judgement. 

With no cash in the kitty, he knew that if he wanted a new face it would have to be a loan signing. The man he had his eye on was another Sky Blue - midfielder Gerry Daly, the stylish Irish international who'd made his name at Old Trafford. But how would the fans react? After the disastrous moves for Tommy English and Jimmy Holmes, surely a third ex-Coventry man was too much to stomach. 

But three days after the Blackburn defeat, Daly arrived on a one-month loan deal. Milne said: There may be some reaction because I have taken another Coventry player, but I don’t care about that. All that matters is that this move is for the benefit of Leicester City.

That's club captain Eddie Kelly on the left, welcoming Daly to the club at the Belvoir Drive training ground. Kelly didn't know it but he had already played his last game for Leicester. Daly was the man who took his place.

It was here, at the low point of the season, that hope was kept alive by the precedent set the previous season.  Strangely enough, the man who set that precedent was none other than Martin O'Neill, the man who, a decade later, would follow Milne's blueprint and snatch promotion from the jaws of adversity. In February 1982, Norwich City had been even further off the pace in the promotion race, but when O'Neill joined from Man City, he inspired a thrilling surge that saw them clinch promotion on the final day. That was the first season of three points for a win, and teams now realised that if you could put a run together you could shoot up the table. If Norwich could do it, Milne thought, so can we. 

We're Not Nervous

Gerry Daly's impact was instantaneous. We won 1-0 at Carlisle, though Fulham won too. The following week, with Larry May sent off at Grimsby, we fell to another defeat, and were now twelve behind Fulham. 

Then on February 26th it all suddenly clicked against leaders Wolves. With Daly starring in midfield, and English finally finding a role on the left of midfield, we put on a show that rivaled Fulham's win at Newcastle as the Division Two performance of the season:

Fulham's return game against Newcastle was the same day, and they dropped two points in a 2-2 draw. The gap was now 10 points.

The following week Milne received confirmation of his pending court appearance on a drink-driving charge, but if he was worried about that, he didn't let it show. We kept picking up points and Fulham started dropping them - losing at Oldham and then Cambridge on a night when a crucial late header from John O'Neill gave us a 1-0 win over Middlesbrough (the electrifying effect of that moment was similar to Kevin Russell's late winner against Tranmere in 1992). After the game, O'Neill said he'd heard Macdonald on TV at the weekend claiming Leicester had no chance of catching them. But now we were just two behind, though we'd played a game more.

Once more Macdonald tried to shrug it off, saying 'Leicester have to go to QPR next so we'll be five ahead again'. Rangers were vying with Wolves for the title and seemed invincible on the plastic pitch at Loftus Road, but two Lineker goals gave us a 2-2 draw, and though Fulham beat Charlton, the gap was not five, but four. Macdonald's comments were becoming a factor in the psychological battle. Every week he had to fill those column inches in the Daily Mirror, and you know what they say - 'give 'em enough rope...'  He was also providing the Mirror with numerous 'wacky' photo opportunities, such as this, which had appeared on Christmas Eve:

It was certainly a Christmas present - an absolute gift, just asking to be pinned on a rival team's dressing room wall and used as a dart board.

While Gordon Milne retained a steely determination, saying exactly the right thing at every stage of the run-in, Macdonald's pronouncements were becoming a liability. Asked again about the pressure of Leicester chasing them, he said, 'People are trying to create something that isn't there. We are not nervous'. 

Macdoanld pictured in April as the pressure builds up.

On April 16th, with Daly's loan extended to the end of the season, Lineker got two more in a 3-1 home win over Rotherham - that was nine in ten games for him. At Elland Road that day a young striker called Tommy Wright scored to deprive Fulham of victory, and the gap was back to two, though we had still played a game more. In midweek, Fulham won their game in hand against Barnsley to go five clear with five to play. We knew we needed a result the following Saturday - at Craven Cottage.

In the recent thread about the 1991/92 season (let's call it retrospectively The Promotion Files #1), you might recall mention of the Charlton away game being 'our biggest ever away following for a League game in London'. Well, it wasn't by much - we'd taken similar numbers to the Orient title decider in 1980 -  and to Fulham for this game on April 23rd 1983. 

These wonderful extended highlights of the game (uploaded only a few months ago) show just how dominant we were that day. If you don't have time to watch the whole 20 minutes, head for 13.30 in the video to see the key moment:

One thing I love about that footage is the Milne interview after the game. There's one key line; in fact, one key word:

'Inevitably, one of them's going to crack'.

There it is. That single word encapsulates the whole three-month period of hunting them down and reeling them in, and reveals the ruthless streak in Milne's character that underpinned it.

He explained after that game how the team had evolved: Larry May got himself suspended and Kevin Macdonald (switched from midfield) brought a new dimension to the defence. Gerry Daly arrived and so Tommy English moved across to the left side.

That led to this classic line-up:

Mark Wallington

Paul Ramsey

John O'Neill

Kevin Macdonald

Bobby Smith   (switched to left back in January after Friar / Williams / Brown has been tried)

Ian Wilson

Gerry Daly 

Tommy English

Steve Lynex 

Alan Smith 

Gary Lineker

I Fought The Law - And I Won

A week later at Hinckley Magistrates Court, Milne finally had the opportunity to give his version of what happened late at night on January 6th. It wasn't alcohol that had caused the crash. He'd had an emotional day, with the Tommy Williams injury, and a momentary lapse of concentration on an icy road led to him losing control of his Mercedes. He was asked about the result of the blood test, which had revealed over twice the legal amount of alcohol.  Supported by his wife Edith's evidence, he explained how, when he finally made it back to his Burbage home, she realised how shaken he was and gave him a glass of brandy. He'd then had several glasses more. What about the champagne he'd taken to Williams' house earlier that evening? He'd only had one glass. When he drove home, he was sober. 

The prosecution tried to prove otherwise, but they couldn't. The magistrates dismissed the case.

Milne was perhaps fortunate that he wasn't working in the age of social media. You can imagine what would happen nowadays. He was no doubt thankful too that the media in Leicester played down the whole episode from start to finish. The Mercury could hardly be accused of sensationalistic journalism - on the day of the trial, their rather dry headline was 'Case Against City Manager Dismissed', above a brief report buried at the bottom of page one, almost asking to be ignored.

A different editor might have considered it a more important news item - worthy of the top story perhaps, with a punchier headline in large type, and a fuller account of proceedings, accompanied by a photo of the accused arriving at the court.

Just like this:

Milne left court that Thursday an innocent man. But like four months earlier following the original arrest, he now had a big decision to make about the crucial game on Saturday. Gary Lineker was injured, and would miss the last two games. Who would Milne choose to replace him at Oldham? Back in January he'd made that surprise decision to include young Paul Brown, which had backfired. Now he made an equally bold choice, bringing in Robert Jones for his debut.  'I know it's a huge risk but I must back my judgement', he said. 

I don't know what's more impressive here, the action on the pitch or the scenes behind the goal:

Milne once again staying cool there after the game.

The following week was just as he predicted - Burnley were hard to beat, but the point was enough to take us up, with Fulham losing at Derby. There'll be more detail about events that day below, but the key thing was - we'd done it. A monumental achievement for a young squad, and most of all for the man who'd come through the hard times to taste glory at the finish. 

This was the magnificent 15 game unbeaten run from February to the end of the season:

That's from wikipedia. You'll notice Robert Jones' name is in a different colour. Yes - the man who played such a key role in the climax to that historic season does not have a wikipedia page.

At season's end came this wonderful tribute from David Welch, Sports Editor of the Mercury (a man about whom I know nothing, though I wish it were otherwise - this is one of the best things I've ever read in that paper):

It's time soccer managers took a back seat. Last weekend we were confronted with pictures of one Cup Final manager, Brighton's Jimmy Melia, surrounded by models in lingerie, and another, Ron Atkinson of Manchester United, perched on the bonnet of a sports car. I had an overwhelming feeling that we should be seeing players, not managers, in those situations. Managers in the past didn't need to have the spotlight turned on them like today's 'larger-than-life' brigade.

Every so often, however, a manager overcomes the odds to such an extent that he deserves every bit of praise and publicity he receives. So much more so, of course,  if he seeks neither.  And that, I believe, is the situation this year with Leicester City and Gordon Milne.

Set against a backcloth of severe financial restrictions, necessary team pruning, and falling attendances, Milne has produced a team which has proved capable of gaining promotion. 

He came in, almost apologetically, to replace the more brash and exuberant Jock Wallace, and quickly had to withstand criticism from loyal Wallace fans during a disappointing start to the season when he seemed more concerned with cutting the wage-bill (and his own resources) by transferring Wallace's costliest buys.

Admirably resisting the temptation to hit back, Milne won over the players, and with a quiet confidence, began rebuilding a side not exactly full of heart after the shock, and demoralising exit of Wallace last summer.

The side soon played its part by displaying magnificent team spirit and commitment but, whereas his predecessor often found that the quality to be most admired, Milne himself appeared, rightly, to take it for granted. Commitment is the very least supporters can expect of a team, and that's largely what enabled them to gradually reduce Fulham's lead in the promotion race.

That, allied to no small amount of skill, has taken the side back where they belong.

Let's imagine Leicester City history as a row of books lined up in order on a shelf - the book of Pearson, the book of Ranieri etc - one for each of the 42 men who've managed the club (some volumes a lot thicker than others).

Right in the middle, the book of Wallace sits next to the book of Milne. I'm fascinated by the contrast between these two. It's partly because the years they were in charge - 1978-1982 and 1982-1986,  were my formative years as a City fan. And it's partly because each represents a classic managerial archetype - one loud and passionate, demanding that his players play the same way; the other quiet and thoughtful, encouraging a more patient approach  (many clubs, as well as the England national team, have often swung back and forth repeatedly between those two poles, each new manager compensating for the perceived inadequacies of the former).

Despite their differences, Wallace and Milne have something very important in common - something none of those other 40 Leicester managers can boast. Their fathers each had a long and distinguished career in the game - Jock Wallace Senior and Jimmy Milne.

By following either of those father-and-son stories you can trace a history of British football in the twentieth century. But if you place the two stories side by side, it starts to get a bit kaleidoscopic. To describe that in detail would require a volume much thicker than we have room for here. So let's have a rapid-fire review of  the highlights.

The East Coast of Scotland, 1911

 In the early months of 1911, the fathers of two future Leicester City managers arrived. On January 24th 1911,  James Low Milne was born in Dundee. On April 13th, John Martin Wallace was born in Edinburgh. Just 62 miles and 79 days separated the two events. But as their lives developed, they would be brought even closer together.

Flower of Scotland

Both spent their childhoods doing what almost all boys in Scotland did back then - kicking a makeshift football round inner city streets and parks at every opportunity. In the late 1920s, Scotland were arguably the strongest football nation in the world. The team known as the 'Wembley Wizards' had pulled off a sensational 5-1 victory over England, and if they had entered the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay, they might well have won it.

As the hosts lifted that trophy in the summer of 1930,  Milne and Wallace were both 19, playing in Scottish Junior football (what the English call 'non-League'). James, known as 'Jimmy' to his teammates, was a right half, John, known as 'Jock', was a goalkeeper. Each was still playing in the city of his birth - Milne for Dundee Violet, Wallace for Wallyford Bluebell in Edinburgh.

Yes - that's really what the teams were called - both named after flowers. It was a tradition in Scotland. There were many teams called  'bluebell' and 'violet', and others were called 'primrose', and of course 'thistle' (it's very difficult to find a definitive explanation for this - perhaps foxestalk's Scotland correspondent @Vacamion could offer an opinion?)

In the following season, those young talents would bloom.  Both signed for professional clubs. Jimmy stayed in his home town, joining Dundee United, while Jock left Edinburgh to join the Kirkcaldy-based club Raith Rovers. Now the distance between them halved - they were just 30 miles apart.

The proximity was not just geographical. Both clubs were in Scottish Division Two, and on February 14th 1931, their paths crossed for the first time. The match was at Stark's Park, and it finished Raith Rovers 0 Dundee United 0. You can see the team line-ups here:

Both would soon be heading for England. Milne signed for Preston North End in October 1932, and the following season Jock joined Blackpool. Despite their long journeys south of the border, they ended up even closer together. Now they were separated by less than twenty Lancashire miles, though Preston were in Division One and Blackpool in Division Two. The next time their paths crossed on the football field, both had become fathers.

This is where the biggest difference in the two stories appears. Jock Sr dreamed of playing for Scotland, and he had the same ambition for his son. He made sure his wife was back in Scotland for the birth so he would be eligible (the rules were strict back then). Jimmy Milne also aspired to international honours, but he was happy for his children to be born in England. The significance of that would become apparent three decades later.

Jock Wallace Jr was born on September 6th 1935 - in Edinburgh, Gordon Milne on March 29th 1937 - in Preston. Here's the Wallaces:

We don't have a similar picture of the Milnes. Not yet anyway. When Gordon's book is released next week there's a good chance we may get one - the title is 'Shankly, My Dad and Me'. 

'Shankly' is Bill, of course - he was playing alongside Jimmy Milne in the Preston half back line. They were both in the side that faced Blackpool in October 1938, after the Tangerines had been promoted to the top flight.  That was the game when our two main characters appeared not just in the same match,  but also in the same cartoon.  Preston's goal was scored by Milne himself - past Wallace - a half back doing what the forwards had failed to do - at least that was the angle taken by the Lancashire Evening Post:

Like Father, Like Son

This is where the screen goes all woozy and we cross-fade to a scene 22 years into the future, with Wallace and Milne on opposing sides again. Wallace is still in goal, Milne is still at right half. Only this is the next generation.

It's January  2nd 1960, West Brom v Preston, and the only time Jock Jr and Gordon Milne faced each other on the football field. Jock was 24 but Albion were already the fifth team he'd played for. Gordon was still with his first club - and father Jimmy was still at Preston too. After retiring as a player he had become the club's trainer. West Brom won 4-0 that day, and below are the team line-ups. There they are in exactly the same position as in the game 29 years earlier when their fathers first opposed each other:

(Notice also 1950s Leicester hero Derek Hogg at outside left for Albion)

The presence of his father as trainer was a major reason Gordon wanted to get away from Deepdale. His dad was an inspiration, and he loved listening to his stories of football back in the day, but he wanted to be independent, and shortly afterwards came the move that really set him up - Bill Shankly signed him for Liverpool.

League titles and 14 England caps followed (he narrowly missed out on the 1966 World Cup squad). Jock Wallace Jr's later playing career, by contrast, was a disappointment. He never did win the Scotland cap his father hoped for, and he dropped into lower league football.

The two of them then moved into management in the early months of 1970, the stories still running in parallel. In the week his father turned 59, Gordon Milne was appointed player-manager of Wigan Athletic. And in the week his father turned 59, Jock Wallace was appointed assistant manager of Rangers. Jock's official title was 'assistant' but it was one of Glasgow's worst kept secrets that he was really in charge of the first team, with Willie Waddell more of a 'general manager'.  

The most stunning coincidence in the story came next.  Gordon's progress with Wigan was quickly noted by the Football Association, and in 1971 he was appointed manager of the England Youth Team (while continuing as Wigan boss). In May 1972 he tasted real success. With 18 year old Brian Little in the squad, England won the European Youth Championships, the tournament the press confusingly called 'the Little World Cup'. It received a lot of media coverage in those days:

They won the trophy by beating West Germany 2-0 in the Final at the Nou Camp in Barcelona, and as Milne celebrated with his squad, another group of players from the UK arrived in the city. The European Cup Winners Cup Final was due to be played at the same venue two days later - between Dynamo Moscow and Rangers. 

The Gers won 3- 2 - the greatest triumph of Jock's managerial career. It remains the club's only European trophy:

So Gordon Milne and Jock Wallace both led teams to victory in an international tournament for the first and only time - two days apart, in the same Catalonian stadium.

Those triumphs didn't go unrecognised. The following month, Gordon Milne made the massive leap from Northern Premier League to First Division - he was appointed team manager at Coventry City. And Rangers acknowledged the reality of the situation at Ibrox - changing Jock's official job title to 'Manager'. 

The rest we can summarise quickly. The family dramas had run in parallel across two generations, and now the two sons followed each other at Filbert Street. Wallace was appointed Leicester boss in 1978, and he took us up to the First Division two years later - where Gordon Milne's Coventry City were waiting (separated by less than thirty miles again). The Sky Blues did the double over us that season, 1980/81 - so it was Milne 2 Wallace 0 in the managerial stakes. Had those results been reversed, we would have stayed up and Coventry would have gone down. 

A year later the book of Wallace closed, and the book of Milne began...

There ends the dash through 75 years. We've barely scratched the surface. Jock Wallace's own career was featured on here in some detail last year. Gordon Milne deserves the same treatment, for the tale is just as dramatic. That's coming very soon - hopefully coinciding with the publication of his book next week.

I reckon it's Gordon Milne, whose autobiography is just out. The title is 'Shankly, My Dad and Me', which is itself instructive. He had an incredibly distinguished career, but it's Shanks who gets top billing. 

I've been speaking to Gordon this week, and I'll put the results of that interview on here shortly.  As a taster for that, here's a brief run through of the highlights of that amazing career as a player and manager.  After that, a brief chat with Steve Younger, who helped Gordon write the book.

1) England v Brazil, Wembley 1963.

We'll start with his England debut. Let's freeze the action just 12 seconds into the game. Bobby Charlton is in possession wide on the left, and that man with his hands in the air, keen to get his first touch in international football, is Gordon Milne of Liverpool. Bobby decides to give him the ball.

Look at what happened next - his first three touches in an England shirt:

Had the shot gone in, it would have been the most sensational start to any England career.

That was the first England XI chosen by Alf Ramsey. Milne was his type of player - a man who plays for the team, a hard worker (notice how quickly he tried to get back in position when the Brazilian keeper saved that shot), but with the technical ability to perform at the top level. After this impressive debut (it finished 1-1), he became a regular, winning 14 caps in the next year and a half. He must have been dreaming of glory in 1966.

But it didn't happen. Players such as Alan Ball and Martin Peters moved ahead of him, and like Paul Gascoigne in 1998, he suffered the heartbreak of being one of those chosen for the pre-tournament squad but left out of the final 22.

Is it any consolation that he later enjoyed a more successful managerial career than any of the 22 players Ramsey selected?

2)  April 3rd 1974  

Alf Ramsey's last game as England manager finishes in a dull goalless draw in Portugal. What should have been vital preparation for the World Cup Finals in West Germany was in the end just a meaningless friendly. We'd been knocked out in the qualifiers by Poland.  At the end of the month, Ramsey was sacked.

Who would replace him?

The bookies had Coventry boss Milne and Ipswich's Bobby Robson as joint favourites to take over (with Clough fancied to take over at Villa Park). It was later revealed that Milne (but not Robson) was indeed on a shortlist drawn up by the FA - along with Leicester City's Jimmy Bloomfield.  But when Revie threw his hat in the ring, it was he that the FA turned to, and Milne stayed at Highfield Road.

Let's go back and see how his managerial career began, at the start of the 70s:

3)  June 5th 1971

It's the Football League's AGM, and Wigan Athletic are waiting to discover their fate. Milne had taken over at the ambitious non-League club a year earlier, and had already enjoyed spectacular success, taking them to the Northern Premier League title. Their dream was to enter the Football League,  but there was no automatic promotion then. It all depended on the vote at the AGM. The previous season, Bradford Park Avenue had been the first club voted out in a decade - replaced by Cambridge United, who employed a PR company to devise a slick campaign to gather the necessary votes. This year, Wigan decided to employ the same company. 

It all went disastrously wrong.

They had been promised 35 votes, which would have got them in.  But when Len Shipman, Football League President and Chairman of Leicester City, announced the results, there was astonishment from the Wigan party. They received the support of just 14 clubs. What on earth had happened?

Prior to the vote, the PR company had arranged for an expensive Parker pen to be presented to representatives of each of the Football League clubs. According to newspaper reports at the time, this backfired spectacularly, taken as a crass gesture, akin to bribery.  

Gordon Milne was stranded in non-League football. But the following season, success in his other job, manager of the England Youth team, got him his position in the First Division at Coventry (see previous thread about the Wallace/Milne connection).

Here he is at the time of his appointment - not the highest quality photo, but it captures a young, suave and successful Gordon, looking for all the world as though he's about to announce his candidacy for Presidency of the United States,

4) March 28th 1964

Gordon had played for three clubs before taking over at Wigan - Preston, Liverpool and Blackpool. When asked about the most memorable games of that career, he would point to Easter 1964, and a key game at Filbert Street. 

Under Bill Shankly, Liverpool were chasing their first title in almost two decades. Three games in four days, from Good Friday to Easter Monday, would be decisive:

Tottenham (a) April 27th

Leicester (a)  April 28th

Tottenham (h) April 30th

Tottenham were chasing the title too - they didn''t come this close again until 2015/16. Liverpool got a crucial 2-0 win at White Hart Lane, but Gordon Milne picked up an injury and was doubtful for the game at Filbert Street 24 hours later. Trainer Bob Paisley worked furiously on the injury when they arrived that evening at their hotel in Leicester.

Also in the city that evening were Liverpool fans who'd arrived early, desperate not to miss the game. Some of them broke into the ground overnight with tins of red paint, and when the groundsman turned up first thing next morning, he found red goal posts, and LFC graffiti at the back of the Main Stand Enclosure:

The graffiti was removed in time for the game, but as the Mercury reported, the goalposts still had a 'pinkish hue'. 

Milne was declared fit, and he played a key role in Liverpool's 2-0 win that kept them on course. Here he is, centre of shot, celebrating the second goal:

Two days later Liverpool completed a perfect Easter, beating Spurs at Anfield to condemn them to decades of also-ran status, and a few days later Liverpool clinched the title to kick off the Reds' dominance of the next 25 years.

5) April 30th 1965

A year later and Liverpool are in the FA Cup Final v Leeds United, looking to break the spell and bring the trophy to Anfield for the very first time. For Milne, it''s a chance to claim the winners' medal that eluded his father Jimmy in 1938 when he missed Preston's triumph due to injury. 

But incredibly, Gordon suffered the same heartbreak, injured against Chelsea just two weeks before the big game. This photo says everything - taken the day before the final as his teammates get the feel of the Wembley turf.

6) Autumn 1977

Anyone remember Brian Clough's message to Forest fans before a match at the City Ground?

This was actually a two-man campaign. A few days later, Gordon Milne made this appeal to Coventry City fans:

At Highfield Road two days later, Coventry beat West Ham 1-0 and fans sang 'We are not allowed to swear' (to the tune of 'Bread of Heaven' -  you know - the 'we'll support you evermore' melody), and also sang 'you're a bounder, you're a bounder, you're a bounder referee!' and 'What the flip, what the flip, what the flippin hell was that?'

And we can't leave Gordon's Coventry years without a quick mention of this notorious moment four seasons later when Clive Allen's shot came back off the stanchion at the back of the net:

Wonderful line that from Terry Venables: 'If the ref's saying we've got to hit some particular part of the net to get a goal....'  Milne was sympathetic, 'I have no doubt it was a goal', he said.

7)  Gordon Milne and Terry Venables, in opposition here too -  at the top of this list:

What's that stat about?  Several bonus points for anyone who can guess the answer before I tell you. 

The presence of Jock there is a pretty big clue.

OK - it's the managers Gary Lineker scored most goals for,  whether for club or county. 

Gordon's glorious first season at Filbert Street was covered recently on here, and there'll be more Leicester talk in the forthcoming interview.  For the time being, here's the day he joined the club - saying farewell to players at Coventry, then shaking hands with Terry Shipman (eleven years after the Parker pens incident with father Len).

The presence of Tommy English in the top picture is ominous.

8) Besiktas May 1990

Gordon moved to Istanbul just after his 50th birthday, and enjoyed six years of remarkable achievement. Look at the reception the players get on the day they won the title -  the first of three in a row under Gordon's guidance.

Gordon has god-like status among Besiktas fans, and I hope the book will bolster his legacy in this country -  not least among Leicester fans.

This is a response to a request I got from @SecretPro for some information about a friend whose grandfather played for Leicester just after World War 2 - a player called Bobbie Anderson. I was going to send a photo and a bit of background information, but as is so often the case, once you start looking into something, you find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole and finding out all kinds of fascinating stuff. @SouthStandUpperTier, @davieG and @Rain King provided some useful info and a photo yesterday, but I thought I'd give this a thread all of its own as it really needs it to tell the story in full.

June 1944

Leicester manager Tom Bromilow knew he had to start planning for the end of the War, which everyone was praying would come sooner rather than later. Unlike the first War, the club had not lost players in the fighting, but it had suffered massively in other ways. A German bomb had damaged the main stand (and German POWs had helped repair it). A fire had then completely ruined half of that stand and all the equipment inside, damage that the club couldn't afford to repair (and wouldn't have been allowed to anyway, with post-war resource shortages). The City Council then told them they may have to leave Filbert Street, with the land needed by the Electricity Board. And most of the club's directors had been banned for life after under-the-counter payments had been exposed. It was truly a dark hour.

But Tom Bromilow knew he just had to get on with the job. He liked nothing better than getting on a train and heading for some far-off destination to seek out new talent. 

In June 1944, he went north, first to Glasgow, and then on his way back, to Middlesbrough. In Scotland he visited a club called Mearns Amateurs, and spotted a 15 year-old winger called Robert Anderson. In Middlesbrough, he saw our new nursery club Middlesbrough Swifts in action, and it was 16 year-old Donald Revie who caught his eye.

Don, as he was known, and Bobbie (or sometimes 'Bobby'), as he was known, soon headed for trials at Filbert Street, and both impressed.

Years later, Revie wrote about the moments after he first stepped off the train at Leicester Station: I wandered forlornly around Leicester with my football boots wrapped in brown paper under my arm. I walked round and round the shops, then hastily gulped down a cup of tea in a small café’.  He was soon in action, wearing a City shirt for the first time in a 2-2 draw v Wolves at Filbert Street, the first game of the 1944/45 season, which was still organized into regional Leagues.

Bobbie Anderson's arrival in the city may have been very similar, but in his case, the chance to play for Leicester would have to wait. He was an apprentice fitter-engineer, and it wasn't until January 1945 that he was fixed up with a company in Leicester where he could continue the apprenticeship. 

1945/46

With the war over, football could get back to normal again. Though not immediately. The Football League decided that 1945/46 would be a transition season, still based on regional divisions. 

Leicester City had a new manager. Tom Bromilow had quit in March, and Tom Mather had just taken over. It can be unsettling when the man responsible for bringing you to a club suddenly moves on, but Mather knew a thing or two about wingers. When he was Stoke CIty manager in the early 1930s he had signed 15 year-old Stanley Matthews. 

On Saturday August 11th, Bobbie turned 17, and on that day Leicester City held their first post-war trial match, 'Blues v Whites', to see who would start the game at home to Charlton Athletic, scheduled for two weeks later. Bobbie and Don played in the trial, but only Don was selected for that first game, which Charlton won 3-2. The return match at The Valley a week later was also lost. 

Wondering who could freshen things up, Tom Mather went to watch Leicester Colts (the youth team) on Wednesday September 5th, with Bobbie in the line-up against Ibstock Penistone Rovers. He must have impressed Mather as the next day, the boss told him to join the first team squad for their third game of the season, away at Brentford. 

He was supposedly just along for the experience, but then left winger Fred Crack of Grimsby Town, due to turn out for us as a guest, was suddenly called back to his army base in Germany - which meant Bobbie Anderson's big moment had arrived. 

To call his first team debut 'sensational' would not be an exaggeration. This was the how the Daily News, then one of the leading national newspapers, reported the game:

The Leicester Evening Mail called him a 'boy star', and said his teammates 'mobbed' him when he set up that first goal.

Here's the Middlesex Chronicle, with an entertaining passage I'll quote at length:

It was one of those affairs when one team exerts four-fifths of the pressure and the other lot snatch the goals. When Leicester full back Dai Jones, as a sort of advanced goalpost (and with no more intention than if he had indeed been one of those inanimate pillars) turned away a terrific smash by Les Smith, I thought it was going to be one of those days. That was a mere four minutes from the start, but the premonition was soon justified. When Leicester won a corner, the ball was most meticulously middled by Bobbie Anderson, and it was met by the head of Liddle to send it curling on a 12 yard journey into the net. It was 2-0 at the interval and in the second half the ball stayed in the City half for such long periods that the Bees might have been kicking down a one-in-three slope. 

 A week later, that reporter was still writing about the same game:

Many a young player has been ruined by too much fulsome praise, and we had an instance last week when Anderson, making his debut after a Colts' appearance the previous evening, was hailed by one writer, with the imagination of a film star's press agent, as Scotland's next Alan Morton. He made a most promising debut, but to start measuring him up for an international cap on the basis of one appearance is verging on the ridiculous. Let's hope the lad takes no notice.

On the opposite wing that day was Don Revie, and supplying them both from the middle of the park was City legend Sep Smith, then in his 17th year at Filbert Street.

Tom Mather certainly wasn't going to let the attention go to Bobbie's head. He chose him for just a handful of games that season, unlike Don Revie, who was becoming a regular, playing in the club's first FA Cup game for seven years, a third round defeat against Chelsea.

1946/47

The transition was over, and the Football League was finally back to normal. We had yet another new boss - Johnny Duncan, the wizard of Leicester's forward line in the 1920s who had since been running the Turk's Head pub, opposite the prison.

Just like the previous season, we lost our first two games without Bobbie, then he came in for game three. In the record books, this is considered his 'real' Leicester City debut - the transitional season deemed 'unofficial'. Could he have the same impact as at Brentford? Once again, it was a tough-looking away game in London - at Upton Park. And once again, he was sensational.

This was the Leicester Evening Mail:

The same reporter added: Opportunities for Leicester became fewer later on, but the 17 year-old Scot with the twinkling feet and quick-thinking brain, never ceased to be a  problem to the West Ham defence.   2-0 was the final score.

Once again, though, this was only a brief flash of Bobbie's talent. He played a total of 13 games that season, without adding to his goal tally. Meanwhile, Don Revie was continuing to establish his reputation. 

1947/48

A season of frustration for Bobbie (who made only six appearances, scoring once against Millwall) and for Revie, out for six months with a broken ankle that was so bad that doctors were almost certain he'd never play again. 

One bright spot for Bobbie came in a reserve game against Spurs:

1948/49

In the four years since Tom Bromilow's scouting trip brought them to Filbert Street, the careers of Bobbie and Don had gradually diverged. Revie had now made a miraculous recovery from his injury, and was an indispensable member of the City side that mounted a historic bid for the FA Cup this season, despite struggling at the wrong end of the Second Division. Bobbie's lot was very different. With the quarter-final approaching, he had not made a single first team appearance all season. But then suddenly he sensed an opportunity.

That quarter-final was at a venue which held special memories for him - Griffin Park,  Brentford. In the days leading up to the game, regular left winger Charlie Adam was struggling to be fit, and there was speculation in the press about who would replace him - Bobbie Anderson, or Jim Dawson (Bobbie's best mate).

On the Friday morning, Adam passed a fitness test, but then just as it seemed Leicester would be able to field their regular forward line, Adam was handed a telegram from Scotland with dramatic news. His mother had been rushed to hospital and was 'dangerously ill'.  The club were prepared to let him travel north, and it seemed that a replacement would be needed after all. 

But Adam insisted on playing, and he stayed with the Leicester squad. 

His mother died that night, and on Saturday, Adam lined up alongside Revie as City tried to reach the semi-finals for only the second time. Bobbie Anderson wasn't needed.

This is what happened:

Adam left for Scotland immediately after the final whistle.

In the semi-final we shocked First Division leaders Portsmouth at Highbury (arguably our greatest ever result in the competition) - and so we had finally made it to Wembley.

Don Revie then suffered a freak injury against West Ham, and this time it was not just his career but his life that was in danger. He had punctured a vein at the back of his nose, and he needed a series of blood transfusions at the Royal Infirmary to take him out of danger. There was no way he'd be ready for the Cup Final.

As that was confirmed, just three days before the final, there was a milestone moment at Filbert Street - Sep Smith's last ever appearance on the ground, for the reserves against Bournemouth. Also playing that day was Bobbie Anderson, and it was his run from midfield that led to City being awarded a penalty, from which Sep Smith scored. He didn't know it then, but that was also Bobbie's last game at Filbert Street.

Three days later, he was at Wembley to watch us lose heroically to Wolves, 3-1, while Don Revie was listening to radio commentary in his bed at the Infirmary.

In the week following the Final, the local press had good and bad news about Bobbie. On Wednesday came reports that he was one of eight players placed on the transfer list. He was no longer wanted at Filbert Street. But somebody wanted him. The following day came news of Bobbie's engagement. The big day would be June 25th, and this was his bride-to-be:

Here's Leicester Chronicle from July 2nd reporting on the wedding:

Don Revie was planning his wedding too - his bride Elsie was the niece of Leicester boss Johnny Duncan. When another City player, Jimmy Harrison, married Doreen Shipman, daughter of the club chairman Len, he had been barracked by City fans, who suspected he was getting favourable treatment. Don didn't want to suffer the same fate, and told the club he wanted a transfer. 

In November 1949 he got his wish, with a move to Hull, though by then Duncan had moved on himself.

So the Leicester careers of Don Revie and Bobbie Anderson overlapped almost exactly - arriving in summer 1944 and leaving early in the 1949/ 50 season.

Revie went on to enjoy great success as player and manager, and to have numerous books and documentaries devoted to describing every moment of his life.

Bobbie Anderson was almost completely forgotten, but as you can see from that post-war period in which he shone briefly yet brightly, his story is well worth telling.