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. 

One day in 1997, after Leicester City decided they had to leave Filbert Street, Chief Executive Barrie Pierpoint was standing in a field in Aylestone, forming pictures in his mind. Above him ran Soar Valley Way, the road that leads from Glen Parva out towards the motorway. On the far side of the field, the River Soar was rolling gently along, separated from the canal by just a tiny slither of land. 

'It's the perfect place for the new stadium', he thought. 'Easy access to the M1, not too far from the city centre, a beautiful spot'. It was one of several potential sites the club had identified after discussions with Leicester City Council.

As he stood contemplating the club's future, Barrie was probably unaware of it, but on that very spot, 44 years earlier, one of the darkest episodes in the post-war history of Leicester was unfolding - and it was connected to his own family history. 

Around that time, Barrie's father changed the spelling of their name. It was originally 'Pierrepoint', but he decided to shorten it to 'Pierpoint', attempting to conceal the connection to a certain Albert Pierrepoint, a distant relative. 

Who was Albert Pierrepoint? He was the UK's most famous hangman, who carried out the last execution at Leicester Prison in 1953, after Irishman Joseph Reynolds was sentenced to death for murdering 12 year-old Janet Warner. 

This is what happened:

May 22nd 1953

The football season had just finished, and despite Arthur Rowley topping the goalscoring charts, Leicester City had yet again failed to achieve their primary objective - promotion back to Division One. It was in the following days that Jospeh Reynolds began his macabre daily ritual.

He was employed at Leicester Gas Works, just south of Filbert Street, and after work he would walk along the canal footpath to Aylestone, looking for a likely candidate. He spotted Dennis Goodger, who was on his way home to Gwencole Crescent, off Narborough Road, from the building job he was working on near the County Arms in Blaby.

The next day, and for several days after that, Reynolds returned to the same spot along the canal, and each time he saw the same man. Finally, on May 22nd, he was ready. When Goodger walked past that day, he would put his plan into action. 

But Goodger didn't turn up. Fortunately for him, his job in Blaby had finished the day before. The plan was stymied.

Tragically for Janet Warner, Reynolds quickly decided to find an alternative victim. She was strangled, and her body dumped near the canal in Glen Parva.

Reynolds was soon arrested, and sentenced to death five months later. On November 17th, a scene that had been observed many times over the previous 100 years played out for the last time - a large crowd gathering outside the walls of Leicester Prison, awaiting confirmation of the execution.

Among them was none other than Dennis Goodger, who spoke to a reporter from the Leicester Evening Mail about his narrow escape. 'He was there every day at the same place. And he always asked me the time. Every day I gave the same answer: 'It's just turned five o'clock'. He used to give me a strange out-of-this-world look and I became more and more suspicious'.  

At 9.10 a.m. the chief warder opened the main gates of the prison and pinned up the notice stating that the sentence of death had been carried out. 'Pierrepoint', the Mail said, 'was the executioner'. That's how people referred to him. He didn't need a first name - everyone knew who he was.

It had been nine years since the previous execution in the city, a double hanging in 1944.  Albert Pierrepoint was there that day too, and he might have been busier in the intervening years had it not been for the efforts of one man. That was Dr. Arthur Colahan, an Irishman from Galway who had worked in Leicester since the 1920s. He was often called to murder trials to offer his expert opinion on the sanity or otherwise of the accused. On one particular occasion, that evidence proved crucial.

Saturday January 24th 1948

It was a huge day for Leicester City - drawn at home against Sheffield Wednesday in the Fourth Round of the FA Cup. At 2 p.m., supporters heading to Filbert Street from the city centre may not have paid too much attention to a taxi picking up two passengers at the Grand Hotel. Josef Zawadaski and his former partner Joan Mills told the driver to take them to Kitchener Road near Spinney Hill Park.

At Filbert Street, far more than the usual number of police were on duty. They had been struggling to keep order for several hours as huge numbers gathered, excited by the prospect of a Cup run, and perhaps Leicester's first visit to Wembley. Half an hour before kick-off the gates were closed, leaving thousands outside. One entrance at the Spion Kop end was then smashed and fans surged into the ground without paying. Police somehow managed to form a barrier and prevent even more getting in.

This was how Filbert Street had looked at 12.30:

Calls may have been made to Charles Street police HQ, asking for reinforcements,  but just at that moment it became apparent that a drama of a different nature was unfolding across town in Kitchener Road. When that taxi arrived, Zawadski suddenly produced a gun. He shot Mills, killing her instantly, then tried to shoot himself in the head, but failed. 

At Filbert Street, Leicester beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 with two famous goals - Walter Harrison after a '40 yard dribble' and Jimmy Haines from 25 yards. In the local papers on Monday two stories dominated - the fall-out from the shooting on Kitchener Road, and the draw for the last 16 of the FA Cup. Leicester were given a tie away to fellow Second Division side Tottenham Hotspur. 

By the time Zawadski's case came to trial on March 16th, Leicester were out of the Cup. They would have to wait another year for their first ever visit to Wembley. In court, Dr. Arthur Colahan testified that at the time of the shooting, he believed that Zawadski was suffering from 'manic depressive anxiety'. His evidence was crucial - without it, Zawadski would have been given the death penalty, and Pierrepoint would have been back in town.

In fact, this was not the first time Dr. Colahan had played such a role. Before that double hanging in 1944 mentioned above, he had testified on behalf of one of the defendants, William Cowie, who was suffering, he said,  from 'depressive insanity'. But on this occasion his testimony couldn't prevent a death sentence being handed down, and Pierrepoint was called for (at that time, as an assistant, with his uncle Thomas in charge shortly before he retired).

Back in 1931 Dr. Colahan had testified on behalf of Annie Robson, a Leicester nurse charged with the murder of a patient. He said he had interviewed her in prison and declared her 'insane'. The jury found her guilty, but due to her insanity, she escaped the death penalty.

So that's three occasions over a period of 17 years when he tried to save someone from the noose. It's tempting to think that, above any considerations about a defendant's state of mind,  Dr. Colahan was motivated simply by an abhorrence of the death penalty.  Maybe he simply wanted to save lives.

When you look at his life story, it's easy to see why that would have meant so much to him.

August 17th 1912

Long before Arthur Colahan left Ireland and came to Leicester to begin his medical practice, his brother Roly lost his life in a tragic accident on Lough Corrib in County Galway. 

Roly and his friend Oswald Fisher went out in a sailing boat in windy conditions, and the vessel was quickly in trouble. A strong gust blew the boat over on its side, and the two stripped naked and dived into the water, several hundred yards from the shore.

The heartbreaking story of what happened next appeared in the Galway Express:

That's how Arthur Colahan lost his brother. 

Several years later, after he moved to Leicester, he wrote a song dedicated to Roly's memory, the lyrics full of allusions to the tragedy on Lough Corrib. He called the song Galway Bay. It became a massive hit in Ireland, the UK and the USA. 

This is the Leicester Evening Mail from May 1948:

Arthur Colahan died in 1952.

Now another great Irish songwriter has died, and his song, which tips its hat to the boys of the NYPD choir and to Colahan's song, is everywhere (even more so than usual).

Colahan isn't short of recognition either. This is his plaque in Prebend Street:

The FA Cup - the one everyone wants to win. That's how it used to be anyway - certainly until the 1960s, and for many people, for a long time after that. Nothing compared to that excitement - the anticipation building through the week, the whole city gripped by Cup fever.  Not just for semi-finals and finals, but every step along the way. 

To show how things have changed over the years, let's take a look back at five moments in time - from 1934, 1969, 1985, 1991 and 2017. 

Notice anything about those dates? Have another look.

They're the years we played Millwall in the Cup. Five truly remarkable occasions that I'll use to tell not only the history of this fixture,  but also the history of the competition itself.

It's been great fun digging out these stories. I hope you enjoy it.

Part One: Channy's Swansong

December 17th 1932

Manager Peter Hodge knew that the moment had arrived. It wasn't easy to bring down the curtain on a great career, but it was his job to make these calls.

'I'm going to put you in the Reserves this weekend, Channy'.

Arthur Chandler was 37. The following day, as the first team were drawing 2-2 with Birmingham City at Filbert Street, he was playing for the 'stiffs' at Highbury. Quite a comedown for our record goalscorer. And that was before the match started. When he walked off at the end, Arsenal had won 10-1. 

The bitter irony of that scoreline would not have escaped him. It was a reversal of the most celebrated game of his career, when the sixth swan flew over Filbert Street, beckoning him to knock in another goal. 

'That's football', he thought. 'It builds you up. It knocks you down.' 

But he hadn't hit rock bottom yet. The following week, the Reserves were playing again. Channy's name wasn't on the teamsheet. Hodge told him he was being 'rested'. 

Leicester City fans saw no more of Channy that season. A series of stand in centre-forwards were tried as Hodge and his scouts searched far and wide for a man who could fill the great man's boots.

Monday January 15th  1934

Over a year later, and Chandler was still on City's books. Now 38, he was playing at Filbert Street in another Reserve game -  against Millwall. At the same time, at FA headquarters in London, the draw for the Fourth Round of the FA Cup was taking place. The afternoon was to unfold in a quite remarkable way.

The Reserves went goal crazy, Channy scoring twice as Millwall trailed 8-1 at half time. When the players came in for the break, they heard news of the Cup draw. The very first team out of the bag was - Millwall. The second - Leicester City. The clubs would be meeting in a senior fixture for the first time ever. 

In the second half, Channy scored again to complete his hat-trick, and it finished 10-1. Yes - double figures again.

This was the headline in the Evening Mail:

It was an omen. There would be another riot twelve days later.

After watching that performance, manager Peter Hodge decided to restore his veteran centre-forward to the first team. We hadn't yet found a satisfactory replacement, and the following Saturday, for the League game at White Hart Lane, Channy was back at number 9. We came away with a shock 1-0 victory. This is how the news was received in the city centre:

In Leicester on Saturday night there was but one topic of conversation. In the Market Place, a loud cheer was raised by the stallholders as soon as the result was known. News sellers could not conceal their appreciation of the fillip this fine win would give the sports edition sales. Tram conductors, and even inspectors, had to say their little piece about it while passengers were being carried past their destinations because of the fascinating nature of the subject.   (From the Leicester Chronicle).

Channy stayed in the team for the next match - the Cup tie at The Den. 

January 27th

Millwall were a League below Leicester - in Division Two - but boss Bill McCracken was feeling confident. He told a Leicester Evening Mail reporter that City's 'stylish' football would not stand up to the 'robust stuff' that Millwall use in the Cup. In the reporter's judgement, however, 'McCracken may find that Leicester are not so 'ladylike' as they have been described on so many occasions. The restoration of Chandler to the attack at Spurs has added the necessary punch'.

At Leicester Station on Saturday morning there wasn't enough space on the Football Special, and 'late arrivals joined trains from Nottingham carrying Forest fans to their tie at Stamford Bridge. When that train pulled in there was a lot of good natured banter, followed by mutual expressions of goodwill'.

The players had traveled on an earlier train, and as it passed through north London there was another omen:

After arriving at Marylebone, they continued 'by motor'. The man from the Leicester Chronicle described the rest of the journey: 'We sped past Marble Arch, crossed the Thames and skirted The Oval to the strains of haunting melodies, as Sandy McLaren (the Leicester keeper) acted as choir leader'.

At The Den, the thing that really struck that reporter was the roar of the Millwall fans. Their shouts of "Come on Lions!" were so loud 'they must have been heard some distance away'. On days like this, noise from outlying grounds would often carry as far as central London, and this was one of those unique occasions that only the early rounds of the FA Cup could provide. With bigger gates, heightened passions, and the luck of the draw giving the big London teams home ties, the skies were filled with noise from all directions - Stamford Bridge (that Chelsea v Forest game), Highbury (Arsenal v Crystal Palace), White Hart Lane (Tottenham v West Ham) and here, south of the river, where the cries of thousands of Leicester fans were added to the mix. 

Millwall started the game brightly, but then came the key breakthrough. There's no Pathe news footage of Sep Smith's goal, but it was described so well at the time that we can visualise exactly what happened:

Millwall equalised, but then we went into overdrive. At half-time we were 4-1 up, playing 'cool, methodical, on-the-floor football'.  Channy, Arthur Maw from 35 yards, then Danny Liddle were the scorers. Here's Channy's goal:

That kit we we're wearing was red shirts with black shorts.

After the break Channy and Arthur Lochhead made it 6-1, before Millwall quickly got two back. It was 6-3 after 63 minutes, which is how it ended. That word was back in the headlines:

As the team arrived back in Leicester, 1,000 fans were there to greet them, the biggest cheer reserved for Channy. 

In the next round we played Birmingham City at St. Andrews. Look at the picture below, taken at the Queen's Hotel in Coventry where the team stopped on the way home, and see if you can guess the outcome of the game:

The man with the beaming smile in the middle of the back row is Arthur Chandler, 38 years young, whose goals gave us a 2-1 win and took us into the quarter-finals. 

Here's one of his goals:

Next was another tough away tie - at Preston, who had Bill Shankly and Jimmy Milne in their half back line. We came away with another fantastic result. This was the only goal of the game:

'Furnival', the famous cartoonist of the Lancashire Evening Post, saw it like this:

The man who had been written off by everyone was now the talk of the nation, on a sensational scoring streak, wth key goals at The Den, St.Andrews and now Deepdale putting us in sight of our first ever trip to Wembley.

The semi-final draw paired us with Portsmouth, with St. Andrews again the venue.

It was the biggest game in the 50 year history of the club, and there were 12,000 at Leicester Station that morning.  'Not since Armistice Day in 1918 had there been such scenes of jubilaiton' said the Evening Mail, which had some wonderful pictures. This is what Leicester fans looked like back then:

And this was the players' wives on the way to the game, Channy's wife one from the right:

And there was one more woman heading for St. Andrews. With her advancing years, she had been unsure whether she should make the journey. But when she woke up that morning in London she knew she just had to be there. She hurried to Paddington Station and boarded a train for Birmingham. Had she told her son she was coming, she would have been given a comfortable seat alongside those wives in the Main Stand, but she didn't want her impulsive decision to disturb his preparation. She paid her money and stood on the packed terraces.

How much of the action Mrs. Chandler, Arthur's mother, was able to see we don't know, but we can be sure that when he ran out that day, she'd have been the proudest person in the 66,000 crowd.

Here he is in action, white shirt and black shorts, Pompey in red shirts and white shorts.

Sadly, we lost 4-1. Channy's glorious swansong would not be ending at Wembley. 

But before leaving this story, there's another song we need to mention. Remember those 'haunting melodies' of the players' choir as they passed through London on the way to The Den? On the day of the semi-final, captain Roger Heywood told us more:

There had been too much seriousness in the team. We decided to form a kind of choral society, with Sandy McLaren as leader, and Channy and Hughie Adcock, with his child impersonations, contributing the harmony. 

There was one number that they sang at every stage of that Cup run. Not 'Sweet Caroline', but 'Sweet Adeline' - a massive hit in the early decades of the century. 

Here are the lyrics:

Sweet Adeline

My Adeline

At night, dear heart

For you I pine

In all my dreams

Your fair face beams

You're the flower of my heart

Sweet Adeline

Here's a comic version from a 1930 cartoon:

It's also been in The Simpsons:

In an alternative history, we went all the way in 1934, and City fans sang the song at Wembley as we lifted the trophy. It was the same when the Cup was paraded through the streets of Leicester, helping to establish it firmly in everyone's minds as the club's very own theme tune, a tradition that has continued to this day.

If only. 

Oh well, perhaps the @Union FS lads, who've always had a keen sense of history, could polish their barber-shop harmonies and resurrect it on Saturday.

That's the first part of the story. Part Two coming right up.

Whatever this season has in store,  it's unlikely to be quite as eventful as the race for promotion in 1991/92, when 'the city went absolutely mental'.

That's how Leicester striker Kevin 'Rooster' Russell described it, and if you lived through it too, you'll know he wasn't exaggerating.

No wonder we went crazy. For so long we'd had nothing to shout about. We'd had years of Second Divison mediocrity,  we hadn't won a single FA Cup tie for seven years, and we hadn't been to Wembley since way back in the 1960s.

To tell this story properly would require a whole book, but here's a highlights package, with key moments from that unforgettable run-in. And I want to tell the story in a different way, focusing not just on us, but also the three teams we faced at the climax of that season. Each of them had a fascinating back story, and each of them had a striker who had been, or would soon become, a Filbert Street hero.

1) There's only one place to start - Saturday February 15th 1992, the day when all the main players in the drama took the stage.

It was on that day that a new force entered English football. Newcastle United were lying 22nd in Division Two, facing a trip to leaders Blackburn. The club's away support usually hovered between three and four figures, but on this day,  five times the normal number - a 'Toon Army', as they would soon be called - made their way to Ewood Park. 

Why the sudden excitement?  The week before, the Messiah had returned. Kevin Keegan had taken on the manager's job at St. James' Park. His mission - to stop the former giants falling into the third tier. 

Keegan was the greatest British footballer of the 1970s - and his main rival for that title was Kenny Dalglish. Kenny had taken over as Blackburn boss four months earlier. With Jack Walker's money he'd already transformed the club, and they looked set to return to the top flight for the first time since the 1960s.

In the days before the game, it was off the field goings on that had people talking. The tabloids had been reporting on the private life of Blackburn's David Speedie, or more specifically, his wife who, while he was on away trips, had been having adventures of her own.

When the game began, the 5,000 Newastle fans chanted 'We've all had your wife'. Their mood became even brighter when David Kelly gave them a shock lead. Kelly had been brought from Leicester City three months earlier - the last big signing of previous boss Ossie Ardiles.

Then a controversial decision changed the game. 

Referee Peter Jones from Loughborough was a massive Leicester City fan, and a friend of Steve Walsh. Just before the break, as Newcastle keeper Tommy Wright gathered the ball, Rovers' Jason Wilcox followed through and caught him with his studs. An obvious free kick to the Geordies. But after lengthy treatment for the keeper's injury, Peter Jones inexplicably awarded a drop ball inside the area. 

Seconds later Blackburn were level - and Speedie was the scorer. Keegan had to be pulled back from Jones as the teams left the field at half time.

After the break, Speedie added two more and 3-1 was the final score. As one Newcastle fan said, 'We started off going on about his wife but at the end it was us who'd had the shafting'. 

Here's that controversial drop ball moment:

The phrase 'Toon Army' caught on later that year, but the roar of 'Blue Army!' was already filling the air at grounds across the country.  On February 15th, Vale Park joined the list - and that day was a big turning point in Leicester City's promotion drive. 

Brian Little had been in charge for seven months, but Kevin Russell had yet to start a first team match. His goals at the end of the previous season had been a crucial factor in City staying up, but he didn't fit into Little's tactical plan. Now, as City traveled to Port Vale,  Russell was told he'd finally get his chance. He'd just returned from a loan spell at Stoke City in Division Three. Their boss Lou Macari was desperate to sign him, and if the club had been able to afford the 75,000 that we were asking, Russell wouldn't have played any part in our promotion drive.

Just like Speedie that day, Russell was being roundly abused by the opposing fans - thanks to the Stoke connection.  And just like Speedie, Russell had the last laugh. He scored twice to give City a vital three points, as chants of 'Rooster!'  and 'Blue Army!' rang around Vale Park. 

Here's the key moments:

One more striker made his comeback that day.  Cambridge Untied were the surprise team of the season. Back in the summer, their boss John Beck had been targeted by Leicester City (before we turned to Little), but he'd decided to stay at the Abbey Stadium to try and achieve what no-one had done before - take a club straight from Division Four to Division One in three seasons.  

In November it looked like the miracle was possible. Their long ball game had taken them to the top of the table. But then star striker Steve Claridge picked up an injury that kept him out for 10 weeks. Now on February 15th he was back, and he was Man of the Match as they beat Charlton 2-0. The match report said, 'At last, the Cambridge fans enjoyed some of the variety in attack they had craved for months'.

This was how the table looked at the end of the day:

Newcastle were still down in 22nd place.

2) April 14th / 15th

Ee-eye-ee-eye-ee-eye-o! Up the Football League we go!  That was another regular on the soundtrack of the 1991/92 season, and it captured perfectly the joyous feeling of upward movement after years of flatlining. 

Brian Little was getting used to it. In the two seasons prior to joining Leicester he'd taken Darlington to successive promotions - from the Conference to Division Three. 

Dalglish and Keegan were serial winners too. As player and manager, both of them had known nothing but continual success. After losing to Speedie's hattrick at Ewood Park, Newcastle had picked up four wins and rapidly moved up the table. The Keegan Midas touch was working. Meanwhile Dalglish was still on course to take Rovers up to the top flight that, from the following season, would be the newly constituted 'Premier League'.

Then something quite astonishing happened. Those two legends of the game, at the same time, experienced something entirely new - a soccer slump.  Newcastle, seemingly cruising to safety, lost five games in a row. Blackburn, seemingly cruising to promotion, lost six games in a row. The national media lapped it up - full of talk of Dalglish 'cracking up again' after the pressure had made him quit the Liverpool job, and speculation about what Keegan would do when the inevitable happened and they dropped into Division Three.

On Tuesday April 14th, Blackburn were at home to Wolves, and the manner of their defeat - the fifth in that losing sequence - was crushing. Rovers' regular keeper Bobby Mimms had been troubled for weeks with a thigh strain that meant he'd been delegating kicking duties to his defenders. Dalglish decided to rest him for this game, hoping he'd come back fully fit for the run-in. His replacement was John Dickins, making his debut. 

In the last minute, with the scores level, Wolves' Paul Birch tried a speculative shot from 25 yards that Dickins seemed to have covered. This is what happened:

That defeat left Rovers in fourth place. Could they stop the slump?  Their next game was at home to Leicester City at the weekend. 

Before that, we had a crucial home game against Tranmere Rovers on the Wednesday night. And that was the moment when promotion fever at Filbert Street reached a new level. Here too there was last minute drama. After a scrappy ninety minutes, Steve Walsh chipped a glorious ball through to Kevin Russell, and he raced on to shoot City into second place in the table -  the first time in six months we'd been in one of the two automatic promotion spots. This clip still sends shivers down the spine.

3)  April 18th - 21st  

Next came that game at Ewood Park, which we won 1-0 with another Kevin Russell goal. Bobby Mimms was back for Rovers - did that thigh injury play a role in the key moment of the game, when he messed up his clearance?

So Blackburn had lost six in a row, and were in danger of not even making the play-offs.

The following Monday, April 20th, saw the tension build still further.

That fifth straight defeat for Newcastle came at Derby, when the wheels really came off. In just the third minute, Newcastle defender Kevin Brock was sent off for stopping a goal bound header with his fist. Assistant manager Terry McDermott was soon sent to the stands for protesting, and further red cards for Kevin Scott and Liam O'Kane left Newcastle with only eight players. Derby ran out 4-1 winners, and Newcastle fans smashed up the away end. Paul Kitson, yet another Leicester link, was one of the scorers (we'd sold him to Derby a few weeks earlier, causing a massive rumpus - but that's another story).

That same evening, Blackburn were facing an incredible seventh straigtht defeat, losing 2-1 at Tranmere with time running out. As they pressed for an equaliser, a goal bound shot led to a fantastic one-handed save  - by John Aldridge (the leading scorer in Division Two).  The handball gave Blackburn the chance to draw level. Then they would surely press for a much-needed winner against ten men, with Aldridge taking an early bath.

Except that Aldridge somehow stayed on the field. Unlike the red card shown to Newcastle's Kevin Brock for the same offence, he received only a yellow. The ref later said he 'wasn't sure the shot was goal bound'. Hmmm. Have a look at where the ref is standing. It's very clear on the replay:

Mike Newell's penalty at least stopped the losing streak (yet another ex-Leicester striker).

That defeat at Derby left Newcastle on the brink - as one paper put it, 'staring Division Three, financial ruin, and the departure of Kevin Keegan in the face'. With two games to play, the final one at Filbert Street, they were back in the drop zone and things looked grim. Keegan had decided he'd quickly get away from it all whatever the outcome - he'd booked a holiday in Los Angeles straight after that final game at Leicester.

But then events in America made him change his plans.

In late April came the verdict in the Rodney King case. He was a black man who'd been filmed being brutally beaten by police officers in LA. Despite the clear video evidence, the jury found them not guilty, leading to days of rioting, which left 63 people dead. Scores of shops had been looted - not in the rich white areas, which police had sealed off, but in the Korean community, which had been left unprotected.

Keegan canceled his holiday. 

That sort of thing could never happen in Leicester, right? Well, just as that Rodney King jury was considering its verdict, there was an incident in sleepy Stoneygate that raised racial tension in the city to a worrying level. 

Valentina, a shop in Allandale Road, had been selling shoes bearing inscriptions from the Koran, including the word 'Allah'. On April 20th, a car was rammed though the shop's window, and the place was then set alight and destroyed. In the hours following the attack, phone calls were made to several mosques in the city threatening revenge attacks. The top story in the Mercury the following day was 'Shop Arson: Stay Calm', with police and representatives of the city's muslim community appealing to the public. 

That evening, the city was anything but calm. But fortunately, the cause of the excitement was events at Filbert Street, as promotion fever reached a peak.

This doesn't need any words, just watch the action:

The left us on the brink of automatic promotion:

 This was the front page of the Mercury the following day:

Years and years of misery were surely about to end. Everyone was talking about promotion. The shop arson case rapidly fell off the news agenda,  the racial tension disappeared overnight, and there were no more developments in that story.

In the following days the local media were full of Leicester stories - people getting Rooster haircuts,  fans camping out overnight to secure tickets for the Newcastle game, and above all, 'How do we get to the Charlton game on Saturday?'  Charlton were then based at Upton Park, playing in front of very small crowds, and we would have our biggest ever away following for a League game in the capital.

You can see at the start of this video that unforgettable moment about half an hour before kick-off when Leicester fans, packed in tight on the South Terrace, surged across the pitch to fill up the empty chicken run side (please skip the rest of the video):

We completely filled two sides of the ground, and two thirds of the 15,000 crowd were City fans.

Sadly, the carnival occasion inspired Charlton more than us. They hated playing in front of tiny crowds at Upton Park, and their results were better away from home. We lost 2-0, and it was suddenly out of our hands. Middlesbrough won their game in hand, and now we had to win that Newcastle game - and hope.

In the end we had to settle for a play-off place, as Newcastle won 2-1 to secure their safety. Keegan may have canceled his holiday to avoid the trouble in LA,  but the most memorable thing about Filbert Street that Saturday was its resemblance to a riot zone, with a police helicopter circling overhead throughout the game, cops in full riot gear marching out of the tunnel, scores of arrests, and dozens injured. Extra barriers had been erected in the East stand to separate the two sets of fans, but that didn't stop coins flying both ways, and more than 300 seats being ripped out.

This was the Mercury on Monday:

And here's an unusual angle on the scene - taken from the East Stand and posted on a Newcastle forum:

Who would we meet in the play-offs? It looked like it might be Blackburn, who'd got two crucial wins in the run-in - but then Cambridge came back from two down at Sunderland to draw 2-2 - both goals from Steve Claridge - and that took them above Rovers into 5th.  The semi-final line up woud be Derby (3rd) v Blackburn (6th) and Leicester (4th) v Cambridge (5th). The two that went up automatically were Ipswich and Middlesbrough.

Three days later UEFA announced that the 1996 European Championships would be held in England. Incredibly, by the time that tournament kicked off at Wembley, we would have played FOUR play-off finals at the stadium. 

And several of the main actors in this story would have played key roles in those play-off stories.

Let's take a breath and leave the 1992 play-offs for Part Two.

The players that stay with us from last year, they need to change their mentality. The players that we brought in, they need to understand that Leicester is a demanding club.

That's the quote that sticks out so far. And if you look at Enzo Maresca's first experience of English football, you can see that attitude in evidence right from the start.

This is the story of how an 18 year old from southern Italy arrived in the UK - and quickly impressed everybody who saw him in action.

July 12th 1998. 

It's World Cup Final day - France v Brazil - and Enzo Maresca is watching with special interest.

His own country are not involved - but his role model is.  Zinedine Zidane is the type of midfielder he aspires to be. He loves his technique - the ball control, the twists and turns, the elegance. He loves how these skills are employed for the benefit of the team - not for show, but for the purpose of winning football matches. 

Zidane scored twice as Brazil were beaten 3-0, and while France celebrated, Azzuri boss Cesare Maldini was being hammered for his negative tactics during the tournament - they hadn't got past the quarter-finals. The Itailan media were on the look out for a new manager - and they were also identifying the young talents on the field that could lead the next generation. 

One of those names was Enzo Maresca of Cagliari, captain of the Italian Under-18 team.

Cagliari had just been promoted, but Enzo wouldn't be with them in Serie A. He had just made a momentous decision. As he watched the black-blanc-beur team parade the World Cup - he'd decided that his future lay with - the Baggies. Just days after the Final, he was heading for the The Hawthorns.

How did that happen?

Here's the Sports Argus:

Ferraresi and Maresca had been pals in Italy - and now they'd be together in the West Midlands.

July 20th 

Maresca's first training session with West Brom. It's actually a trial - Albion want to see him in action before they sign him, and watching proceedings is boss Denis Smith. 

There are two other Italians on trial with him - Marco Nappi and Mario Bortolazzi, who are both in their 30s:

From left to right: Nappi, Smith, Bortolazzi, Maresca.

After just half an hour, Denis Smith had seen enough. He decided to offer Maresca a professional contract. Bortolazzi was also taken on, though Nappi returned to Italy.

August 8th

Albion were in the Football League First Division - what we now call the Championship. Their first fiixture of the new season is away at Barnsley, and Maresca is with his teammates on the coach, hoping to make his debut. 

But there's a problem. Cagliari, still incensed about losing their young prodigy for nothing, have not forwarded the paperwork, and Maresca's registration in England has still not been completed.  Albion take the field at Oakwell without him - and draw 2-2. Albion are pretty confident that the hitch will only be temporary. After all, the Italian FA have been faxing them with demands that Maresca be released for Under-18 games.

September 16th 

Those international commitments were the next interruption to his Albion career.  The transfer formalities were eventually completed,  but come the middle of September, he'd still not pulled on an Albion shirt. 

Without him, Albion have had a reasonable start, lying in sixth place. The man making all the headlines is Lee Hughes, who's scored seven goals in seven games.

Then comes Maresca's first chance to impress - in a midweek reserve game at The Hawthorns against Middlesbrough.

Albion cruise to a 5-2 win - and on the scoresheet is the man who, in 2023, would be targeted by Leicester City as the man to replace Brendan Rodgers - a guy called Graham Potter.

Maresca didn't score that day, but played well. In the local press the following day, there are two Albion-related stories:

i) Leicester City want to sign Lee Hughes.

ii) With Mario Bortolazzi suspended for the weekend game v Bradford City, it looks like either Potter or Maresca will be promoted from the reserves.

September 20th  

West Brom 0 Bradford City 2. Potter wasn't chosen, and Maresca started on the bench. The game was live on Sky - a Sunday 1pm kick -off, and there's a good highlights video online. Forward to 8.25 in this clip and you can see that Enzo made an instant impact when he came on:

October 13th

Before he got a chance to make the starting XI he was called away again to represent the Italy Under-18s.

They played England in Tivoli, but captain Maresca couldn't prevent a 4-2 defeat.  In another weird echo of recent events, playing for England Under-18s that day and up against Enzo in midfield were both Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker.

October 24th

Desperate to be involved - part 1:  Enzo still hasn't made the Albion starting line-up, but he's on the bench again as they draw 2-2 at Swindon. Lee Hughes adds another to his tally and as he does his famous 'naff dance' goal celebration, Enzo dashes off the bench to join in. The referee isn't impressed and he goes in the book. 

November 3rd 

Desperate to be involved - part 2:  West Brom 3 Preston 2. Lee Hughes with all three - taking his total to an amazing 18 in 18 games. Enzo comes on as sub yet again and is fouled for the penalty that gives Hughes the chance to complete his hattrick. As the match report said, Maresca had the cheek to try and take the spot kick himself but Hughes was having none of it.

December 12th   

After seven substitute appearances, Enzo finally gets his chance to start at Huddersfield, who have Paul Barnes in their line-up (Harvey's dad). Albion win 3-0 and all the reports agree that Enzo was the Man of the Match:

What he lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in skill and passion. And boy does he wear his heart on his sleeve, waving his arms or clenching his fist at every opportunity in a deliberate attempt to wind up the Albion fans. And the tactic paid off to such an extent that all who had made the journey to South Yorkshire began saluting their new hero long before the final whistle sounded.

December 26th

Two weeks later he stars in a 3-2 win v Preston, and the match report again praised his energy, saying 'Let's hope his enthusiasm rubs off on some of the other players. who are often content to take their foot off the accelerator pedal and coast to the final whistle'.  Professional footballers not giving 100%? Surely not.

Now reports start appearing in the press saying Italian clubs are interested in paying a big fee to take him home,  one of them being Sven's Lazio:

January 2nd

Enzo's first taste of the FA Cup is at Bournemouth, then in the third tier. The Cherries won 1-0, the winner a career highlight for this fellow:

March 6th 1999

After two months out with a foot injury, and with Albion still pushing for a play-off place, Enzo is on the bench as Albion host Oxford. He comes on and scores his first baggies goal - and pretty special it was. Head for 1.10 in this video:

I wonder how long he'd been waiting to reveal that Superman shirt. 

April 17th

Albion 2 Portsmouth 2.  His second goal for the baggies - and Superman is back. Look at 0.40 in this video:

Despite Maresca's efforts, Albion slipped out of the play-off running, finishing in mid-table.  

Jul 23rd 1999

The biggest moment of Enzo's career so far. Italy Under 18s need to beat the Republic of Ireland to reach the Final of the European Championships, and his goal seals a 2-0 victory - 'twisting one way then the other before shooting home' (no video online unfortunately - unless you know better). In the Final three days later they lost 1-0 to Portugal, but reports say his value has now soared to 4 million pounds, with a host of Italian clubs after him.

Could West Brom hold on to him?  The day after the Final,  Albion sacked manager Denis Smith. The man chosen to replace him had experience of taking a club up to the Premier League - Brian Little.

We've been involved in a few relegation fights with Forest over the years, and while the precedents are not all positive, there are some remarkable stories to be told.

Let's have a look back over 100+ years of history. 

1) 1908/09

After our first promotion in 1908, we only lasted one year in the top flight. But as we were plummeting towards Division Two that season, there was one thing easing the pain ever so slightly - and that was the prospect of taking Forest down with us. 

This was the bottom of Division One on April 20th:

It was a 38 game season, so we were dead and buried. With two clubs going down, Forest were sitting perilously, just above the line with two to play. And their next game was - at home to Leicester Fosse.

What a great opportunity to salvage some pride and dent Forest's survival chances.

Sadly, it didn't turn out like that. Forest scored in the 5th, 8th, 11th and 14th minutes.  

By half time it was 8-0. 

The final score was 12-0. The worst defeat in the history of the club - a record that still stands.

Football News reported that: Forest were allowed to crowd around the goal almost as much as they liked. The backs and half-backs made hardly any attempt to stop them.

The Leicester Daily Post said: Time after time, when a judicious charge by a Fosse defender would have dispersed danger, that charge was not made.

Absolutely no blame was attached to our keeper - England international Horace Bailey, without whom, reports said, the score would have been 20-0 or worse.

It's an extraordinary scene to imagine - our defenders wandering round in a daze, doing nothing as Forest banged in goal after goal.

There was a reason for this - the day before the game, the Fosse players had attended the wedding of ex-teammate 'Leggy' Turner, and had clearly celebrated the occasion a little too freely. At least, that was the excuse the players gave to an FA inquiry into the result that was held shortly afterwards.

Forest stayed up, but only for two more years. In 1911 they would join us in Division Two, which is where the next chapter unfolded...

2) 1913/14

There was a time when Football League clubs could suffer a fate even worse than relegation - you could be kicked out of the League altogether. The bottom clubs had to apply for re-election, and if you failed, there was no National League there to catch you - no pyramid structure to cushion the fall. Some clubs simply went out of business completely. That's what happened to Fosse's great rivals Loughborough just a few years before.

The table below is perhaps the most remarkable in the history of the Leicester - Forest rivalry. It shows the two clubs propping up the whole Football League:

There were just two divisions then,  but both clubs faced the prospect of the dreaded re-election vote with just three games each left to play.

Our next fixture was the key - at home to Lincoln, the third team in danger. We won that 2-0, and then a draw at Bury saw us move above the Imps on goal average. 

Forest, though, were adrift, and the team that had won the FA Cup only 16 years earlier had to go through the humiliating process of pleading their case at the League's AGM. 

The memory of that Cup win must have played its part in Forest getting comfortably re-elected - they got 34 votes, Lincoln also surviving with 24.  Stoke's 16 votes was the highest of those applying to join the League.

3) 1914/15

Just a few days after that vote, the results of another application process were announced.  Stoke, hoping to go one better next time, had advertised for a new manager, and out of 130 applicants, the winner was a Scotsman called Peter Hodge, previously at Hearts, and later to become arguably Leicester City's greatest ever boss.  

The Football League season that followed was a surreal affair, played out to a backdrop of slaughter across the Channel, the games continuing even as tens of thousands lost their lives in the early months of the Great War. 

The Football League said that the continuing Saturday fixtures gave people some release from the thoughts of the horrors over the sea and the bleakness of daily life in wartime.

Not that fans of Fosse and Forest were getting much solace. Once again, the two clubs were involved in a fight to avoid the re-election zone. 

In the end, the previous season's positions were reversed and it was our turn to plead our case at the League AGM. 

Thankfully, we cruised home with 33 votes, just one fewer than Forest the year before. Glossop were not so lucky -  the club was in a mess financially and they received just a single vote, allowing Peter Hodge's Stoke to win a place in the Football League. 

Our last game that season had been a 2-0 defeat at Clapton Orient  - and that fixture was the last ever played by Leicester Fosse. The Football League finally decided to suspend the competition, and when things resumed after the war, a whole new club was occupying Filbert Street. This was Leicester City Football Club, and just a few weeks into its existence,  Peter Hodge quit his job at Stoke to join us.

4) 1948/49

Hodge took us to our first Cup semi-final in 1934, then the man he discovered, Johnny Duncan, went one better in 1949.

Look at this freeze frame:

It's one of the most controversial moments in our history. 

2-1 down to Wolves in our first Cup Final, Mal Griffiths hooks the ball through to Ken Chisholm (top of picture). He then shot past the Wolves keeper to equalize. But the linesman's flag went up and the goal was ruled out for offside. Wolves soon went up the other end and made it 3-1.

The picture shows just how close a call it was. A 1940s version of VAR might have allowed the goal to stand, and the game could have finished 2-2. 

But that would have presented a huge scheduling problem.

In the League, we were involved in a fight with Forest at the bottom of Division Two. On Cup Final Day, Forest were in London too. They got a sensational 5-0 win at Upton Park which left the table looking like this:

It was still two up - two down, and with Forest's goal average being much better, we knew we needed three points from our remaining three games to be sure of staying up. And those three games had to be played within the space of only four days in the week after the Cup Final, like this:

Wednesday:    Bury (a)

Thursday:        West Brom (h)

Saturday:         Cardiff (h) 

Now if the Cup Final had been drawn, the replay would have been on Wednesday at Villa Park, with the Bury game switched to the Friday. This would have meant a quite unbelievable sequence of four games in four days:

Wednesday:    FA Cup Final Replay v Wolves

Thursday:        League game v Bury (a)

Friday:              League game v West Brom (h)

Saturday:         League game v Cardiff (a)

In this alternative history, we might have become the first club to win the Cup and be relegated to Division Three in the same season. It's hard to imagine we could have got the necessary League points straight after the exertions of a replayed final. 

The real story, of course, had a different kind of bitter-sweet conclusion. We lost the Cup Final but captured the nation's hearts (no club so low in the League had ever reached a Wembley Cup Final) - we then won at Bury, and after losing to West Brom, got the point at Cardiff that kept us up and sent Forest down, with even the Cardiff fans cheering Jack Lee's equalizer.

5) 1968/69

On January 18th 1969, new Leicester boss Frank O'Farrell took his team to the City Ground for a crucial relegation four pointer. 

He had taken over when Matt Gillies' ten year reign at the club ended a month earlier.  

The game finished Forest 0 Leicester 0, which left the bottom of Division One like this (still just two clubs going down):

The biggest talking point at the City Ground that Saturday evening, however, was neither the match, nor the League table. The news was breaking that Forest were about to appoint a new manager themselves - and it was none other than Matt Gillies, just weeks after quitting Filbert Street. 

This was the Nottingham Guardian on the Monday:

Forest had heard that Man U had their eye on Gillies to step into Matt Busby's shoes when he retired at the end of the season . So they moved quickly to offer him the job. 

For Leicester the remainder of the season was another story of a dramatic FA Cup run combined with a fight against the drop. This time,  we lost out on both counts, while Forest, already out of the Cup, picked up points steadily in the League under Gillies' leadership and finished the season in 18th place, three points above us in 21st (though it wasn't long before we were back up and they were back down).

So that's the past - and totting up the historical score it looks like Forest are 3-2 ahead. 

But you'll notice a pattern emerging:

1909    Forest

1914    Leicester

1915    Forest

1949    Leicester

1969    Forest

2023    __________

Come on lads, time to level it up.

Running through the soap opera that is the history of the England football team there are a number of recurring plotlines. Possession football or the direct approach? Loyalty or current form?  Club or country?

Another one is 'Wild card - in or out?'. Every four years, there's a clamour for a certain player to be included in the squad. The man in the spotlight this time is, of course, our very own James Maddison.

This is the story of the men in whose footsteps he is walking. Three who were chosen, and three who weren't. 

The Wild Cards Who Made It In

Italia 90 - Paul Gascoigne

Bobby Robson didn't really trust him. He hadn't started any of the qualifiers, and in the game he had started, a friendly at Wembley v Chile, England played out a dull goalless draw. 

Then in the last friendly before they boarded the plane, Robson gave him another chance. He was outstanding as we beat Czechoslovakia 4-2, and this is how he rounded off the performance:

That sealed his place in the squad, and made him an almost certain starter too. 

In Italy came those moments v Holland, Belgium, Cameroon and West Germany that we know so well.

France 98 - Michael Owen

He only made his Liverpool debut in May 1997, and he can't have dreamed he'd be in with a chance of making the finals a year later. He was only 17, and anyway, it was a golden age of English strikers. Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham, Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand, Ian Wright, Robbie Fowler - Glenn Hoddle was spoilt for choice. But then Owen took the Premier League by storm in 1997/98, and Hoddle picked him for the full squad in February for a friendly v Chile. He became the youngest England player of the 20th century, and showed glimpses of his potential in a match mostly remembered for a world class performance from Marcelo Salas. 

He finished the season joint top scorer in the Premier League, along with two other contenders for the World Cup squad - Chris Sutton and Leicester born Dion Dublin. Just before the finals, Glenn picked Dublin for a friendly in Morocco, with Owen on the bench. Then Ian Wright was injured, and Owen came on. 

In the second half, Owen got away from the last defender and was through on the keeper, but at an angle. He had two choices - shoot, or pass to Dublin, who would have had an easy tap in. Owen shot and scored, becoming England's youngest ever scorer.

Owen made the squad, Dublin didn't (and nor did Gazza - that was his last cap).

Owen's next task was to oust Teddy Sheringham, Alan Shearer's trusted sidekick, from the starting line up - and as the group stage in France progressed, that's just what he did. In the last 16 v Argentina came that moment. Running through the defence he had that choice again - give it or shoot - but Paul Scholes was never going to get the pass.

Italia 90 - David Platt

Yes - two from the same tournament. 

David Platt's Italia 90 story is if anything, even more dramatic than Gazza's. He was nowhere near selection a year earlier, but then hit the most glorious run of form as Aston Villa challenged for the title. Time after time he would receive the ball on the edge of the box and dance his way through the defence before scoring. His composure as he did so was extraordinary - he seemed to be playing at a different level to everyone else on the pitch, seeing possibilities no one else could. Think Madison at Goodison last week, only more so. This was clearly a talent waiting to flower on the world stage.  But with Gascoigne pressing his claim, could there be room for Platt too?

The thing often forgotten about World Cups is that there is time for all kinds of development to take place within a squad. People are saying now that Maddison has no chance of being picked ahead of Foden, Saka, Bellingham and Sterling - and maybe that's true for the first game, or even the first stage. But what about injuries, fatigue, substitutions, changes in tactics? There's time for so many things to happen.

That's what happened with Platt in 1990 - he made only two substitute appearances in the first three games, but then came his magical moment against Belgium, after which he had to start.

The Men Who Didn't Make It

1954 Switzerland - Duncan Edwards

It's quite a coincidence that arguably the two greatest players the world has ever seen - Pele and Maradona - were born at exactly the same stage of the four year World Cup cycle. They were both 17 years and 8 months old when their national manager had to make the big decision - is this young talent ready for the greatest stage of all? Pele of course was given a chance in 1958 by Brazil - and he led them to their first World Cup triumph. 20 years later, Maradona came so close to following Pele's example. In the end, manager Menotti decided not to include him in the squad - and their victory on home soil shows they didn't need him anyway.

Many believe that Duncan Edwards, had he not died tragically in Munich, would have become a legend of a similar stature. And incredibly, he too was born at the same stage of the World Cup cycle - meaning that the England selectors in 1954 also faced that dilemma - do we pick someone who is only 17 years and 8 months old?

in 1953/54, Edwards had already established himself as a giant on the football field. He'd made his Man U debut the previous season, and now the talk was of him being England's great hope for the finals in Switzerland. 

On March 31st, the England selectors went to Highbury to watch him in a League game. A good performance and he was in contention for the Scotland game the following week. But he had one of his rare off days and Arsenal won 3-1. Had he missed his chance?

England announced a preliminary squad of 40 at the end of April - and Edwards was included. The following month came the final cut, and Edwards missed out.

The selectors were a stubborn lot that year. Just before the finals, we lost 7-1 in Hungary, but they decided to keep exactly the same set of defenders for the games in Switzerland. The first decent side we played, holders Uruguay, hit four past us in the quarter final. 

It's one of the great what-ifs of English football history - what might have happened had Edwards been selected? Oh well, maybe his chance would come four years later...

France 98 - Matt Le Tissier

Glenn Hoddle deserved great credit for finding room for Michael Owen, but there are many who have never forgiven him for his treatment of Le Tissier.

The clamour to include the Southampton man was even greater. He was touted as our one truly creative genius - the talent that could unlock any defence in the world. 

Hoddle had picked him in the crucial qualifier v Italy at Wembley, when Zola scored the only goal of the game, and the famous headline in the press the next day was 'Glenn's a Mug Punter'. He had thrown his two mercurial talents - Le Tissier and McManaman - into the same team, and it hadn't worked. 

Still, Glenn seemed prepared to give him a final chance by selecting him for an England B game against Russia just a few weeks before the finals. If Le Tissier could shine here, he would surely make it in. 

This is what happened:

But when the final 22 was named, Matt's name wasn't there. It seemed all the more bizarre, as Hoddle himself had suffered the same treatment in the 80s - clearly the most talented player of his generation, but never really trusted on the big stage.

Sweden 1958 - Bobby Charlton

Bobby was the man fans all over the world were talking about in 1966, but he would never forget the disappointment of being overlooked in Sweden eight years earlier. 

Four months before the finals, Duncan Edwards and seven other United players died in the Munich Air Crash. Bobby not only survived, but was back playing three weeks later, with reserves and hastily signed newcomers filling the places of those who had lost their lives. 

Somehow, Charlton was playing even better than before the crash, and he was chosen for his England debut in April for the match against Scotland at Hampden:

A 4-0 win and 'World Cup hopes were riding high', as the Pathe News man said.

Three weeks later, Charlton scored both goals as we beat Portugal 2-1 at Wembley.  The FA insisted he play despite United having a European Cup semi-final v AC Milan the following day. Without him, United could only manage a narrow 2-1 win, which Milan easily overturned in the second leg. Bobby probably got over that pretty quickly - he'd made a sensational start to his England career, and was raring to go on the big stage.

England's next warm-up match was, unbelievably, in Belgrade - the place United were returning from when the plane crashed in Munich. It's impossible to know how much the memories affected Charlton's performance, but England lost 5-0. 

He was left out of the final warm up in Russia, and though he was part of the squad that went to the finals, he didn't play a single game. The England selectors thought that, just four months after the crash, there was something not quite right about Bobby (but if so, why take him in the first place, why fly him to Belgrade for one friendly, and why pull him out of the United - Milan match for another?)

There are so many what ifs about those finals. If only the team hadn't lost three key players at Munich (not just Duncan Edwards, but also Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor were England regulars). If only Bobby Charlton had been given the chance to prove he was world class. Would Jules Rimet have been gleaming eight years earlier?

So that's the story of the wild cards - six of them anyway. Please add your own memories below.

It's a bit of a long shot to imagine that our James could rank alongside the greats mentioned here, but there's little doubt that right now, he is playing the best football of anyone in his position, or maybe any position. We don't know just how good he could be. Timing is such a key factor, and he may have timed his late run to perfection. 

So Gareth Southgate is going to name a preliminary squad of 'up to 55 players' this week. If it is that many, surely James Maddison will be included - and James Justin and Harvey Barnes might even sneak in, though they'd be very unlikely to make the final cut.

This gives us a chance to look back at all the Leicester players who have been named in an England World Cup squad - as well as all those who have come anywhere near.

Our First Internationals

Our club had been in existence nearly half a century before we had a player chosen for England.

But then suddenly:

Sid Bishop was chosen in April 1927

Reg Osborne seven months later.

Len Barry six months after that.

Ernie Hine five months after that.

Hugh Adcock seven months after that.

An extraordinary sequence. And the timing was intriguing for another reason. Just as Len Barry became the third on that list, Jules Rimet's idea of a competition for all the nations of the world was given the go ahead. A year later, as Adcock completed the sequence, Uruguay was chosen as the venue for the first 'World Cup'. 

In an alternative history, an England squad packed with Leicester City players sailed across the Atlantic and became the first ever World champions.

But in reality, England and FIFA had fallen out, and we never even entered the competition. Those Leicester players were left only with 'what ifs', though back then, no-one knew that Rimet's tournament would grow into the monster it is today.

This story will be full of 'what ifs'. It's hardly a glorious tale (one shining moment aside), so we'll have a look at all the hypotheticals too.

1930 Uruguay

You might have noticed that Arthur Chandler was not on that list above. He was another Leicester player that would have been in contention for a place in 1930. He was watched by the selectors and kept breaking scoring records, but he was destined never to win a cap.

Had England taken part in that first tournament, they would have traveled across the Atlantic on the same ship as the four European teams that did enter. Another man on the boat was Jules Rimet, with the gleaming trophy in is bag. Three European referees were on board too - and could so easily have been joined by Leicester man Tom Crew. He had refereed the biggest club game in the world that year - the FA Cup Final - and with England then considered the authority on the laws of the game, Crew would have been a leading candidate to take charge of the Final in Uruguay. But with the FA's stance on FIFA, that possibility was ruled out.

In the end, there was one real connection between that first tournament and Leicester City. Sandy Wood, originally from Scotland, played right back for the USA in the tournament, including the 6-1 defeat to Argentina in the semi-final. He later moved to Filbert Street and played over 50 games for us.

1934 Italy / 1938 France

City legend Sep Smith would likely have been in the squad for both of these tournaments, had we entered. He only won one cap, in 1935, but for years he was on the verge of the team, often called up as a reserve. He developed a reputation as the 'nearly man', one newspaper saying he was like the 'fat man who got stuck in the turnstiles', never fully making it inside.

Here's something that has never appeared in any Leicester publication, online or otherwise - a photo of Sep in action for England. it's that first and only cap, in Belfast in October 1935. On the left is Peter Doherty of Ireland, from whose autobiography the picture is taken:

Smith would have been the ideal World Cup squad member, possessing that quality beloved of England managers down the years - versatility. Back then, a selection committee was in charge, each member with his own personal favourites, and as they sat round the table in another interminable conflab, you can imagine Sep, with that ability to cover any number of positions, emerging as the perfect compromise candidate.

It was Italy who won both of those tournaments, with Mussolini, a man who really would have got stuck in the turnstiles, using the triumphs to boost national pride as well as his own massive ego.

1950  Brazil

After the War, England rejoined FIFA, and set their sights on Brazil 1950. What was the prospect for Leicester players? 

In May 1946, England played a 'Victory International' against Switzerland at Stamford Bridge, and selected a half back line that is fascinating from a Leicester perspective:

Billy Wright had guested for Leicester during the War. Neil Frankiln, the Beckenbauer of the 1940s, almost signed for us, and Bert Johnson later built our Ice Kings side with Matt Gillies in the 1960s. 

But these tenuous links aside, we were in the middle of what might be called 'thirty years of hurt' - no City players chosen for England in the almost three decade gap between Sep Smith and Gordon Banks. Don Revie was receiving a lot of plaudits in the late 40s, but he left for Hull City in the autumn of 1949 and wouldn't win a cap until 1954. 

In Brazil, Billy Wright led England out for our first World Cup match, but thanks to the USA we were quickly on our way home.

1954  Switzerland

This was the year we finally won promotion, and it's surprising that Arthur Rowley, with 36 goals that season, didn't even make the provisional squad of 40 for the finals. He continued his good form in the top flight but, like Channy, he never would get a chance for England.

1958  Sweden

Winger Howard Riley became the first Leicester player to play for the England Under-23 side just before the finals, but once again, there were no City players in the squad of 40.

1962  Chile

Gordon Banks was chosen as non-traveling reserve for the finals. He was born in Sheffield, and the keepers who did travel to Chile both played for clubs in that city - Ron Springett at Wednesday and Alan Hodgkinson at United. Centre half Tony Knapp was named in the provisional squad of 40. He'd first been called up in 1960 when he couldn't even get in the Leicester team (Ian King was keeping him out) and he left for Southampton to get first team football. 

1966  England

Finally, on July 11th 1966, a Leicester player played for England at the World Cup. Banks kept a clean sheet against Uruguay, and the only goal he conceded in five matches en route to the Final was a Eusebio penalty in the semi final. 

In his autobiography, Banks tells the story of those Finals in great detail, but strangely absent is detail of saves he made in those first five games - apart from one moment in that semi final. With the score at 2-1, 'I took to the air to tip over a rasper from Coluna that was heading for the roof of my net'. It seems he had very little to do in the other games, which may be why the Goalkeeper of the Tournament award ended up with Lev Yashin.  (The following season, the Kop at Filbert Street would sing 'We all agree, Banksy is better than Yashin'). 

He was busier in the final. Germany's opener from Helmut Haller was a shot he might have saved - Banks said he was unsighted. He had no chance with Wolfgang Weber's equaliser in the last minute of normal time, but he says it should have been disallowed for handball in the scramble that preceded it.

Graham Cross must have been pretty close to joining Banks in the squad. He was chosen several times for the Under 23 team and was spoken of as a candidate for full honours, but in the end he was another nearly man.

Here's Gordon is at his own World Champion celebration - at the Town Hall five days after the final (cutting from Bernie's scrapbook):

1970  Mexico

Banks was still England's Number One, but when he made that famous save from Pele in Mexico he was a Stoke City player, having left Filbert Street in 1967. His replacement Peter Shilton was very close to joining him on the plane - he was fourth choice behind Peter Bonetti and Alex Stepney. He was named in the provisional squad of 28 but not in the final 22. Shilton, never short on confidence, must have been telling himself how different things might have been had it been he rather than Bonetti that was thrown in at the last minute when Banks was taken ill before that infamous quarter final v West Germany.

1974  West Germany

Here's an intriguing hypothetical. Would Frank Worthington have had a chance to shine on the world stage in 1974 if England had made it through? Would those highlight reels have included not just the Cruyff turn and Brazilian banana shots, but also Frank flicking the ball over his head and volleying home? (Of course, thanks partly to Shilton's error against Poland, England hadn't made it through the qualifiers).

It's often assumed that it was only when Alf Ramsey was sacked in May 1974 that the flair players were brought in. Temporary manager Joe Mercer picked Worthington, and Keith Weller too, for those fairly meaningless games in the summer of that year when the eyes of the world were on the finals in Germany. But in fact, Ramsey had selected Worthington for his very last squad - for a friendly game in Portugal. It was only when we drew the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool, and a replay was scheduled for the same day as the Portugal game, that Frank pulled out of the squad. So he had been on Alf's radar. 

Just like 1930, it was another case of 'if only' for several City players. Here's four of them together - Weller, Whitworth, Shilton and Worthington.

They were the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th Leicester players to win full England caps. Only Shilton would play in a World Cup Finals - but that was after he left Leicester.

1978  Argentia

Don Revie, the only ex-Leicester man to manage England, botched qualification, and McLintock's Leicester were relegated. The only player who would have been anywhere near a World Cup squad was central defender Steve Sims, who was chosen for an England B tour of the Far East that summer.

1982  Spain

With Keegan unfit, manager Ron Greenwood was looking for someone to give a spark to his competent but dull England team. How about Gary Lineker, aged 20, who'd got 17 goals for Leicester in Division Two that season? No - it was too early for him. Incredibly, the highest scoring Englishman in the top flight after Keegan was 33 year old Frank Worthington, now at Birmingham City. But no - it was too late for him, seven years after his last call up.

1986  Mexico

No Leicester players in the squad but every City fan felt a sense of pride when the boy from Knighton took home the Golden Boot award. Alan Smith had just finished his fourth season at Filbert Street and was looking more and more like an international class striker, but his first cap came only when he left for Arsenal.

1990  Italy

More goals for Lineker, Alan Smith narrowly missing out on the squad (Steve Bull preferred), and Shilton taking his caps total to 125, but with David Pleat's team treading water in Division Two there were no current City players anywhere near a call-up.

1994  USA

Had we made it to the Finals, the only City player who might remotely have been in with a shout was Julian Joachim. But he would have been a long shot of almost Walcottian proportions (see 2006).

1998  France

Emile Heskey had been called up for the England B team five months before the finals, and Martin O'Neill thought he was ready for a full cap. But his debut would come the following season, with Steve Guppy's only cap coming six months after that.

2002  Japan / South Korea

Emile had left for Liverpool, but relegated Leicester did have one World Cup hopeful - keeper Ian Walker. In the end he missed out and blamed that relegation for his omission.

(Personal note - I was there in Shizuoka as we took the lead in the QF against Brazil, with Heskey completely bossing the supposedly world class Roque Junior. It looked for a few glorious moments as though my dreams might come true - my favourite player leading us to World Cup glory. I still blame myself for it all going wrong - just as I said to the guy next to me 'this is easier than the Argentina game - they haven't even had a chance ', Beckham pulled out of a tackle on the halfway line (metatarsal still not recovered) and Brazil broke away and equalised).

2006  Germany

Matt Fryatt had made his debut for England U-19s two years earlier, and was no doubt dreaming of a career trajectory that took him into the full squad and World Cup glory. That may have been in the realm of fairy stories, but it was at this World Cup that the wildest fairy tale of all was spun when Sven called up the completely untried Theo Walcott for the final squad (with predictable consequences). 

2010  South Africa

Not much to say here, unless you want to make a case for Jack Hobbs, who'd been in the England U-19 team at a similar stage to Matt Fryatt four years earlier. Sven enters the fairy story again here, but as the bad guy, telling Hobbs that he could leave Leicester just a few months after he'd been voted Player Of The Year in April 2010 (though in truth Hobbs had lost the form that won him that award).

2014  Brazil

David Nugent was our top scorer but his only England cap had come seven years earlier. Jamie Vardy's first cap would come in 2015, our first England player since Ian Walker. Danny Drinkwater followed a year later. 

2018   Russia

Finally, 52 years after Gordon Banks, and after all those oh-so-nears (and frankly not-so-nears) Leicester had a second and a third player in the England World Cup squad. 

Maguire played in five games, Vardy in one plus three as sub.

Ben Chilwell nearly made it three at one tournament, but his first cap came just a few months later.

2022  Qatar

It looked for a while as though James Justin and Harvey Barnes had a great chance of making it, but now it seems that only Maddison has a realistic chance of making the final 26.

Over to you, Gareth. 

41) Those McLintock comments about players' lack of passion were actually echoed by Jock when he arrived at Filbert Street - 'I am sure there is a lot of spirit and character lying dormant within them and it is up to me to bring it to the surface', he said

One of the first to understand what Jock meant by this was 17 year old Gary Lineker. Early in Jock's reign he recalls coming in at half time in a reserve game having scored twice when:

“He walked in and slammed the door behind him and started going, ‘You, ya wee English s***e, ye,’ and he’s looking straight at me. He walked up to me - I was tiny in those days - and he picked me up by the scruff of the neck and pinned me against the dressing-room wall. I was trembling.

“At the end of the game he walked in again and said to me, ‘My office, 9.30 in the morning.’ I never slept a wink - I thought my football career was over.

“I made sure I was early. At 9.15 I was sat outside his office like a naughty boy outside the headmaster’s office and eventually he summoned me in.

“I sat down and he said, ‘Wee man, you were magnificent last night. I just want to keep your feet on the ground!’”

42) In his office, Jock installed a foot high statue of his hero William Wallace. Then, just a month into the season, he was called back to his homeland when his father passed away, aged 67. There was talk in the press that he might even be back in Scotland permanently - Ally MacLeod stepped down as national team boss after the debacle of the 1978 World Cup - and Jock was considered a front runner for the job. In the end, the other 'Big Jock' was appointed - Jock Stein, who'd only just joined Leeds United after years as Wallace's main rival at Celtic.

43) Gary Lineker's first goal for the club was one of the most important of his career.

We'd spent the whole season in the bottom half of the table but never looked in real trouble - until April when we took one point from five games. Things were looking bleak, and Jock reckoned we'd go down if we didn't take at least three points from our last four games (this was in the days of two points for a win). 

The first of those games was at Notts County, who were lying 6th in the table. Lineker's goal gave us a 1-0 win, and suddenly the pressure was off. People at the club were using the phrase 'The Great Escape' after that win, which might seem strange as we were never in the bottom three - but it tells you just how much we'd been in free fall. Without that Lineker goal, history could have been very different.

44) This was our Youth team that season.

Of the 18 players pictured, exactly half also played for the first team in 1978/79.  This youth policy reached its peak in the last game of the season when Jock selected the youngest ever Leicester City side for the game at Bramall Lane.

45) This was how Jock reflected on his first season:

During this transition period the enthusiasm and ambition that I have has been echoed throughout the club - by players, the staff and the board - and I know that the fans are behind us. They can see the youngsters getting their chance. Every one of them has gone into every game - which ever City team he is playing in - by giving 100%. 

Having finished in our lowest League position for 30 years, you might think that was too rosy an analysis. But in fact, the fans really were behind the team - and Jock.

46) Jock was impressed with Alan Young's hattrick for Oldham against us in the Cup. He told Martin Henderson, best man at Young's wedding, to contact him and say Leicester were interested. It would have helped that he looked just like a Rangers player in that Oldham shirt. Jock signed him in the summer of 1979.

47) A key result that season was a 2-1 win at St, Andrews in December, with Frank Worthington making his Birmingham debut. Goals from Bobby Smith and Martin Henderson gave us the points which took us up to 4th. Above us were Chelsea, Newcastle and Luton - but none of those three would end up promoted.

The following week, Alan Young's form led to him being called up to the Scotland squad for the first time. But his international story was uncannily similar to Jock's twenty years earlier. As soon as he was chosen, his form seemed to desert him. He went sixteen games without a goal and he, too, was destined never to win a cap. 

48) After Harlow Town stunned Filbert Street with a late equaliser in the Third Round of the Cup, Jock decided to make one change for the replay, bringing in Gary Lineker for Pat Byrne. Lineker wasn't fully fit, but he recalls 'I was too scared to tell Jock, and I was dreadful'.

Harlow won 1-0 - a shock almost as big as Berwick 1 Rangers 0.

49) In an interview in April as the promotion race neared its climax, Jock said he wasn't just aiming for the top three, he wanted City to be champions. 'I want to beat every bastard', he said. This was the interview, with the Mirror, in which he talked about the depressed state of the club when he arrived, quoted right at the start of this thread.

Here's a key goal from the run-in - Bobby Smith's equaliser at Bristol Rovers:

Bonus point if you can identify the Rovers player on the right - later a much-loved Premier League boss.

50) There have been some great old Leicester videos uploaded to youtube by a guy called Nigel Bennett, mostly from Jock's era, The ones from this season give a real flavour of the excitement of that promotion race. 

Nigel Bennett leicester - YouTube

In the end, we did it - the final day win at Orient giving us the Division Two title for the sixth time in 49 seasons - classic yo-yo club behaviour. How long would we stay up this time? 

Jock had his sights set a little higher. 'We're going to win the title', he said.

51) At the start of the 1980/81 season, Mark Wallington talked about the new mood on the terraces: Standing in the goal in front of the Kop I could hardly believe the depth of feeling and support. It's so different from a few years ago and the players thrive on it. Bill Anderson of the Mercury said this: There is a growing fanaticism that I never thought possible at City.

The man responsible for this change was Jock Wallace. Here's Anderson again: 'To the fans, Wallace IS Leicester City'.

Jock would say in return how much he appreciated the support from the Kop. Three chants define that era. There was the classic 'When You're Smiling' with the hand waving, there was the Alan Young chant, with the left to right arm waving ('He's here, he's there, he's every f***ing where), and of course Jock's own chant - (sing his name to a 'three blind mice' melody and you'll have it).

52) Jock signed yet another Scottish striker that summer:

But Melrose didn't score his first goal until December, by which time we were in the bottom three.

53) We suffered another shock FA Cup defeat - losing 3-1 at Third Division Exeter. But three days later came the surprise result of the whole Football League season - our 2-1 win at Anfield which ended Liverpool's unbeaten home run of 85 games (a record which still stands).  Here are two rare photos of the goals - Byrne's equaliser and Melrose's winner.

54) The next shock was Johan Cruyff almost joining the club. Jock's old friendship with him led to month-long negotiations with the deal being that Cruyff would be paid 4,000 pounds for each of our remaining 11 matches. Jock believed the money would be recouped from increased attendances.

The negotiations became public on February 25th;

But at the last minute, the deal fell through. Spanish club Levante had an option to sign him which they finally exercised, and in the programme for the Forest game three days later, Jock was left to explain that he had been '100% sure Cruyff would sign', and that the whole thing had not been a PR exercise to boost ticket sales. 

55) We had been in the bottom three since November, and despite famous victories against Liverpool (twice), Spurs (twice), Man U and Arsenal, our relegation was pretty much sealed with two games still to play. So much for winning the title. 

Jock said this in his last programme notes of the season: I made a fool of myself when I predicted we would win the Championship and I have taken a bit of stick about it ever since. But if I did not feel and believe that at the start of the season I have no right to be here.

Fine words, but surpassed by this shrewd analysis from Of Fossils And Foxes:

Jock reveled in the Braveheart approach to the game. Yet he could often appear a rather naive tactician; and it did not help that his assistant Ian MacFarlane seemed hewn from the same craggy rock. The abiding memory of the latter years of the Wallace regime was of Jock and Ian rising together from the City bench, snarling and shaking their fists to demand more frenetic effort, rather than conveying any more subtle shift in playing pattern.

Despite going down, Jock's job was not in danger. Most fans still believed in him, and the board were keen for him to see out his long contract.

56) 1981/82. Jock's last season at Leicester.

In October, he took us to Berwick to celebrate the centenary of his old club. On the cover of the programme was a picture of him defying Rangers in the 1967 Cup tie.

A couple of weeks later, as if prompted by that reminder of his own goalkeeping style, Jock made some very revealing comments about Mark Wallington. They came after a 4-1 win at Charlton in which Wallington was outstanding. Jock said: One save was the best I have ever seen him make, when he took a cross ball under fantastic pressure. If he had been taught to take crosses like that in his younger days he would have been right up there alongside other world class keepers instead of being simply a very good club keeper.

How much did Jock try to coach Wallington? Those comments suggest Jock was trying to remake him in his own image - a keeper with the courage to come off his line and command his area with authority. It's an issue which reappeared later in the season, as we'll see.

57) In that Charlton game Gary Lineker scored twice - and it was that brace that finally cemented his position. He wouldn't be dropped again. Since making his debut three seasons earlier he had been in and out of the team and had made fewer than 40 appearances in total. It really did take a long time for him to develop into the world class striker we all know. 

Here he is scoring a classic Lineker goal against Watford in December - a through ball from midfield and his pace means the last defender has no chance:

58) The most dramatic game of Jock's reign was the FA Cup quarter-final against Shrewsbury. Jock's experience as both a goalkeeper and a manager helps us to understand better the drama of that day.

With Leicester 1-0 up came the famous moment when Wallington charged out to stop an equaliser. 'Wallington's bravery saving Leicester City.' Barry Davies says in the commentary, 'And that really must have hurt him'. It was classic Wallace-style goalkeeping - the kind that we have seen throughout this tale - from both Jock and his father. Wallington had clearly listened to Jock's advice about dominating the area.

And he had no choice but to listen again when Jock ran onto the field to lift him back to his feet so he could carry on, despite having almost zero mobility.

Later in the commentary Barry Davies calls out Wallace for this error. By the time Wallington was substituted, Shrewsbury had taken advantage and were 2-1 up.

Here's Jock back on the field after Alan Young had donned the gloves and himself got hurt:

And watching on the left as Lynex takes over:

But if Wallace can be criticized for not acting sooner, he also deserves credit for having created the team spirit which drove that heroic fightback, and for helping forge the bond between players and fans so evident on that day.

Here's the full story:

59) Three points for a win had been introduced that season, and it added an extra dimension to the promotion race. This was the table with two months of the season remaining:

We're down in 12th, but after our FA Cup exertions, we have a remarkable five games in hand on Blackburn, who were then occupying the third promotion place.

A series of wins put us right back in the picture. There was a dizzying spell when fans were repeatedly doing sums no-one had ever done before - three points x so many games in hand = which possible position?  But an even more impressive surge came from Norwich City who, as you can see, were in 13th and without the games in hand. They'd just signed Martin O'Neill, and he led them on a charge up the table that set up Leicester v Norwich on May 1st as the key game.

Norwich went four up in less than an hour. It finished 4-1, and though we could still do it if we won all our games, we ran out of steam and O'Neill led the Canaries into the top flight.

60) So it was double disappointment - no promotion, and we'd lost in the FA Cup semi-final of course. Then came the shock news that Jock was quitting - for Motherwell. 

Leicester fans were left with only memories. Here's a classic Jock quote from the best moment of his four years at Filbert Steet - the win at Orient that sealed the Division Two title:

61) As we appointed Gordon Milne as our new boss, Jock got down to pre-season training at Motherwell in the usual way.

Yes, that is a very young Gary McAllister looking incredibly apprehensive about the sand hills, two years before he joined Leicester.

62) After an uneventful year at Motherwell, Jock went home. He was appointed Rangers boss again in October 1983, and they quickly won a trophy, beating Celtic in the League Cup Final. The match is remembered for two iconic Jock moments - 

This comment before the game:

Then this at the end:

That's STV reporter Graham Stewart.

Jock was sacked by Rangers in 1986, after which they appointed Graeme Souness. 

63)  Jock's next move was to follow John Toshack and Terry Venables to Spain to take charge of Sevilla. He decided to take an old acquaintance from Leicester as an interpreter. Raymonde Fernandez owned a Spanish restaurant that Jock often visited when he was boss at Filbert Street. Thanks to Jock's recommendations, the place became a favourite of Midlands football managers.  (Anyone with more details about this restaurant or Senor Fernandez please tell us below).

Jock didn't have much success in Spain, either with his team or with his language classes (unlike Gary Lineker), and he was shown the door by the Sevilla owners who said his inability to communicate with his players had undermined his position. 

64) Jock's final job was at Colchester, and he would end his career with one last act of managerial heroism.

The situation was this. In 1988/89, one club went down automatically from the Football League to the Conference. With just a few matches to go, it came down to a dog fight between two managers - Jock Wallace of Colchester, and Brian Little of Darlington.

Wallace had joined just a few weeks earlier when the Us looked doomed, but he had put them on the verge of a great escape. There then followed a most extraordinary run of results that is worth recording in full as a fitting way to conclude this long tale:

April 15th    Lincoln City 1 Colchester 1 - an 83rd minute equaliser salvages a point, but they're still two points behind Darlington.

April 21st    Colchester 1 Carlisle 1 - a last minute equaliser gives them a point, and they're just one behind Darlington.

April 25th    Colchester 2 Wrexham 1 - a winner two minutes from time gives them three points (but Darlington won too).

April 29th    Darlington 1 Colchester 2 - the big one - after Little's side had gone ahead, Jock's men fight back to move off the bottom.

May 1st     Colchester 3 Halifax 2 - after Halifax had been two up, they fight back for another unlikely but vital three points.

So in five games in a row they had shown that resilience and spirit that Jock valued above all other things.  They'd hauled themselves to a position of (almost) safety. They followed that up with convincing wins over Exeter and Torquay to leave Brian Little's side facing the big drop out of the League.

Sadly, Jock's health deteriorated the following season and though still only 54, he retired from the Colchester job, and from football for good. He would die six years later.

65)  For City fans of a certain age, Jock will always have a special place in their memories. He was a giant - metaphorically and literally - as this photo taken at Hazel Street Primary School, just a few yards from the East Stand at Filbert Street, emphasizes.

21) The Disappearing Goalkeeper (2)

In that BBC documentary, The Saturday Men, there's a bizarre continuity error. At the climax of the programme we see the players, Jock included, in the dressing room preparing for the big game. Then as they run out, Jock has magically been transformed into Tony Millington:

Clearly it was filmed over several Saturdays then edited together.

But actually, that 'error' captured a deeper reality. His replacement by Millington signaled the end of his time at West Brom. He was transfer listed at the end of the season and never played in the top flight again.

The club that showed most interest in him in the summer of 1962 was, unbelievably, Hinckley Athletic. Yes - the Leicestershire club then in the second tier of the Southern League. What's more, Jock was fully prepared to drop five down five levels of the football pyramid to play for them. 

How come? Well, the maximum wage had only just been abolished, and the retain and transfer system was still in place. Albion were asking what Jock believed to be an inflated fee for his signature, and if no one came in, Jock would just have to rot in the reserves. 

But clubs outside the Football League were not bound by transfer regulations - they didn't have to pay a fee at all. Instead, they would offer well-known names like Jock a higher wage than they were getting in the First Division.

Jock knew how the system worked and held out for more money than Hinckley were prepared to pay. Negotiations broke down and Jock signed instead for a club one level higher - Bedford Town, in the Southern League Premier Division.

22) Giant Killer

The move didn't mean Jock was out of the headlines. Bedford Town were soon to cause the biggest FA Cup shock of the 1960s - and Jock was the hero.

In January 1964, they battled through to the Third Round proper, and were drawn away at Newcastle United, the post-war giants of the FA Cup, who'd lifted the trophy three times in the 1950s.

Bedford stunned St. James' Park by going two up, and then faced a Geordie onslaught. Jock stood firm and it wasn't until the last minute that United scored.

The photo shows you Jock at his best - a huge man always looking to leave his line and dominate the area.

In Round Four, Bedford were drawn at home to Carlisle United. That's where the fairy tale ended, with Carlisle winning 3-0. Here's Jock failing to stop Frank Kirkup (number 11) scoring, as the gas holder dominates The Eyrie, Bedford's ground. Rushing to congratulate the scorer is Hugh McIlmoyle, Leicester's centre forward in the 1961 Cup Final. 

23) Record Breakers

Jock moved on at the end of that season, dropping down another level to join Hereford United in the Southern League First Division. Here too he made waves. The club had an extraordinary year - winning 34, drawing 4 and losing 4 for a total of 72 points - the best ever 42-game season in English professional football (Doncaster Rovers got the same points total in Division Three North in 1946/47, but Hereford's goal average this season was superior).

Here's that commanding presence again - a dangerous cross, but Hereford defenders know they can leave it to Jock. The ground is Hartsdown Park, Margate. The photo is from the Thanet Times. Jock really was a big fish in a small pond.

24) In 1966/67, Jock set another record. He is believed to be the only player to appear in the FA Cup, the Welsh Cup and the Scottish Cup in the same season.

It started in October when Hereford beat Kidderminster Harriers in the Fourth Qualifying Round of the FA Cup. Two weeks later they beat a team called Berriew in the Welsh Cup. And two weeks after that, Jock left Hereford to take the player-manager's job at his old club Berwick Rangers. He was still only 31.

Jock now had the chance to try out a new training idea. He took the Berwick players to the sand dunes at Gullane near Edinburgh and demonstrated what he wanted them to do:

In later years, Jock's players at Hearts, Rangers, Leicester City and Motherwell would all have to go through the same test of endurance.

But where did he get the idea?

25)  Here is Jock in later years with Sean Connery.

In the mid 60s, just before Jock started the sand dunes training routine, Connery starred in a film called 'The Hill'. It was about a brutal army prison regime in wartime North Africa in which soldiers are broken down and built back up again to turn them 'into men'. 

The main punishment is to run repeatedly up and down a huge man-made hill in the middle of the prison:

26) Two months after Jock became Berwick player-manager, they were given a dream draw in the First Round of the Scottish Cup - Rangers at home. 

Rangers were not the most popular club in Berwick - for several reasons.

Three years before, Rangers had pushed for a restructuring of Scottish football that would have meant Berwick and four other small clubs being thrown out of the League. After a long legal battle, the plan was eventually rejected.

That hadn't been forgotten - and nor had Rangers' previous visit to Berwick in 1960. They won 3-0 in the Cup that day, and their fans celebrated by smashing up the town. This is from the Daily Herald:

Three thousand fans blazed a trail of destruction through Berwick town centre on Saturday night. They smashed 15 shop windows and looted hundreds of pounds worth of goods during an all-night drinking spree.

Publican Arthur Embleton of the Royal Hotel said, "They stole everything in view, including 7,000 cigarettes". The Berwick telephone exchange was choked with calls from publicans seeking police help. Though the fans drank 250 gallons of whisky, publicans said 'we don't want them here again'.

Now in 1967, Rangers were back - and expected to stroll to another easy win against Jock's team. After all, they had never been beaten by a Second Division club.  

27) January 28th 1967

At the start of the match, Rangers launched attack after attack, but they couldn't get past Jock. Then after thirty minutes came Sammy Reid's historic goal, a moment captured in this grainy video footage:

The half time score was 1-0, and in the second half, Jock was still stopping everything. Here he is commanding his area in typical fashion:

They couldn't beat Jock by fair means, so they tried something else. Rangers defender Colin Jackson later recalled what happened: 

We realised that Jock was the guy who was stopping us so Willie Johnston tried to do him. Jock came for a cross and Willie went in slightly over the top. Actually it was waist height and he clattered into Big Jock. But Jock was an old campaigner so the way he turned he gave it back to Willie and broke his ankle.

Berwick held on and Rangers were out. The Scotsman newspaper called it “the most ludicrous, the weirdest, the most astonishing result ever returned in Scottish football.”

28) Berwick were drawn against HIbernian away in the next round, and they nearly caused another upset. They had a goal controversially disallowed and Jock saved a penalty, but in the end they lost 1-0.

What were Rangers doing that day? Having been knocked out, they had a free weekend, and they decided to head south for a match against - Leicester City.  

It was a friendly match, but there was trouble on the terraces, a shower of bottles on the pitch and 30 injuries. Leicester won 1-0. By the time the two clubs played each other again in 1984, Jock was a hero to both sets of supporters.

29) Berwick's next big Cup game, in 1969, was memorable for a different reason - at the time, Jock was doing four jobs at once. He was manager and goalkeeper of Berwick, and had just been appointed by Hearts to the position of 'Assistant manager and coach'. Jock insisted on working for both clubs until Berwick were knocked out of the Cup.

In the run up to the Scottish Cup ties on January 6th, Jock was preparing the Berwick players for their game at Aberdeen, and the Hearts players for their trip to Dundee. Had the two clubs been drawn to play each other the situation would have been even more surreal.

Berwick lost 3-0, but Hearts won 2-1 at Dundee, and they could now claim sole ownership of the Big Man. 

That game at Pittodrie brought the curtain down on Jock's career as a professional footballer. Just like his father, his last game was a defeat in in a Scottish Cup tie. Jock Senior had been 38 and knew his time was up, Jock Junior was now 33, and told the press he was still the best keeper in Scotland. 

But it was time to hang up his gloves, and to devote his energy to inspiring others.

30) Hearts had big plans for Jock Wallace. Second in command at first, they saw him as the long-term successor to boss John Harvey.

Part of Jock's long-term plan at Tynecastle was to blood the youngsters - it was here that he first realised the benefits of giving youth a chance. Two of them, Eddie Thomson and Davie Clunie, were chosen for a Scotland v England Under-23 match at Sunderland in March 1970. Jock wasn't to know it as he traveled down with the two players to Roker Park, but a snow storm that caused the game to be abandoned in the second half would have big long-term consequences.

When the game was called off, he walked back to his hotel in the snow with Rangers assistant boss Willie Thornton. Jock spoke about his ideas - and Thornton was impressed. He went away with an idea of his own.

31) Jock Wallace was appointed Assistant Manager of Rangers in April 1970, though in truth he was more than an 'assistant'. He would have as much influence over the team as boss Willie Waddell.

Rangers' task was clear. In the season just ending, Rangers finished second - behind Celtic. They'd lost in the Scottish Cup - at Celtic. And they'd been knocked out of the League Cup - by Celtic.

Their Old Firm rivals had now won five titles in a row. Rangers hadn't won anything since a Scottish Cup triumph in 1966.

Six months later, they finally had a chance. It was the League Cup Final again - their opponents, of course, Celtic.

Wallace surprised Waddell by suggesting they play 16 year old Derek Johnstone at centre-forward. Waddell said 'He's only a kid', but Jock replied 'He's the only player we have that can beat Billy McNeill in the air'. 

Jock got his way. 

This is what happened:

Rangers won 1-0. From that moment on, Jock never had any doubts about giving youth a chance. If you were good enough, you were old enough - a philosophy that Dave Buchanan, Andy Peake, Gary Lineker, and many other Filbert Street teenagers would later be grateful for.

32)  Just ten weeks after that Final, 66 fans (including 31 teenagers), lost their lives in the Ibrox disaster. 

Here's Jock:

It was the biggest disaster in British football history:

1971 Ibrox disaster - Wikipedia

One consequence was Willie Waddell's desire to completely rebuild the ground, ripping up the old terraces and turning it into a stadium. When the plan was finally ready in 1978, it seems that the prioritizing of stadium redevelopment over team rebuilding was a major factor in Waddell falling out with Jock, who then quit to join Leicester City.

33) September 28th 1971 was a remarkable day in the European Cup Winners Cup.

Chelsea beat Jeunesse Hautcharage 13-0, for a 21-0 aggregate - the highest ever by a British side in Europe. At the Nou Camp, a 19 year old gave a dazzling performance that sealed his move from Distillery in the Irish League to the English First Division - his name, Martin O'Neill. At Ibrox, Rangers sealed a first round aggregate win over Rennes - the first step on the road to the biggest game of Jock's career. 

In the second round, they played Sporting Lisbon. No European tie has ever had a more bizarre conclusion. 

Rangers won their home leg 3-2, and Sporting won the return by the same score. In extra time, both sides scored again, so it was 6-6 overall. The referee told the players that a penalty shoot out was required. 

Rangers missed their first spot kick, and their second, and their third, and their fourth. Sporting scored three and that was it. Rangers trooped disconsolately back to the dressing room.

Then there was a knock on the door, and someone said there'd been a mistake. The penalty shoot out should never have taken place. Rangers should have been declared the winners after extra time on the away goals rule.

No-one knew what to believe, but UEFA confirmed the away goals ruling, and Rangers were in the quarter-finals.

34)  It often had a reputation as the easiest of the three European competitions to win, but after beating the French and Portugese Cup winners, Rangers then had to get past Torino of Italy before facing Bayern Munich in the semi-finals.

This was the Bayern of Gerd Muller, Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner and Uli Hoeness - the spine of the great West German team that outclassed England at Wembley that same spring - what many believe to be the greatest ever German XI.

Rangers drew 1-1 in Munich and then at Ibrox Sandy Jardine scored a famous 25 yarder past Maier after just two minutes. Rangers won 2-0 and they were heading to Barcelona to meet Dynamo Moscow in the final.

Here's the key moments from the match. Great pitch invasion at the end:

And here's Jock with the trophy:

35) Rangers were banned by UEFA for a year because of the fans' behaviour in Barcelona, but they did play one European tie. A Dutch journalist suggested a meeting between the winners of the European Cup and the Cup Winners Cup. UEFA wouldn't sanction it because of the ban, but the game is now recognised as the first ever European Super Cup.

Rangers were beaten by Ajax home and away, with Johann Cruyff outstanding, as you can see here:

Two more contrasting football personalities than Jock Wallace and Johann Cruyff it would be hard to imagine. But the pair got chatting after the match and formed a friendship that endured - one that would lead to Jock almost pulling off the most outrageous transfer coup of the decade when he was manager at Filbert Street.

36) After their European victory, Willie Waddell 'moved upstairs' to become general manager, and Jock was given full control of the team. The task was still the same as when he joined the club. Celtic had won the League in 1971 and 1972, taking their run to seven in a row.

He was still in charge of training, and the sessions at Gullane continued:

The players bought into Jock's harsh regime, many coming back for afternoon training sessions, and that fitness helped them overcome Celtic 3-2 in the Scottish Cup Final after an epic battle.

But they still finished 2nd in the League as Celtic made it eight in a row.

37) The following season, Celtic made it nine. But then finally, in 1974/75, Rangers got the one they really wanted.

They needed a point at Hibs to clinch the title, and it finished 1-1. Here's a fuzzy shot of a great moment:

Rangers fans totally took over Easter Road that day, like Leicester at Upton Park in 1992, only more so. Look at the scenes on the huge East Terrace in this clip:

By the way, that Leicester game at Upton Park came at the climax of the last season of the old Football League system before the Premier League was brought in. And Rangers' win at Hibs clinched the last ever Football League title north of the border, before the ten club Premier League kicked off in 1975/76.

38) Rangers won that first Premier League title, and Jock sealed his legendary status at Ibrox by leading them to all three domestic trophies.  

Also in the glittering line up are the Glasgow Cup and a Reserves trophy.

A new star that season was Martin Henderson, who would later follow Jock south:

39) The cycle of triumph and tragedy that has been a feature of this story continued in March 1978 when Rangers and Scotland star Bobby McKean was found dead in his car, having died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

What happened? There's a Rangers supporters' thread that is pretty illuminating. For some reason the link can't be posted here, but google 'follow follow Bobby McKean' and you'll find it straight away.

Just three days after his death, Rangers played Celtic in the League Cup Final. Jock told the players to win it for Bobby, and that's what they did, winning 2-1 with Gordon Smith's goal the clincher.

 40)   That was the first leg of another treble. The season finished with two historic occasions. Rangers beat Motherwell 2-0 to clinch the title in the last game at Ibrox before the old terraces were bulldozed, and then at Hampden they beat Aberdeen in what was to be Jock's last game before his shock departure.

Leicester's season had been a triple dose of misery. Losing to Third Division Portsmouth in the League Cup, losing at Third Division Walsall in the FA Cup, and finishing bottom of Division One with five wins and 26 goals in 42 games.

When Frank McLintock quit he laid the blame for the awful season at the players' door, saying they were 'completely devoid of passion' and 'a bunch of introverts'. 

Newspapers were speculating on who might replace him as boss. 'Possibles include John Barnwell of Peterborough, Gerry Summers of Gillingham, and Bobby Roberts of Colchester', said a report in early May. 

Not exactly a list to get fans rushing to renew their season tickets.

What a shock it was when, in a Glasgow hotel on May 26th, Big Jock was announced as our new boss.

"When I came to this club", Jock Wallace said, "Everything was wrong. The players were sick. They were sour. There was no ambition. The directors were frustrated. The fans were disenchanted. We were hugely in debt".

Sound familiar?

He was talking about the summer of 1978. We'd just been relegated under Frank McLintock after our most miserable season ever - five wins and 26 goals in 42 League games.

Jock changed everything. He got rid of the old timers and brought in a group of teenagers who, along with a few shrewd signings from Scotland, took us back up two years later as Champions.

Everything about the club was rejuvenated, and Jock formed a bond with Leicester fans closer than any previous manager had enjoyed.

Today, September 6th, would have been his 87th birthday.

He died tragically young, aged just 60, but he packed a huge amount into those years. This is the extraordinary story of those triumphs and tragedies. It's a long read, and it'll be divided into about a dozen sections, which I'll post one a day for the next couple of weeks.

It could be a momentous couple of weeks for Leicester City. This story is a reminder that a crisis is also an opportunity.

I hope you enjoy it.

1) Same Old Leicester

It's August 29th, 1936. Leicester City are playing Blackpool at Filbert Street in the first game of the season, and just after the start comes a small moment of history.

Leicester's opening attack has come to nothing, and the referee has signaled for a goal kick.

What happened next?

In previous years, a defender was allowed simply to tap the ball to the keeper, who could pick it up and advance to the edge of his area for a drop kick. 

But in the summer of 1936, the FA introduced a new goal kick rule. Now, the ball had to be kicked right out of the penalty area before it was deemed in play. 

So that August afternoon, the Blackpool keeper placed the ball carefully at the edge of his six-yard box, took a series of precisely measured backward steps, then ran forward to belt the ball down field as hard as he could.

Leicester supporters behind the goal would no doubt have grasped the comic possibilities pretty quickly. Visiting goalkeepers always present an inviting target, and this poor fellow had to go through the whole routine right in front of them.

It would have been isolated jeers and wisecracks for the first kick, but then, perhaps even on this first day, others would have latched on and joined in, the jeers gradually becoming a chorus. Years later (no-one knows exactly when), four-letter words were added, and the Leicester City goal kick ritual became fully established. 

But on that first day, it had little effect. The match report tells us how well the 'new goal kick' was being performed by the Blackpool keeper. 

He wasn't the type to be easily intimidated. His name was John Wallace. Commonly known as 'Jock'.

Blackpool won 2-1 that day. Nearly 50 years later, voices from those same terraces would be directed at Jock's son. Not in provocation, but in adoration.

2) The Holy Grail

Jock Wallace Jr. was only at Leicester for four years, but this story will cover the highlights of the whole career - of both him and his father. Not just because it is such an incredible tale, but it also helps us to understand what happened in those four years at Filbert Street. An additional reason is that for both of them, Leicester City keep cropping up at key moments in the story.

Jock Senior started his career at Raith Rovers but was soon spotted by English scouts and moved to Blackpool in February 1934, aged 22. At that time, there was one trophy footballers wanted to win above all others. Not the World Cup (still in its infancy, without home nations' participation), not the European Cup (still 20 years away), not the League Title - which was then placed second behind the big one - the FA Cup. 

Jock got his first chance in 1935 when in the draw for the Third Round, Blackpool were handed an away tie - at Filbert Street. City were then struggling at the bottom of Division One, and the Cup offered a welcome diversion. Surely they could get past Second Division Blackpool.

It wasn't that easy. Here's Jock in action that day:

The report speaks of 'wonderful goalkeeping by Wallace'. But eventually we made the breakthrough and won 2-1 (though we didn't have much of a Cup run. We lost 1-0 at home to Arsenal in the next round).

3) It's A Boy

At the start of the following season,1935/36, Blackpool have a new manager, Joe Smith. He would stay in the job for over two decades and lead them out at Wembley for that most famous of all FA Cup occasions - the Matthews Final of 1953.

Leicester had lost their fight against relegation and were now Blackpool's rivals in Division Two. 

In the first week of the season, it was all happening for Jock. His wife was expecting a baby, though she was over a hundred miles away in Wallyford, the family home near Edinburgh. Jock wanted the child to be born in Scotland. In those days, you could only play for the country of your birth - and as Jock imagined the future, the thought of a son in an England jersey was more than he could bear. 

On Friday September 6th, John Martin Bokas Wallace came into the world. It's unlikely Jock Senior was present. On the Wednesday he'd helped Blackpool to beat Norwich 2-1, and on Saturday there was a fixture at Bury, which Blackpool drew 1-1 to put them top of the table. 

Those names tell a story. John and Martin were taken directly from his father. But what about 'Bokas'? That was a tribute to his teammate, Frank Bokas, a half back who rarely got a game in Blackpool's first XI, but who was clearly a great friend.

Here's the proud father and wee Jock:

After that great start, Blackpool's season trailed off. A couple of weeks after Jock Jr. was born, Leicester City traveled to Bloomfield Road cheered on by over 2,000 away fans out for a fun weekend at the seaside. We won 5-3 to leave us top of the table. But that too was a false dawn. We would finish 6th, with Blackpool down in 10th.

4) Promotion Rivals

That brings us back to the 'new goal kick' occasion we started with.  After that 2-1 defeat to Blackpool on the opening day of 1936/37, we were struggling for a few weeks and a drop into the third tier seemed a possibility. Then new boss Frank Womack signed the legendary Jack Bowers from Derby.

We went on an incredible run, with Bowers scoring 12 in his first six games. That set up the match of the season on Boxing Day - the return game at Blackpool. We were unbeaten in eleven, they'd won six on the trot, scoring 24 goals in the process. 

But one man would be missing. Two weeks before at Plymouth, Jock Wallace was stretchered off and taken to hospital 'in a grave condition with a suspected fractured spine'. On Boxing Day, he was in a hospital bed listening for updates from Bloomfield Road as we were given a real hammering - Blackpool were 6-0 up after 55 minutes and a record score looked on the cards.

Thankfully, we salvaged a bit of pride and it finished 6-2. And thankfully for Jock, his injury wasn't as serious as first feared. He was back in action a month later to help his team to second place at the end of the season - behind Leicester City. Yes - the teams that had met on the opening day were the two promoted - and so the rivalry would continue in the top flight.

5) The Hampson Tragedy

January 8th 1938. Blackpool's latest quest for the FA Cup began with an impressive 1-0 win at Birmingham. Then two days later the unthinkable happened.

Jimmy Hampson was Blackpool's centre forward. Jock stopped them at one end, Jimmy knocked them in at the other.  In 361 games for them he'd scored 248 goals - a club record that still stands.

On Monday afternoon, he heard the draw for Round Four. Blackpool were heading back to Birmingham - this time to play Aston Villa. On Monday evening he went fishing with friends off the Fleetwood coast. His boat was hit by a trawler, and he was knocked overboard. His body was never found. 

The photo shows the Blackpool players at the memorial service. That's Jock on the middle-right of the picture with the dark-coloured belt.

A week after the funeral, they lost that tie at Villa 4-0 in front of almost 70,000. On the same day, Leicester City went out at Preston, Blackpool's great rivals. Inspired by Bill Shankly, Preston went on to lift the Cup. 

You can see Jimmy Hampson in this photo of the Blackpool team of the late 30s:

Jock is circled in the back row. In the middle row from the left are Jimmy Hampson, Fred Bokas and Maurice Reeday, the full back who would shortly join Leicester City and gain a reputation as Stanley Matthews' toughest opponent. In the front row is Peter Doherty, widely considered the finest inside forward of his generation.

The following year was the last before the war. Leicester would be relegated, and Jock would play his last games before spending the war years back in Scotland, making guest appearances for a number of teams. 

Jock Junior was at school in Wallyford, sharing not only his father's name, but also his passion for football. And in the next part of this story, along with the amazing tale of Jock Senior's last bid for FA Cup glory, we'll see Jock Junior set out on his own career.

6) Football Fever

Jock Jr. was a Rangers fan. His first visit to Ibrox was in 1944, and it was a bit of an adventure. He'd walk five miles from his home in Wallyford near Edinburgh, catch the supporters' club coach, then at the ground he'd ask people to lift him over the turnstiles.

When the war was over, it seemed like everyone had the same idea. After a seven year break, people were desperate to see competitive football. Jock Sr. was trying once again to get to Wembley with Blackpool, and in February 1946 they played Middlesbrough in a Fourth Round replay, staged at neutral Elland Road. 

Such was the clamour to see the match that fans ripped down fences around the ground and an estimated 15,000 people got in without paying.

This was the scene after the game:

Sadly for Jock, Blackpool lost 1-0.

Just a month later another combination of huge crowds and poorly maintained facilities led to 33 people dying in a crush at Bolton. It was the worst disaster in British football history - until the 1971 Ibrox tragedy, which features later in this tale.

7) First Major Trophy?

In 1946/47, Jock Jr. moved up to Musselburgh Grammar School, and turned out regularly for the school team. He wasn't yet a keeper (his future position) - he played centre half. It was a star-studded team - in goal was future Scottish International Bert Slater, and in the forward line was John White, future Spurs and Scotland inside forward.

Meanwhile Jock Sr. was having a great season with Blackpool. They'd never won a major trophy, but a remarkable game at Liverpool over Easter left them in a heady position - top of the Football League. Liverpool had gone two up, but the Tangerines stormed back to win 3-2, with a last minute wonder save from Jock preventing an equaliser.

This was the table after the game:

You'll notice that Wolves had an amazing five games in hand. Blackpool lost their next two, but Wolves stalled too and it was Liverpool who won the title.

8) The Disappearing Goalkeeper

For the following season, 1947/48, Blackpool signed Stanley Matthews from Stoke City. Could he be the catalyst that would finally bring them a major trophy? Expectations were high when they hosted Leeds United in the Third Round of the Cup. But there was a late hitch - Jock Wallace had gone missing:

Jock failed to turn up and was suspended by the club. He never played for them again. 

Blackpool didn't seem to miss him. They beat Leeds 4-0 and then went on a great run to the latter stages of the competition. Jock had missed out on his chance for Wembley glory.

Or had he? That wasn't the end of the story.

Derby County were also having a good Cup run and had made the quarter finals. But before the tie at QPR they had a goalkeeping crisis. With no senior keeper fit they were desperate to sign someone. There was just one problem - all the decent keepers were Cup-tied, having already turned out for their own sides in the earlier rounds.

That's where Jock came in - having been AWOL for that Leeds tie, he was free to play for any other side in the competition. Derby snapped him up and he played as they got past QPR and into the semi--finals.

There was now the prospect of Jock facing his old side in the final at Wembley - if Derby could beat Man U, and Blackpool could get past Spurs. 

Here's Jock's photo in the Derby Evening Telegraph before that semi-final:

It wasn't to be. Stan Mortensen hit a hattrick as Blackpool made it to Wembley for the first time, but Derby fell 3-1 to Man U at Hillsborough. In the Final it was United who triumphed, leaving Blackpool and Stanley Matthews the loveable losers, just like Leicester City a year later. Jock's head was no doubt spinning with thoughts of what might have been.

9) The Final Drama

Jock's time at the Baseball Ground was brief. At the end of that season he went back to Scotland to play part time for Leith Athletic in Edinburgh in Scottish League Division C. The rest of the week he worked down the pit and did various other manual jobs - including working on the development of Leith Athletic's ground. 

No clubs could get permission to use precious building materials for football grounds in the austere post war years, but Leith took a different route. St. Bernard's were another Edinburgh club in the Scottish League, but financial problems in wartime led to the club folding and their small main stand being sold - to Leith Athletic. 

You can see the stand here, at St. Bernard's on the left, and then at its new home:

So Jock not only played in front of Leith Athletic fans, he also helped reconstruct the stand from which they watched him. 

The final drama in his career came on January 28th 1950 when Leith were on the verge of a major upset. They were away to St. Johnstone in the Scottish Cup and leading 3-1 at half time. Then everything fell apart. 38 year old Jock conceded six goals in the second half and they lost 7-3.

That was his last game in professional football. It was time for his son to don the gloves...

10) Following In His Father's Footsteps

Blackpool boss Joe Smith must have forgiven Jock for that disappearance in 1948, because just a couple of years later, Jock Jr. was taken on as an apprentice at the club.

By this time Jock had switched from centre half to goalkeeper, and no doubt it was his father's old connections at Bloomfield Road that opened the door.

It wasn't to be, though. He quickly got homesick and returned home to Wallyford. 

Then he ventured south of the border again - to Workington in 1952. Once again, his stay was brief. He made just six appearances for them in Division Three North, 

Fortunately, photographs remain of his time at the club. Here he is in a cap playing at Chester in October 1952, aged 17:

After his short spell at Borough Park he turned out for non-league Ashton United, near Manchester, before returning home once again to Scotland. 

There seemed to be no clear direction to Jock's life. But then came the experience that shaped his character and laid the foundation for a great career.

11) In 1955, Jock Jr. began his National Service. He was posted to Malaya, where the UK was trying to suppress an independence uprising.

His time in Malaya showed him the value of hard, disciplined training and also how good teamwork could mean the difference between life and death. The lessons he learned would guide him for the rest of his life.

He kept playing football in Malaya, and finally enjoyed some success:

12) Before he left for Malaya, Jock had signed with Berwick Rangers, and on his return to Scotland in 1957, he resumed his career with them.

This was a different Jock. Fitter, more confident, he quickly attracted scouts from the top Scottish clubs, who were impressed by the way he would command his area. 

In October 1957, he signed for Airdrieonians in the top flight. The photo below is of poor resolution, but there's no mistaking the attitude. It's the first sighting in this tale of the trademark Wallace resolve:

When Jock signed, Airdrie were bottom of Division One, but he helped them stay up, and the following season, they started well and by Christmas were challenging for the title. 

When they beat Aberdeen 2-1 on December 27th,  Airdrie were unbeaten in eight games and second in the table just a point behind Rangers. Jock was getting rave reviews, and the following week he was called up to play for the Scottish League against the Scottish FA. This was a trial match - based on this, the selectors would pick their team for the game against England at Wembley.

The possibilities were intoxicating. Could Jock play for Scotland? (the closest his father had come was being chosen as reserve in the 1930s). Could Airdrie win the League? (the closest they'd come was finishing second in the 1920s under Willie Orr - the man who took Leicester to the runners-up spot in 1928/29).

Then the trial match was postponed due to a snow storm. It would be delayed until March. By then, Airdire's title challenge had hit the buffers, and they'd been thrashed 7-2 at home in the Cup by Motherwell, with Ian St.John scoring four.

The trial match eventually took place, but Jock wasn't selected for the Wembley game. In May, with first choice Bill Brown injured, Jock finally got a call up for Scotland, but only as reserve for the game v West Germany at Hampden. He was just a spectator as Falkirk's John White, his old Musselburgh Grammar School teammate, made his debut and scored in the first minute to help Scotland to a famous 3-2 win.

13)  Early the following season, 1959/60, those two Musselburgh lads were heading for England.

On October 6th, Leicester City manager Matt Gillies traveled north to sign John White. But Falkirk stalled. We wanted to offer a player in part exchange, Falkirk wanted cash. Bill Nicholson jumped in, stumped up the fee and White signed for Spurs. Several English clubs were also in the race to sign Jock Wallace. Leicester were not one of them - we had Gordon Banks, who had just made his debut. But West Brom were desperate. They'd shipped eleven goals in three games, and that persuaded them to pay the high fee Airdrie were demanding. So a week after John White joined Spurs, Jock too moved south.

Albion's fortunes quickly improved. Jock kept a clean sheet in his first two games, and having been 17th when he joined, they rapidly climbed the table. This is him before a game at Highbury:

Leicester too were on the up. After a 3-0 win at champions Wolves in December, Gillies wrote in his diary that this was the day 'the team began to live again'. Soon, these two improving clubs would go head to head.

14) January 16th 1960

Three months after signing for West Brom came a milestone in Jock's career - his first game at Filbert Street. 

Albion had a special routine when they traveled to Leicester. They considered it a lucky ground and took the same route from Birmingham every season. They would stop at a hotel in Ashby for lunch so they could see their 'lucky monkey', on display at the hotel. The creature might have had a lucky escape that day. Jock's favourite Malayan jungle anecdote was about how he used to survive on 'monkey steaks' (anyone from Ashby who knows more details about this hotel and its monkey please tell us!) 

Leicester were on a great run - unbeaten in seven - and we played brilliant football that day. The Leicester Evening Mail called it the game of the season so far.  But however good the approach play, we couldn't get past Jock Wallace:

15) Two months later, and Albion were back at Filbert Street for a huge match - in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup. 

It was the first ever all-ticket match at Filbert Street, and it was a day of huge drama.

City raced into a two goal lead within half an hour. Here's Jock failing to stop Jimmy Walsh's opener:

Then at half time, referee Jack Husband, 44, collapsed and died in the dressing room.  These days the game would no doubt have been called off, but back then, the game had to go on.

There was a 15 minute delay to the second half as a linesman took the whistle and a reserve official was located. Albion came back in the second half, but we held out for a 2-1 win.

So just like his father twenty-five years before, Jock's first FA Cup campaign ended at Filbert Street.

16) April Showers

Jock and Daphne were married in April 1960, two months after that Cup exit at Leicester. As you can see, they were showered with confetti. 

It was a recurring theme that spring. 

Just before the wedding, he'd been the guest at the Atherstone Shrovetide football game when, reports tell us, Jock 'showered local children with sweets, oranges and coppers'. 

Then at the end of April, Jock was on the receiving end when he upset the crowd at Birmingham City. He deliberately belted the ball into the crowd (it seems, to waste time) and his clearance injured an eight year old boy, who had to be treated by medical staff. Not a good idea to upset those Small Heath lads. The home fans pelted Jock 'with apple cores and cartons', and at the end, he was jostled as he left the pitch. It didn't help that Albion won 7-1. 

A week later came the inevitable kiss and make-up story - with the boy who'd been hit beaming broadly as Jock presented him with lemonade in the dressing room before the return match at The Hawthorns. 

17)  Come On Leicester!!!!!

The following season, 1960/61, Leicester went on an amazing run of 13 games unbeaten that took us into the last four of the FA Cup and up to fifth place in the League. It was just like the 'Ice Kings' run two years later.

Then, just before our semi-final with Sheffield United, we had a League fixture - at West Brom. That's where the run came to an end. Jock kept us out and Albion won 1-0. 

And to connect with another recent thread, look at this photo:

It was taken by our old friend Bernie Henson. The place and date are not recorded, but a bit of detective work identifies it as the Main Stand at The Hawthorns in the early sixties, and the most likely occasion is that 1-0 defeat in March 1961.

18) In the Final that year, of course, we faced Spurs, who had already won the League. A week before Wembley, Spurs' final League game was at home to West Brom - and they needed just a point to break the all time record of 66 points, held by Arsenal. 

They couldn't manage it. Albion won 2-1, and the hero was Jock Wallace. The only time Spurs beat him was when Bobby Smith 'bundled home a shot with all the grace of a dustman aiming a crude kick at a cat'. Apart from that all they could offer were a stream of high crosses 'that Wallace always cut out'.

19) The other big Wembley occasion that spring was the famous 'nearly ten past Haffey' game - England 9 Scotland 3. 

How close was Jock to being in goal for Scotland that day? When he joined Albion in 1959, he was either second or third in line, and he said it might take him two years to break into the Scottish XI. Well, that time had elapsed, and Jock was still to win a cap. Why?

In truth, despite numerous heroic displays for Albion, he was prone to the odd 'dodgy keeper' performance. These reports would have reached the ears of Scottish selectors, who may even have witnessed one of these lapses in the flesh.

Jock would always regret that he couldn't win the cap that both he and his father longed for - but I wonder if a part of him was relieved that it was Frank Haffey, not him, that endured the humiliation of conceding nine goals to the old enemy on that April afternoon.

20)  The following season, 1961/62, Jock's playing career took a downward turn. He was only 27, but he was struggling for form. A week before Albion's big Cup tie at neighbours Wolves, Jock's howler gave Burnley a late equaliser. You can see it at 11.00 in this video:

West Brom v Burnley 1961-2 - YouTube

Jock had been dropped earlier in the season, but he kept his place for the Wolves game, and was back to his best as Albion won 2-1. The beautiful photo below captures a rare uncertain moment for him in that game. Don Howe is the Albion number 2, Bobby Robson on the right.

In the next round, holders Spurs came to the Hawthorns and won 4-2 on their way to retaining the trophy.

A couple of weeks later, the BBC filmed a fly-on-the-wall documentary at Albion. It's a fantastic portrayal of English football in a different age.

If you don't have 30 minutes to spare, just have a look at the sexy beast in the shower about four minutes in.

Over the years we haven't exactly had the proudest record in opening day fixtures. But this is a celebration of the good ones - those first day games that left fans bouncing optimistically out of the ground believing anything was possible. 

Looking at the whole history of the club, here's a top six:

6)  Middlesbrough v Leicester City   2013/14 

When things like the Deeney moment happen, there are two possible reactions. The shock can destroy everything. leading to the break up of a team, the sacking of a manager, and a downward spiral that takes years to recover from.

But Nigel Pearson wanted the opposite reaction. He wanted the experience to foster a new resolution. From adversity comes strength. He trusted his squad, and didn't bring in new faces for the following season. 

But all Pearson's steeliness would have counted for little had we got off to a bad start. An opening day defeat would have brought on the predictable doom mongering - and when we went one behind early on, there was the traditional meltdown on the match thread (it's pretty funny reading it back). Thankfully, late goals from Drinkwater, and a fine Vardy finish turned it around.

The game never features in those  'What was the turning point that led to us winning the title?' threads, but it deserves at least a footnote in that conversation.

You can see the goals on this season review video. It's the first match (obviously):

5)  Leicester City v Leeds United   1948/49

We had a brand new pitch - laid out at huge cost over the summer. We had a new chairman - Len Shipman. We had a new badge on out shirt - a fox - which would give us a new nickname.  We also had a very special new supporter - a 14 year old called Bernie Henson, for whom this was a first trip to Filbert Street. 

We ended up with a 6-2 win - the most we've ever scored on opening day. What followed was a 'stranger than fiction' season.

There's more about that in a separate thread coming soon about Bernie's life, based on his lovingly compiled scrapbooks. So for now let's move on to:

4)   Stockport County v Leicester City   1922/23 

Manager Peter Hodge had earmarked inside forward Johnny Duncan as the catalyst that would turn a team treading water in the Second Division into promotion challengers. In the summer of 1922, going back to his old club Raith Rovers, he signed not just Johnny but his brother Tommy, too.

The new season started at Stockport County. They had just won Division Three North, and had the meanest defence in the whole Football League. The previous season they hadn't conceded a goal until October, and their keeper was Harry Hardy, the only Stockport man ever to win an England cap.

Johnny was making his debut, while Tommy started in the reserves.

What followed had the Leicester Evening Mail's reporter in raptures: 

Never have I seen a game that came anywhere near it, either for spectacular football, or for real excitement.

Stockport quickly took the lead, but Duncan then scored 'a lovely goal' to equalize. The home side then scored two more, and things looked bleak. City came back to 3-3, but County then scored a fourth before City equalized again.

With five minutes left, Duncan headed the winner, and City were off to a great start. 

Duncan was indeed the catalyst for City's rise, the key man in our first great team. We just missed promotion that season, but golden years were on the way.

3)   Leicester Fosse  v Bolton Wanderers    1910/11

It's happened more than once in Leicester's history. We finally find a genuine goal scorer, we have to sell him, and what do you know, in the first game of the following season we're up against his new club. 

Fred Shinton was the only player ever to score 50 goals for the Fosse. In 1909/10 he broke the club record with 32 - but a few weeks later ambitious Bolton, looking to get back in Division One, paid out a four figure sum to take him to Burnden Park. 

Fosse's opening fixture just had to be a home game against Bolton.

We had spent the Shinton money on a forward called Jack Hall, from Middlesbrough, and he played alongside another debutant, George Travers.

Shinton's return to Filbert Street quickly turned into a nightmare - a 5-0 defeat, as relished by a local reporter:

Wanderers were absolutely routed. The wonder was that they didn't suffer an ever more crushing defeat. They were beaten out of all semblance of a first class football team, and long before the finish were a disorganised rabble. In the first half they were out played and out manouvered, in the second they were overwhelmed, demoralised and reduced to a hopeless collection of unfortunates.

If that's what the journalists were like back then, we can only imagine the taunts hurled Shinton's way by Fosse supporters. 

Those two debutants Hall and Travers both scored twice in what is still our biggest margin of victory in an opening fixture.

Alas, unlike Duncan's debut, this result was not the signpost to a glorious future. We had a dismal season, finishing 15th. By contrast, Bolton quickly pulled themselves together and ended up getting promotion. Did they have a Pearson-like figure to shake them up? Maybe they just stuck that match report on the dressing room wall.

91 years later, in 2001, Leicester started the season with the same fixture - and incredibly Bolton reversed that historical result, walking off with a 5-0 away win.  It was the nadir of the Peter Taylor era, when 'disorganised rabble', and 'a hopeless collection of unfortunates' were the appropriate descriptions of Leicester City.

2)    Aston Villa v Leicester City    1933/34

Between the wars, we had two stunning opening day wins at Villa Park within the space of six years. We won 3-0 in 1927/28, but it is the later victory that really caused a sensation. 

Aston Villa had been runners-up to Arsenal the previous season, and had splashed out big money on more star players in an attempt to wrest the title away from Highbury. The press called them the 'Wonder Team' - Charles Buchan predicted that Villa would 'probably open with a substantial victory, as Leicester rely largely on the team that narrowly avoided relegation last season'.

What actually happened was that City caused a substantial upset. 

They went ahead when Arthur Maw finished off a fine team move, then:

Just on the interval, Maw scored an extraordinary goal. Keeper Morton kicked clear from a City attack, and the ball came straight to Maw who was standing forty yards out. Without hesitation he drove it straight into the corner of the net.

That 2-0 half time lead was shocking enough, but after the break Arthur Lochhead scored a third from 35 yards. Said the report:

This goal seemed to settle the issue, and for the next few minutes Leicester ran rings round their rivals.

Whatever the 1930s equivalent of the 'Same Old Leicester...' chant was, it must have been given a good airing that afternoon. 

Perhaps we rubbed it in a bit too much, for Villa got their act together and scored two late goals. Still, we came away with the points. 

This was the headline in the Birmingham paper that evening:

Leicester finished that season in 15th, with the 'Wonder Team' finishing just two places higher in 13th.

1)  Leicester City v Everton   1985/86

Only the most wide-eyed optimists could have expected victory. We hadn't won our opening game in the top flight since 1958 - a truly abysmal sequence of nine draws and thirteen defeats. 

And who were our first opponents this season? Only champions Everton, who'd just bought Gary Lineker (yes - the same situation as Fred Shinton in 1910).

The man to fill Lineker's shoes was Mark Bright, who had been signed from Port Vale the previous season, and had yet to show City fans any evidence that he was a real goal scorer. Up against him was Neville Southall, hailed as the best keeper in the world.

Everton took the lead in the first half and the pessimists were giving each other knowing glances.

Then just before the break, Bobby Smith equalized from a Bright knock down.

At half time, City substitute David Rennie told Bright something he'd spotted from the bench. 'Southall keeps coming a long way off his line'. 

In the second half, the unbelievable happened. Mark Bright beat Southall twice with long range efforts, both floated over the keeper's head. 

Meanwhile, Russell Osman, making his City debut, was keeping Lineker bottled up, leading to chants of 'What a waste of money' which got louder as the game went on.

It finished 3-1, and that dismal run was finally over.

Lineker didn't let it get him down - he ended that season with 40 goals for Everton, the Golden Boot at the World Cup, and a lucrative move to Barcelona.

Mark Bright added just another four to his total that season and didn't find sustained success until he moved to Palace. Still, he'll always be remembered at Leicester for that match - the only time we've beaten the champions on the opening day.

So that's our best ever first day victories.  Please add your own special (or awful) first day memories below.

So much to say about this guy. Let's have a look back at the wonderful career of the keeper who had his own unique chant - 'Who saves penalties? - Wallngton! Wallington!'.

This is not a chronological recap but a chance to look in a bit more detail at certain points of his career - and some stories that haven't been told before.

1) The Man Merseyside Couldn't Beat

1983/84 was a season that started terribly  - worse, in fact, than any other season in our history. After ten games we had just two points and relegation looked inevitable.

It was the season that Merseyside won everything - Liverpool took the League, the European Cup, and in the League Cup they beat Everton in the Final. The Toffees soon got over that disappointment - they went back to Wembley six weeks later to win the FA Cup, and they also won the Youth Cup. 

There was one team that season, though, that managed to remain undefeated against the Mersey duo - and that was Leicester City. We drew twice against Liverpool, and took four points off Everton. No other team in the top flight could make the same boast. 

The home game against Everton was a turning point in our season. That was the 11th game - and finally we registered a victory.

The home game against Liverpool came towards the end of the season, and was perhaps the greatest game I ever saw at the old ground - a thrilling 3-3 draw.

In the two away games, one man in particular stood in the way of the Merseysiders. 

Mark Wallington had started the season in dispute with the club, and new signing Mark Grew was in goal for the first five games. We conceded 14 goals in those matches, and lost the lot. It was time for Mr. Reliable to return.

By the time we went to Anfield on December 27th, we had hit a good run of form, and had risen to as high as 17th (out of 22). Liverpool were top, and looking good for their third title in a row. 

City shocked the Reds by taking the lead in the first half when Alan Smith turned home a cross from Steve Lynex, who was giving Liverpool left back Alan Kennedy all sorts of trouble. The inevitable onslaught followed after the break, with Liverpool attacking the Kop end.

The equaliser wouldn't come, and then with 20 minutes left City went two up when Ian Banks slammed a shot through a wall of Liverpool defenders after an indirect free kick was awarded when Bruce Grobbelaar picked up a back pass.

Liverpool quickly fought back, and goals from Sammy Lee and Ian Rush tied things up with five minutes to go. They swarmed forward in search of the winner, and in the 87th minute, Wallington was adjudged to have fouled Rush, and Souness had the chance to win it from the spot.

This was the result:

The hairline might have been receding, but that spot kick stopping talent was undiminished. Leicester held on for a 2-2 draw and a priceless point that took them another step towards safety.

In March, City went to Goodison Park to face an Everton team that had lost just one of its last 19 games. City were 16th, six points above the drop zone. Kevin Richardson put Everton ahead in the first half, but after the break Gary Lineker beat the offside trap to race away and equalise in front of the Gwladys Street end. Straight after that Everton went up the other end and were given a penalty and a chance to win it.

This is what happened:

Andy Peake watches as Wallington gets down to save Andy King's penalty.  In the scramble for the rebound, Andy Gray put the ball in the net, but it was disallowed for offside:

Ian Wilson's the City man in the picture.

Leicester held out for the draw, with Wallington completing an Anfield-Goodison double - not just saving a penalty on each ground but helping City to a crucial point on each occasion.

Those photos are pretty rare. I don't think any of them have appeared in a Leicester publication before. The Anfield picture is from the Liverpool - Leicester programme from the following season. The Everton pics are from the Liverpool Echo the day after the game and have remained in the collection of yours truly ever since. 

I can't claim many brownie points as a regular Leicester watcher (it's a bit tricky when you live 10,000 miles away) but I was at both of those matches on Merseyside in 1983/84, and I must be one of very few who can say that. There was a good away following at the Anfield match, but the Goodison game was on a Tuesday night and there were probably fewer than 100 City fans in the Park End behind the goal in which Wallington made that save.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that one. More Wallo stories on the way - and please add some of your own!

The trigger for this story was a post from @StanSP.  Over on the random pictures thread he told us about Historic England's new archive of aerial photos, and posted this amazing shot from 1923:

Such a wonderful view of the old place, and if you look closely, all sorts of interesting things become apparent.

First, as you probably noticed, the photo actually shows a match in progress:

What a scene that is - the Main Stand before the 'Wings' were added, and the old Spion Kop looking magnificent,

But is it possible to identify which match it is? Well, the detail on the website says it's from January 1923. We played three home games that month, two in the League, against Barnsley and Notts County, and one in the FA Cup, against Fulham. It's pretty clear that it's the Cup tie we're looking at, given how packed the terraces are, and what looks like a white shirted opposition. You can see the kits in this shot from the Daily Mirror:

The match was a quite an historic occasion. 'Que Sera Sera' was several decades in the future, but this was our first Cup tie with fans dreaming of Wembley. The nation was already obsessed with Cup football, and with the new national stadium set to stage the Final, it just added to the excitement. 

Contemporary match reports from that day, January 13th, give a taste of the mood:

Every type of vehicle capable of moving, from horse charas to Ford one-tonners, turned out to convey the hordes of Fulham fans from Leicester Station to the ground. Others walked, and the path across the recreation ground was soon transformed into a sea of mud. Then crowds swarmed down each street in the "Nutteries" while vehicles dumped their passengers before returning for further loads. 

Zooming into the photo again you can see, in what looks like a scene from Wacky Races, all those vehicles near the ground, next to the Liberty Building. 

The Fulham fans would go home disappointed - we won 4-0, with genius Johnny Duncan getting two. Dreams of Wembley lived on...

But back to that aerial photo. Anything else to notice?

Top right in the original shot is a fine view of the Aylestone Road Cricket Ground, which Leicestershire used between the wars. On the Historic England site you can find another great view of that ground, from four years later:

There's a match in progress here, too. Zoom in and you clearly see the umpires reaching the middle, with the fielding side behind them, and two batsmen walking down the pavilion steps.

Can we identify this occasion?  Well, here we are given a precise date - June 10th 1927. 

That was the final day of Leicestershire's game v Surrey in the County Championship. It was an exciting time for County. They'd had a wretched thirty years, finishing in the bottom half of the table every year but one. But going into this game they were suddenly second in the table behind Lancashire. The sparse crowd reflects the state of the game on that final day. After Surrey built a large first innings lead we only had six second innings wickets left and were just four runs ahead. If we lost quick wickets it could be all over pretty quickly. In the end, the game was wrapped up by mid-afternoon, Surrey coasting home by 10 wickets.

So the archive gives us a precious insight into two separate sporting occasions from almost 100 years ago - Leicester City v Fulham, 1923. Leicestershire v Surrey, 1927.

And this is where it gets truly remarkable, for there is one man who links the two events.

His name is Andy Ducat.

Have a look at this short video:

You might have spotted some key words there - like 'Fulham' and 'Surrey'.

After lifting the Cup for Villa in 1920, he played for Fulham between 1921 and 1924.

And here are the teams for the FA Cup match at Leicester in 1923:

You can see he was Fulham's number 4 - he was playing right half. 

As a cricketer, Ducat played for Surrey for almost twenty five years before retiring in the late 1920s.

And this is the scorecard for their first innings at Leicestershire in 1927:

So he was taking part on both occasions. 

Let's look at those photos again.  It's impossible, of course, to pick him out in an aerial photo. Unless...  

We know from the match report that Leicester were attacking the Kop in the first half, which is almost certainly when the photo was taken, given how early the light would start to fade in mid January. That means Ducat would have been playing on the side furthest from the Main Stand, close to the Popular Side (later the East Stand).

Look at the photo and while the blue shirts of Leicester are difficult to spot against the background, the Fulham players stand out, and are sticking fairly rigidly to their positions in an orthodox  2-3-5 formation. The player circled is in the right half position, and there's a high probability that is our man:

How about the cricket photo?  Well, it shows the players entering the field on the last day, so it could be one of three moments:

i)  The start of play, with Leicester 150-4 overnight.

ii) The start of the afternoon session, with Leicester 220-9 

iii) The start of Surrey's 2nd innings, the target 97.

If it's either of the first two, then Ducat is one of the fielders in the group heading for the middle. If it's the other one, he's sitting in the pavilion, hoping he doesn't have to put his pads on. If he is in that group, then this time it really is impossible to say which one is him. But instead of that, there is a photo from Day 1 of the match, with the Surrey players in almost the same position. 

Which one Andy Ducat is I'm not sure, but if I had to choose I'd go for the player with his left hand on his hip near the centre. 

So how did the stories finish? 

Dreams of Wembley glory would have to wait (for another 98 years). We lost 1-0 at home to Cardiff in the next round. 

Leicestershire faded to 5th (though for them that was a massive improvement). They would have to wait almost 50 years to be County Champions.

Meanwhile, the aerial shot of our old ground currently looks like this:

Hopefully we won't have to wait too long before it becomes the kind of place its history deserves.

March 26th is the anniversary of the body of King Richard III being reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015. We all know what that was the trigger for. But was that recovery the greatest in our history? Or was there another season with an even more unlikely escape from relegation? That's the question to be answered in this thread - a countdown of Leicester's Top Five Greatest Escapes:

5) 1974/75

This picture of Jimmy Bloomfield celebrating his 41st birthday appeared in the papers in February 1975. But his expression looks more like exasperation than celebration. Everything was going wrong. Frank Worthington had gone 16 League games without a goal. Peter Shilton had left for Stoke City and replacement Mark Wallington had broken his wrist. Keith Weller had asked for a transfer, then refused to play the second half of a home defeat to Ipswich after being barracked by fans. The players no longer wanted Weller as captain. Results on the pitch reflected the off-field disharmony - on the morning of February 22nd, after 13 games without a win, and less than a year after being hailed as the most exciting team in the League, the table revealed the grim reality:

Three up / three down had been introduced this season, so the gap to safety, rather than being a single point to Carlisle in 20th, was a massive six points to Spurs in 19th (and there were only two points for a win then). That day we headed for White Hart Lane.  It was a great chance for Spurs to pull further away from danger - and to bang another nail in the Leicester coffin. 

It didn't work out like that. We cruised to a 3-0 victory - the scorers Jon Sammels, Mike Stringfellow (his last for the club) - and Frank Worthington, finally back in the goals.

After the game Alan Birchenall put the boot in: 'We've got problems, but not as many as they have. That's the worst Spurs team I've ever seen'.

The mood at the club lifted. The following week, in place of 'crisis' headlines, we got this:

That's Frank on stage at a Grumbleweeds concert in the city. The day that picture appeared, Frank got the winner at Carlisle. So that was two crucial away wins in eight days - the start of a run of just one defeat in eleven games. Pretty soon we were above Spurs. Our key players were new names -  Bob Lee, finally given a run in the team, and new signings Jeff Blockley and Chris Garland.  Highlights of the run-in were a 2-2 draw at European Cup finalists Leeds United, and Garland's hattrick in a 3-2 home win v Wolves.

We finished in 18th place, three points clear of the drop, with Spurs 19th and Carlisle, Chelsea and Luton going down. 

4)  1983/84

After getting promoted so spectacularly the previous season, Gordon Milne must have been confident that the Lineker / Smith / Lynex combination could terrify a few defences in the top flight too. What a shock we all got.

Mark Wallington was the only survivor of the 74/75 escape,  but a contract dispute meant he sat out the first five games, giving new signing Mark Grew a chance. It was quite a baptism. The first two games were home defeats to Notts County (4-0) and Luton Town (3-0). Here's where I introduce my own form of illustration. I used to make little doodles in my school exercise books - and I still have this effort that tells the story:

The caption reads: Which way does Mark Grew turn? Shots from long range fly to every corner in his first 2 City games.  It's a bit hard to blame Grew, given that he was defending a goal which, judging from the lines on the page, appears to be 12 yards high.

Here's a picture of that Martin O'Neill goal (the Mercury's attempt to photoshop the ball into the picture just as amateurish as my cartoon):

Things didn't improve. We lost the next four as well - the worst start in our history, and after 10 games we had just TWO points:

Then it all started to click. Lineker started scoring, Bob Hazell was bought to strengthen the defence, and gradually we realised we could hold our own against anyone. A run of seven unbeaten around Christmas took us out of the bottom three, and we ended up relatively comfortably in 15th after some scintillating performances like the 3-3 draw with Liverpool (which could be in a different Top 5 - the greatest games ever seen at Filbert Street).

3) 1932/33

If you saw the recent thread about the Rapid Vienna game you'll be familiar with this one. It's February and we still have only two wins to our name. Look at the table and you can see that if three points for a win had been in place then we'd have been in even deeper trouble. Four points adrift at the bottom was bad enough:

Then, after the Austrians gave us a footballing lesson and a few bits of advice, we altered our formation and went on a great run, safety assured on the last day with a 6-2 win v West Brom.  Here's a photo from the 1-1 draw v champions Arsenal in March, the Gunners having received permission to change their kit to a new white-sleeved design just the week before:

Just a word of explanation before the top two greatest escapes - we're not talking necessarily about last day dramas here, but taking a longer perspective, looking at moments across a whole season when we looked utterly doomed. So just missing out on this Top 5 were Tony James v Oxford in 1991 and Ian McNeill's similarly dramatic winner at Birmingham in 1958.

Right, on we go:

2)  2014/15 

What?? Not number one? 

Here's a reminder of how the Premier League stood when King Richard was buried. We had  nine games to play:

We had won only twice since September, and it was now early April. But one thing that might have given us hope was that of the fixtures remaining, six out of nine were at home, many of them against teams with little left to play for.  It's a familiar story so I'll just round this part off with a single photo, of what many cite as THE crucial moment in the whole Leicester City title miracle story:

1) 1958/ 59

Matt Gillies had been in the job six months. But how long would he last?  This was the table on the morning of March 27th as we headed for Burnden Park, Bolton:

Leicester had lost six in a row and looked doomed. One bookie was offering odds of 50-1 against us staying up. Just like 2014/15, the darkest hour came with nine games to play. The five point gap to safety here was the equivalent of the seven point gap in 2014/15 (with three points for a win). We were dead and buried, surely, and there was no King Richard to save us. Were there any other useful omens? Well, it was Good Friday...

Portsmouth, our partners in misery at the bottom, threw in the towel. From that point they lost all their remaining games, and didn't get back to the top flight for 30 years. Would the same have happened to us had we gone down? No Ice Kings? No Cup Finals in the 60s? That's how much may have been riding on our finding a way to stay up.

Given the drama of the run-in, it's a story with a surprisingly minor place in Leicester City mythology. And it's one that needs telling in some detail...

That Good Friday, a seventh straight defeat looked a certainty when Nat Lofthouse put Bolton 3-1 up after just half an hour. But in the second half, Ken Leek pulled one back, 'heading down in wonderful style from a corner'. Then Leicester were awarded a penalty for handball, and John Ogilvie, who had never scored in his previous 83 games for City, was given the job. The pressure must have been unimaginable. Ogilvie stepped up and hit the ball so hard that it rebounded from the stanchion at the back of the net and landed at his feet. It finished 3-3. Elsewhere, Aston Villa took the lead at White Hart Lane but Spurs came back to win 3-2, moving them away from trouble, but cutting Villa's cushion over Leicester to four points.

The next day, Easter Saturday, saw Leicester and Portsmouth meet at Filbert Street. Only 15,000 turned up, perhaps understandable when we hadn't won a match for three months. That day the dismal run was broken - City won 3-1, with another Ogilvie penalty. Villa were playing at Everton that day, and again they took the lead before throwing it away, losing 2-1. The gap was now just two points.  Easter Monday saw the reverse of the Good Friday fixtures. We drew 0-0 at home to Bolton, while Villa drew 1-1 at home to Spurs, so it was 'as you were', with six games to play.

Our next fixture was the big one. Saturday April 4th, Villa Park. On the morning of the match came the tragic news that Jeff Hall, Birmingham's England international defender, had lost his battle with polio. Thousands of City fans were heading for Birmingham (surely 24 year old Bernie Henson was among them, either cycling or hitch-hiking). They would have heard the terrible news on the way to the game or when they arrived at the ground. Leicester and Villa fans stood side by side for a minute's silence, in tribute to one of the game's most respected figures. Then the action began.

We got off to a great start. This description of Jimmy Walsh's opener sounds uncannily like Jamie Vardy's famous goal at West Brom in 2015.

Keeper Dave MacLaren was keeping Villa at bay with some magnificent saves, and then midway through the second half Walsh got another. This one sounded equally dramatic:

Villa pulled one back, but we held on to win 2-1 - one of the most important results in the history of the club. But despite taking six points from four games, we were still in the drop zone. Villa's goal average was better than ours -  they were 20th, we were 21st. Manchester City had also slipped right into trouble after an awful run. They were just one point better off in 19th.

Here's what happened next:

Sat April 11th

Leicester City 1 West Ham 1. Tommy McDonald gave us the lead but John Bond (yes, him) got a late equaliser. Fortunately, for the third away game running Villa threw away a lead, Preston coming back to win 4-2. Finally we were out of the bottom two.

Sat Apr 18th

Nottingham Forest 1 Leicester City 4.  The unbeaten run stretches to six with this fine win at the City Ground. Goals from Jimmy Walsh, Ken Keyworth, Tommy McDonald, then a Bill Whare own goal, 'the last straw for the home fans, who streamed out of the ground in their hundreds'.  Villa got a point at home to Burnley, and Man City lost 2-1 at Blackburn so we climbed another place to 19th. 

Mon Apr 20th  

A great day for us without even playing. Some thought Forest been taking it easy against us with the FA Cup Final approaching, but that theory was disproved when they beat Villa 2-0 two days later. There was more good news. Man City lost yet again - 5-1 at West Ham, leaving the table like this:

Leicester City        39          30 

Aston Villa             40          28

Man City                40          28

Portsmouth            40          21

Was the pressure off? Not with our remaining games against the top two in the League, Wolves and Man United, followed by a trip to Maine Road. It was still all to play for.

Wed Apr 22nd

We head for Molineux, where Wolves need a point to retain the title. We formed a guard of honour as they took the field, but there the respect ended. In the first half, we actually played Wolves off the park. In an extraordinary 15 minute spell, clever build up play gave Ken Keyworth four one-on-ones with the keeper. Somehow he contrived to miss all of them - hitting two wide, one onto the roof of the net, and then dallying too long, allowing a defender to get back and tackle. What was going on? Had Wolves decided he wasn't worth marking? After the break Wolves took over, and ended up winning comfortably, 3-0. Then Leicester director Len Shipman, who was also a member of the Football League executive, presented Billy Wright with the trophy, Wolves' third title in six years (they haven't won it since).

Sat Apr 25th

Leicester v Manchester United.  35,000 at Filbert Street with eyes on the game and ears pressed to transistor radios to hear news of Man City and Villa, who were playing each other at Maine Road. Ken Keyworth kept his place, but he still couldn't do anything right in front of goal: In the 19th minute, Leek's centre reached him six yards from goal, with no-one near him. Amazingly, Keyworth fluffed the dream chance. Fortunately, Jimmy Walsh was wide awake, and before a United defender could clear, he nipped in and scored. Bobby Charlton was giving examples of his electrifying power, but he couldn't beat Dave MacLaren.

Gordon Willis added the crucial second goal after half time, and all United could offer was a late consolation. News came through that Man City and Villa had drawn 0-0, but that no longer mattered. We were safe, and police tried in vain to cope with hundreds of spectators invading the pitch and mobbing the players.

Wed April 29th

Would it be Man City or Villa that went down with Portsmouth? They were level on points, and we had a central role in the drama. Villa's goal average was superior, so if we won at Maine Road, Villa would be safe, unless they took a real hammering at West Brom. With a few minutes remaining, Villa were 1-0 up, and Man City were beating us 3-1. That wasn't enough for Man City - they needed one more goal to send Villa down,  No doubt there were Leicester fans hoping we'd concede another. But then came the late drama that made goal average irrelevant. Ronnie Allen got an equaliser for Albion with two minutes left, and Villa were down. Cue pandemonium at Maine Road - and at the Hawthorns, where, the match report told us, 'the tumultuous cheering and extravagant embraces of the Albion players made it quite clear who the home side wanted to be relegated'. 

The most remarkable thing about the whole occasion was the conduct of Villa manager, Joe Mercer. He'd actually been interviewed for the Leicester job four years before, but lost out to Dave Halliday. After events that night, Leicester directors must have been thinking they'd dodged a bullet. Mercer left the Hawthorns five minutes before the end of the game, with everything still to be decided. He had been invited to a special presentation for Billy Wright, who had just become the first player to win 100 England caps. He wasn't there when Albion equalized, nor in the dressing room after the match with his dejected  players. What on earth was he thinking?  

In the 60s, of course, he became Man City boss, leading them through their greatest era of the 20th century. And you could say the same about Matt Gillies and Leicester City. The glory days were just around the corner, set up by this dramatic late season escape. 

Remembering the managerial highlights of Frank O'Farrell:

1)   January 27th 1962

After just a few months as player manager of Southern League Weymouth, Frank O'Farrell had guided the club to the biggest game in their history - away at Preston in the Fourth Round of the Cup. Leicester City, finalists the previous season (and the following season) were already out, beaten by Stoke City and 46 year old Stanley Matthews. Weymouth were the last non-League club still in it.

It was an emotional day for O'Farrell, going back to the club he'd left just a few months earlier. The excitement was brought to a premature end, however. After just fourteen minutes of play at Deepdale, the referee abandoned the game due to fog.  Frank made an apology over the PA to the 1,000 away fans who'd made the wasted journey, and the game was rescheduled for Monday. 

Just a few hours before that restaged game took place, the draw for the Fifth Round was held, throwing up the following intriguing tie:

Liverpool   versus   Preston or Weymouth

Bill Shankly hurriedly made plans to get across to Preston to watch Liverpool's next opponents.

The hero of the game was Weymouth's 41 year old keeper Billy Bly, who kept out Preston until just before half time. In the end, however, Frank's team went down 2-0, so the FA Cup paths of Frank O'Farrell and Bill Shankly didn't cross. At least, not yet.

2)   April 1st 1968

After taking Weymouth to the Southern League title in 1964/65, Frank moved along the south coast to Torquay, then in the Fourth Division. He took them to promotion in his first season, then two years later, the club were on the verge of their greatest achievement. This was the table on April 1st:

A couple of weeks earlier the Match of the Day cameras had come to Plainmoor for the top of the table clash with Bury, which United won 3-0. Just two clubs were promoted at that time,  but with that four point lead, Frank must have been pretty confident.

Then it all went wrong. They won just two of their last nine games.

On the final day they still had a chance of going up, but lost 4-0 at Reading.  The club would never reach those heights again.

3)  November 27th 1968

The normally laid back Chairman of Ipswich Town, John Cobbold, couldn't hide his anger. ‘I am annoyed and absolutely shattered. After we had spoken yesterday I was absolutely sure he would take the job’. But Frank decided to stay at Torquay: ‘I’m happy here', he said. 'I will only move for the right job’. 

Did Frank change his mind about the Ipswich job? If so, why? Had someone from Leicester been in touch? 

The following day, at an emergency board meeting, Leicester decided to sack coach Bert Johnson, but express 'confidence' in manager Matt Gillies. Surely the board knew how Matt would react to his best friend being treated like that. A day later, Gillies resigned, bringing an end to a glorious ten years. City made their move for O'Farrell and three weeks later he was announced as the new boss at Filbert Street.

4)  March 1st  1969

After beating Barnsley and Millwall, Leicester were drawn at home to Liverpool in the Fifth Round of the Cup. The game was postponed six times, and Frank used to meet Bill Shankly in the Midland Hotel when the Liverpool boss came down to check on the state of the ground. Finally on March 1st,  the game went ahead, but it finished goalless. The replay at Anfield two days later is remembered for two famous moments - Andy Lochhead's header that won the game, and Roger Hunt throwing his shirt away after being substituted. It was the first sign that Shankly's great team of he mid 60s was coming to an end. 

What topics had the two bosses chatted about in the Midland Hotel? Did Shanks perhaps talk about how difficult it was to know when to call time on the legends of the club? It was a dilemma that hung over another club all through the early 70s, as Frank would soon find out.

City went all the way to Wembley, of course, and Frank became the first Irish manager to lead a side out beneath the Twin Towers.  The season ended in double disappointment, however, with relegation confirmed by the 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford, Matt Busby's last game as boss after 25 years. 

5) Jan 16th 1971

Frank had held firm. His star player, Peter Shilton, had asked for a transfer. Frank said no, and Shilton was banished to the stands. Was this a wise move, with City's promotion hopes already running into trouble? On this day, Birmingham came to Filbert Street to face not Shilton, but Colin Mackleworth. They won 4-1, and Leicester fell to 4th in the table.  

One man was watching events at Filbert Street very carefully. Matt Busby was impressed by Frank's resolve. 'If he can stand up to his star players, maybe he's the man to sort out the mess in Manchester'. Busby had been forced to resume control at Old Trafford after Wilf McGuiness, his successor, had been sacked only just over a year after taking over.  Wilf was too pally with the players, people said. The players liked him - bud did they really respect him? 

That Birmingham defeat was the low point. From there, Shilton came back into the team and City went 17 games unbeaten, winning the Division Two title and making Frank an even more appealing choice for Busby. You can see Frank here touching on the Shilton situation in this interview, from February, just after we hit that winning run:

Frank quickly showed just how willing he was to confront the legends at Old Trafford - in a way that surprised Busby. On his first day, he insisted on having the old manager's office that Busby was keen to hang on to despite moving 'upstairs'. 

6)  4.40pm, Saturday December 4th 1971. 

Frank must have felt on top of the world. Four months into his reign, United sat proudly at the top of the League. They were coasting to a 3-1 win over Forest at Old Trafford with just a few minutes remaining. Word of nearest challengers Man City losing at Derby would also have got round, meaning United's lead at the top would be stretched to five points. Then something happened that at the time seemed of little importance. George Best gave the ball away and Forest scored a consolation goal, making the final score 3-2. In retrospect, that moment has massive symbolism - it can be seen as the moment when everything changed. When the upward curve of Frank's career took a sudden and startling downturn, when Best's life and career went off the rails. And, as it happens, when a third Irishman in the story, the scorer of that consolation goal, entered the spotlight for the first time.

Best had been in magnificent form. Just a few weeks before, he'd scored that famous goal where he sets off on a diagonal run past the whole Sheffield United defence before sweeping the ball home. He'd been averaging almost a goal a game throughout the autumn, and with him in such form, everyone thought United would now run away with title. 

Their next three games were all draws, and United were still top. But then, astonishingly, they lost seven in a row. Best stopped scoring, then he stopped turning up for training and was dropped. Frank insisted that he moved out of his luxury home in the Cheshire countryside and go back in with his old landlady. Best, not surprisingly, refused. Frank had lost control, Best never recovered his old form, and a year later United were bottom of Division One. Frank was sacked.

But as the career of one Irish Catholic hit the skids, that of another, who would also lead us out at Wembley, was just beginning. He's the  man who scored that consolation goal at Old Trafford: