It's a pretty impressive sequence  - packing all that action into 40 seconds.  It's Match Of The Day's new opening titles for their FA Cup highlights programme. 

Quite a few Leicester references in there too - some obvious, others less so, and a couple that are frankly tenuous. But this is just a bit of fun so let's go:

1) Let's start with someone whose face should really should be on a 'Wanted' poster - for crimes against the world's oldest football competition. When Man U won the treble in 1999 they qualified to play in FIFA's ludicrous 'Club World Championship'.  Their trip to Brazil coincided with the third round of the FA Cup - and they decided to withdraw from the competition they were supposed to be defending - without a hint of protest from the authorities. In fact, the FA and Tony Blair's government (who were desperate to please FIFA with their 2006 World Cup bid underway) both backed United's move.  

We know that the FA Cup no longer has the status it had in the past - and there are many reasons why - but if you want to identity one key moment, it's right there.

But anyway, here he is, with a big Leicester City reference behind his right ear among that list of United cup winning years:

2)   March 2001

Next another hate figure  - Peter Taylor.

It was all going so well in his first season in charge at Filbert Street. We beat Liverpool in early March and were third in the Premier League table. The following week we had a seemingly easy FA Quarter Final tie - at home to Wycombe Wanderers. Champions League football, our first FA cup triumph, and years of glory beckoned. 

Incredible how quickly things can go pear-shaped. This is Roy Essandoh, whose late header gave Wycombe a 2-1 win. We then lost eight in a row in the League, went down the following year and after a financial implosion only narrowly escaped going into complete oblivion.

3)  May 2021

From hate figures to - well, we used to love him didn't we? Many years from now we'll have forgotten how it all went wrong, and we'll look back with only fond memories of this fellow and his manager: Maybe.

4)  May 1981

And Ricky Villa - has done it! 

But what has he got to do with Leicester City?

Well, a year after his famous goal won the Cup for Spurs, they were drawn against us in the semi-final at Villa Park. The day before the game, Argentina invaded the Falklands, and manager Keith Burkinshaw had to decide whether to play Villa and fellow Argentine Osvaldo Ardiles. In the end Ricky was left out and Ossie played - booed throughout by the Leicester fans. Spurs won that day of course. Come the final against QPR, Ardiles was missing. He'd diplomatically been allowed to join up with the Argentina World Cup squad earlier than he needed to. Ricky Villa wasn't in that squad and could have replaced him in the line-up at Wembley, but with British troops having just landed  at San Carlos, Burkinshaw decided to avoid any fuss and left him out.

5)   May 1972

Oh no - another hate figure. Allan Clarke was the least popular man in the Leicester City dressing room in the late 60s. After we broke the British transfer record to sign him in 1968 he saw himself as slightly above ordinary mortals like Alan Woollett, Rodney Fern and Andy Lochhead. He played in the 1969 Cup Final as we lost to Manchester City, but we were also relegated that season and he quickly moved on to Leeds, for whom he scored the winner against Arsenal in 1972 with a classic diving header:

6)  March 1999

The goal David Ginola scored at Barnsley in Round Five was almost a tribute to Ricky Villa's 1981 dribble. Here he is midway through that slalom run through the Barnsley defence:

And the connection?

Well, Spurs' next match was five days later - the League Cup Final against Martin O'Neill's Leicester City. Ginola was the big talking point in the build up to the game, but he hardly had a kick. O'Neill asked Rob Ullathorne to stay close to him - and it was similar to the job that Pontus Kaamark did on Juninho two years earlier. No happy ending this time though.

7)   April 1923

The first Wembley final. An estimated 200,000 were inside, all semblance of order having broken down as people smashed through the fences to get in.

How did our first attempt to get to Wembley end up? 

You might recall a thread on here a whlle back about the amazing aerial shot of Filbert Street taken during our third round win over Fulham. Well in the next round, we lost at home to Cardiff - legendary centre forward Len Davies with the winner. People were desperate to see this game too - and the pressure on the terraces was so great that thousands jumped over the barriers to take refuge on the pitch. The scene, as portrayed in the Leicester Mail, was a foretaste of Wembley two months later:

8)  May 1976 

Before Youri's goal in 2021, which FA Cup Final had Leicester City fans enjoyed the most? Not the four Wembley defeats, obviously. It was probably 1976, when Second Division Southampton beat Man U 1-0. That alone was good reason to celebrate, but lifting the cup was old Filbert Street hero Peter Rodrigues:

In the background there you can see Prime Minister Jim Callaghan (the last Labour PM before Tony Blair). Callaghan was MP for Cardiff South East, and used to watch Rodrigues in the early 60s when he started his career at Ninian Park.

9)  May 1971

Five years before that, another ex-Leicester man went up the 39 steps as captain of the winning side.

Frank McLintock began his career at Filbert Street in the late 50s and one of the best passages in his autobiography is where he describes the moments after we lost the 1963 Cup Final (the one that began this thread):

My most resonant and abiding memory of our defeat that day is the sound our studs made on the long, concrete tunnel that leads downhill back to the dressing room. After a win there was that rat-a-tat-tat of jubilant players almost skipping their way back. When you lose there’s a slow clack-clack – it sounds like the death march and it haunts you for years afterwards.

Wow. That's how much it meant. 

Well - did I miss anything? Tell me if I did.  Here you are - you don't even have to scroll back up:

Any other tenuous Leicester connections very welcome.

20 years ago today Bernard Murphy set off from his home in Huyton on Merseyside to watch his beloved Everton play at the Walkers Stadium in Leicester. But he never made it to the game. 

As reported in the Liverpool Echo:

Murphy, 40, was walking along Leicester's Upperton Road with his friend Mick Matthews and Mick's 12-year-old son when when a large timber hoarding, caught by gusting winds of 75mph, struck him in the face. The accident happened at around 2.20pm. He died of his head injuries minutes before the fixture against Leicester began.

Leicester manager Micky Adams traveled up to Liverpool for the funeral the following week, and there were so many people at St. Aloysius Church that he couldn't get in. Some time later, a memorial plaque was placed in the garden of rest at the Walkers Stadium. Two of his fellow Everton fans are seen here at the site:

If you look closely you can see the tribute to Bernard "Yifter" Murphy. When he was younger, he was a flying winger in his local football team, and was given the nickname 'Yifter' after the Ethiopian runner who won two gold medals at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. That was Miruts Yifter,  known as 'Yifter the Shifter'. 

Henry Scotton

Equally shocking as Bernard's death was a long-forgotten incident from another era. Thousands of people turned out at Belgrave Cemetery in February 1893 for the funeral of Henry Scotton, after he died in similar circumstances.  He lived on Wand Street, off Belgrave Road. He was 41, just a year older than Bernard, and he was also the victim of freak weather. He was not on the way to a football match, but he was walking past our old ground when high winds caused part of the perimeter wall to collapse on top of him.

This was the Belgrave Road ground when it was our home in the 1880s:

It might still have been our home today if Leicester Tigers had not outbid us for the use of the site in 1888. That red line marks the section of perimeter wall 18 yards long and ten feet high that was blown over. As the inquest into Scotton's death was told, attached to the wall, four feet from the ground, was a huge advertising hoarding, ten yards long and fourteen feet high. This was fixed against the wall by three upright 'deal planks'. The whole lot came down on top of the poor Mr. Scotton.

The hoarding was owned by Captain Winstanley of the Leicester Opera House, and the latest bill on the hoarding had been posted six days before by Thomas Brown's Billposting company of Upper Charles Street, on a day when, two miles away, Leicester Fosse were playing Wednesbury Old Athletic in the Midland League at their new Walnut Street ground.

After hearing evidence from all parties and inspecting the site, a jury returned a verdict of accidental death, the coroner saying that the difficulty in fixing responsibility was too great to warrant a verdict of manslaughter.

In 1901, British United Shoe Machinery purchased the site for a new factory. You can see that, with the old ground marked, in this picture from the 1930s:

The canal on the left will have been flowing gently down from the site of our current home, on its way passing under the Upperton Road bridge, from where that other hoarding was blown away in 2004.

There'll be many tributes to Bernard Murphy today, especially on Merseyside of course. And next time I'm back in Leicester I'll pop into Belgrave Road cemetery to see if I can find Henry Scotton's grave. Perhaps if you live nearby you can do the same. I wish I could find out if he was a Leicester Fosse supporter, back then when they played at that ground just round the corner from his house.

In 2014 I was back home for the first time in five years, just as we played our first game in the Premier League for ten years - Nigel Pearson's team drew 2-2 at the King Power, against Everton. Just by chance, I walked round the north side of the ground and saw a couple of Evertonians in the garden of rest, at Bernard Murphy's memorial plaque. I chatted to them and they told me Bernard's story. It was the two guys you can see in the photo above. I told them that my parents were originally from the same part of Huyton as Bernard, moving down to Leicester just before I was born. 

Henry Scotton and Bernard Murphy are linked by tragic circumstances, and since 2004 there has been a strengthening link between Leicester City and Everton.

RIP Henry. RIP Bernard.

Leo Ulloa said some really interesting things said in an interview he did with a Spanish YouTube channel focussed on English Football -  'La media Inglesa'. He said some great things about the great escape year  and the title season. I love the channel itself because I keep my Spanish sharp whilst listening to discussion of a a topic I love, English Football, so if you're learning or have learnt, i'd recommend subscribing. Anyway, this will be paraphrased as I took notes on things that would be great to share whilst watching it. I don't believe they have English subs available, but if people request / really would like to watch it, I'll painstakingly write them for the video in it's entireity :).

•  He was happy that although we were in the relegation zone in the PL, fans were coming asking for autographs and photos, seemed happy, upbeat.
•  When he signed for Leicester, the lead physio told him 'Leo, there aren't any stars here' meaning big name players (at the time he was our most expensive signing).  
• After losing against tottenham 4-3 in the great escape season, Cambiasso sent him an image at 2am of all the fixtures they had left and all the fixtures of the rivals. He had tabulated how many points could be gained against certain teams, and how many the rivals were likely to gain. Esteban said 'I think we can do this' (survive). During breakfast at the next training day (whilst drinking Mate, a traditional argentinian drink - think a cuppa but for argentines) they again looked over the fixtures and potential points that Esteban had been working on. "I think I'm going to take this to the boss' Esteban then said. Later that day, all the players were shown on a big screen the theory / data that Esteban had put together. They never mentioned that it had came from him. Leo then goes on to say that many of the fixtures ended up coming out how Esteban had calculated. (What a legend Cambiasso!!)   
• The team was very united, like a close family in the title winning season
• When Ranieri Arrived, he asked who was the most talented player with the ball. They all said Mahrez. Ranieri then said 'Okay, so we're going to play for him, we'll help him and he will help us win games'. He said that this really raised Riyad's confidence.
• On Vardy - "tiene calle, tiene barrio" literally 'He has street". I think we all know what he means by this! He also said Vardy was contantly playing jokes in the dressing room, some of them frustrating.
•  On a day out in Dublin whilst playing for Brighton, they ended up in the same pub as the Leicester team. The Leicester team were all in costume, with Wes Morgan and Wasilewski as Rocky and Apollo. 
• In a team full of players supposedly from the second division, they all wanted to prove what they could really do.
• There was no direct financial bonus for winning the league that they were playing for, although of course they did recieve a BMW each, and im sure other bonueses must have come their way after actually doing it. He requested his with left hand steering for when he'd go back to Spain.
• Around Christmas time is when they really believed they could win the league.
• He'll never live something like that season again. When asked which photo symbolises the season for him, he cited the one of Drinkwater jumping on his back celebrating as he had scored again West Ham.

He seems like a really humble, likeable guy.