Guy

I thank him for starring our 6-1 v Huddersfield on NYD, 2013 re Chris Wood brace on his debut! As for why he joined us at all - a late pay day?!

Quite a few Foxes fans are littered about in my old town of Northampton but mostly it's a rugby town these days since the 90s/00s, large support wise when the Saints became successful - with the rest there mostly supporting the Cobblers (NTFC) or any of the 'big six'.

As regards players under Rodgers tenure, then you have to look at present injuries too - re why Barnes and Maddison have been out injured for ages on end now too! Another thing that goes back to the time of Rodgers ridding Rennie from the club it seems!

Hope it's not on a serious scale as it now is with his predecessor Sven.... X

Such a great fellow. such a shame to hear this bad news but I hopes he has longer than expected and lives life where possible to the full up to the day of reckoning. Definitely true that we wouldn't have won the Prem. without his signings of Nugent, Schmeichel and Konchesky.....Pearson spell two then Ranieri did the rest to ensure the miracle!

Yes, Darren Ambrose scored the late winner in 2002 for Ipswich at our place - then a season later in the Prem. he did the exact same scoring against us at home in injury time for Newcastle to grab them a point!

Both itemised B.Day games involving Rodgers was his management tenure at it's worst - with that Liverpool game in 2019 being the start of the rot really IMO! The less said about last year's Newcastle game though, the better!

Can't believe it's 26 years ago!!

It was late August 1997 - a week before Princess Diana sadly died in the car crash....

Defo. - and the small print on the car park signs are a lot less visible in the early evening dark at this time of year of course, if one isn't parking up there until that time of day....

Yes, Ambrose scored both late ones against us on consecutive Boxing Days for the away team in different leagues - for Ipswich in the then Championship in 2002 to grab their late winner - then for Newcastle's injury time equaliser to deny us three valuable points in 'the Prem. survival quest in 03! Unreal!

I wonder if he'll carry on in management until he's Warnock's or Hodgson's age?! - mid 70s?! - or indeed turn his hand to opening up his own watering hole befor long instead?!!

I only dip into this forum every now and then so - little did I know!

So with his having been sacked last w/end then the Bristol City hierachy presumably disapproved of Pearson "callling them out" for their general lack of team investment and not replacing their best players they sold in the summer then? Not sure if this topic is in another thread (probably!) but if not them I'm surprised it hasn't got more of a mention on Foxes Talk.

Let's be honest - after last season then not a soul saw this unbelievable start coming! I just hope we can carry it on against Leeds on Friday!

Although Smith didn't quite get us over the line sadly then he stil had an almost impossible job on his hands by the time he was appointed (which was way too late and after the two horror shows v Villa and Bournemouth when the inept Sadler and Stowell were left in charge). So I'd counter-argue what youi said in part by saying that Smith's game plan and defensive team selection away at Newcastle in the penultimate game nearly came off and was pretty brave, tactically speaking - and was the polar opposite of how we were inexplicably so pathetic defensively in the away game before it at Fulham, a game that everybody thought was the most winnable from all the remaining fixtures under Smith I think! Yes we rode our luck throughout in that game at Newcastle, the Toon were not at their best and we nearly did 'nick it' at the end had Castagne put away his injury time chance past Pope. Despite the draw against Everton then I also thought we looked pretty fluent in that 'six pointer' at home before that - and had Maddison not fluffed his pen.then we'd have stayed up of course, as others have said in this post too. We got lucky at Newcastle but then were unlucky in so far the final fixtures suiting escapologists Everton - but I guess we should have wrapped things up by then in various missed golden opportunity ways. In a way it felt like our relegation was 'meant to be' sadly.....

Must be somewhat unique in so far as Vardy scoring his first league goal for us at Ewood Park back in 2012 and then today there scoring his latest one, 11 years apart - wow! One can't question the GOAT's loyalty....! If we do go straight back up maybe he will go out on that high and then leave - or perhaps stay for cameo appearances in the Prem. next season....?

I suppose his career record after us in the Prem. says it all! Even at his boyhood club he wasn't really good enough. Did ok at Cov. for a brief time after us and then at Port Vale thereafter but not surprising that he hasn't gone quite the same "evergreen" way in first team management as some of his elders such as Warnock and Hodgson!

That was an amazing game towards the end of MON's tenure with that lethal all too short lived Collymore/Heskey combo. and unbeknown to us all at that time we'd hit our quintessential peak in that game after being the first team of the new Millennium to win a trophy of course (albeit v then second tier Tranmere) in the League Cup final. However three months later we did end the season with a limp 4-0 defeat at already relegated Sheffield Wed. - who haven't graced the Premier League ever since amazingly! Obviously it was a great start under PT the following 2000-01 season with the nucleus of MON's side and with topping the league after 10 games by mid October 2000 or so but no real quality was brought in to supplement the foundations MON had laid (arguably Callum Davidson and Gary Rowett were quality defenders but their opposites were in attack - Akinbiyi and Trevor Benjamin, I ask you!), so when the dust settled we were then inconsistent and clearly not a top 4 side (a spot where we miraculously occupied in the early March 2001 after beating GH's Liverpool - but then were unduly 'found out' in the Wycombe QF FA Cup defeat that they wanted more than us and then anon. to finish the league campaign 13th. Not surprisingly PT was sacked the following September after everything came home to roost - including being bottom of the Prem. by then. Didn't Google any of this myself - sadly the demise of this period is emblazoned in some of our minds. Similarly disappoining periods have of course since followed but it's hard to match that time for falling off a cliff in a relatively short space of time IMO from such a favourable starting point - other than last season of course - the most obvious comparison of all to 22 years previously!

We willl (probably) know more on August 31st deadline! I heard Everton are still keen on Iheanacho, while I suppose anybody else departing for now from those listed is pure hearsay. I'm surprised Castagne hasn't yet been snapped up by a high calibre foreign or PL team though....considering Arsenal had been rumoured to want him early doors soon after our relegation. Maybe Maresca has won him over, as well as others. A shame about Souttar not being rated by the manager though if the media is to be believed...as the Championship rigours would be ideal for a player like that one would think!

It is indeed nigh on impossible to predict this coming season - probably the hardest ever Championship campaign to predict this time around with no minnows in there at all (maybe the likes of Rotherham and newcomers Plymouth aside) - and that's following on from the previous hardest to predict Championship season (last season) that somebody as mediocre as Burnley ended up running away with - while the seasoned 'yo yoers' who were expected to go straight back up again (like Watford and Norwich), completely fell by the wayside last time out, as did teams similar like WBA! The fact that sheer mediocrity came a distant second in the next automatic spot (from first and third place) in Sheffield United also shows how poor the league was last season, while someone like Luton going up in the play offs slot encapsulates it all in the mediocre stakes for me - evemn if a bit of a fairytale for them (Bournemouth style under Eddie Howe), given where they were 15 years ago. For the record I'd say we'll be in the play offs shake up next May but no idea where in there exactly!!

Yes, the dire tactics from Rodgers in the Brentford opener last season re the subs still remains deeply suspicious re throwing away our 2-0 lead, as to whether or not it was deliberate sabotague in a protest to the board about not being financially backed.....the rest as they say is history....

Yeah, especially when you consider there were already two managerial casualties in the league by the time we played Forest in early October (Parker at Bournemouth, Lage at Wolves). How he survived those seven consec. defeats (eight winless), was almost as big a mystery as to how he continued to survive after the Southampton away defeat at the start of March! Had we got rid then, then we possibly wouldn't even be having this "what if" discussion!

Yes, I'd say that false dawn of a game at the start of October ref the 4-0 win over Forest was what most likely bought Brendan another six months - which ultimately lead to our relegation as you alluded to. Then again even if we'd lost at home to Forest that night to extend our dreadful run to 8 defeats on the bounce then seeing how slow they were to act in sacking him later on, he might still have been with us for a damaging amount of time after then too!

The statement from Stowell perfectly sums up how we sleepwalked into relegation quite simply!