Matt Mills

[Zear0]

1 hour ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Is that true?

100%

[RoboFox]

 

[Ric Flair]

I remember being genuinely amazed we had the money and ambition to sign Matt Mills, lots of us thought he was destined to be a top defender. He was abysmal with us, like so many of that era. 

[Bert]

1 hour ago, Babylon said:

We go on about worst signings, but comparing the turnovers we had when buying someone like Silva, to when we bought Mills... I think this bloke is right near the top of the list. 

 

 

The hype around him signing was immense as well we thought we were getting the best defender in the league. 

[Corky]

8 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I remember being genuinely amazed we had the money and ambition to sign Matt Mills, lots of us thought he was destined to be a top defender. He was abysmal with us, like so many of that era. 

Yeah, I probably thought Mills was going to be the leader we needed and Beckford the striker to drag us forward. Morgan looked like a "meh" signing and we booed Vardy off at Huddersfield and his time was done.

 

In Nige We Trusted  

[Gamble92]

This is a complete rewrite of history.

 

Sven was sacked because we were outplayed and beat 3-0 at home by Millwall. This was after getting outclassed in the first home game by Mills' ex club Reading where he himself was shown up so much. I havent even had to check any of that, it still haunts me. 

 

It was a masterstroke what Pearson did. Any other manager would have come in and asked for another 25m to spunk on even more 33 year old ex internationals. They did an amazing job of not only getting rid of those awful attitudes, but replacing them with unknown gems who wanted the fight. 

 

I don't hold anything against Mills for signing a huge contract. Any of us would. But looking at his career as a whole, its pretty obvious we signed a 500k bottom hald championship player for a Premier League fee.

[Bert]

1 hour ago, Alf Bentley said:

Some vague recollections of this time (correct me if I'm wrong, as I have an aging, imperfect brain):

- We'd let a 2-0 lead slip midweek, losing 3-2 at Watford after a defensive capitulation led by Mills

- On the Saturday we played in the FA Cup away at Norwich (then a division above us). Nigel dropped Mills and gave Wes his debut......we won 2-1.

- It was rumoured that immediately after the Norwich win, Mills approached Nigel to complain at being dropped (unused sub/traveled with squad?) and was sent to sit on the team coach

 

As others have said, you then just need to look at the subsequent career trajectories of Mills and Morgan......... Go on, then, Matt, off you stumble! 

 

He defo didn’t go straight to the team coach, he stormed out of the ground straight past me and a few others from here. But the rest is spot on. 

[Gamble92]

Also worth pointing out that media have probably been going round trying to get ex players to spill the beans on Nigel since his abrupt sacking.

 

The stuff in the office is very convenient given the rumours of him being sacked for something untoward at Watford.

[South Shire Fox]

Remember at the time there were rumours going round that Pearson stuck the nut on him 😂. He was down training at ‘The Gym’ behind the Highcross with Jon Stevenson a few days later so must of been completely ostrasized from the Club. How a footballer of his ability had an Audi R8 like he did ill never know.

[UniFox21]

Would love to hear the side from the coaching staff and other players. We've all heard how Pearson demands the best from each player, so there's obviously more to it than what's been let on by him. 

[dayday]

Is this the same Matt Mills who said that Forest was the biggest club he had played for in the East Midlands, tosser

[davieG]

the Merc are on the ball with this one

 

'I stumbled off' - Former Leicester City favourite lifts lid on infamous Nigel Pearson bust-up.

 

The two came to blows during their time at Leicester City following a chat in the manager's office.

ByTom Leach
09:37, 19 AUG 2020

Former Leicester City captain Matt Mills has claimed that he was confronted by an unprovoked Nigel Pearson during his time at the King Power Stadium, sparking a training ground bust-up that saw him dropped and forced out of the club.

Mills was made Foxes captain in 2011 after completing his switch from Reading but things soon turned sour when boss Sven Goran-Erikkson was sacked and replaced by Pearson

He says Pearson, who most recently took charge of Premier League Watford, made an early decision to punish the central defender in an attempt to stamp his authority on the entire squad in a power play that asserted his dominance at Belvoir Drive.

But in doing so he overstepped the line, suggest Mills, confronting him in his office just days after a crucial FA Cup clash.

"We were in sixth or seventh when Sven got sacked, it wasn't like we weren't battling for promotion at the time - but Nigel Pearson came in and I could tell it wasn't going to work," he said, speaking to Second Tier Podcast.

"He made it clear in one way or another that I wasn't going to be involved.

"On the first day I met him he shook my hand and said: 'You're not as fat as I thought you were!'," Mills explained.

"I used to have my body fat levels checked every weekend and I was never over ten per cent, so that was a weird comment.

"And then we played Crystal Palace the next day and on the Monday he called me into his office, I thought he was going to tell me it was a great game on the weekend, but instead he just asked me if I thought I deserved to be captain.

"I explained that the old manager obviously saw something in me and that I didn't make myself captain, I wasn't sure what to say but I knew from the start that it was cagey.

"I continued to play and we were in the play-offs when we had an FA Cup quarter-final that he left me out of so I went to see him in his office to ask why I was dropped.

"I was thinking that he would tell me that I had been poor or that he wanted to give someone else an opportunity, but his reply was that I should get up and leave his office. That was random because I had only tried to open a dialogue up.

"And he was quite forceful with it," he continued. "I asked if we had a problem because all I was trying to do was have a conversation but he just proceeded to do something that I probably shouldn't mention so will leave up to other people's imaginations - but I stumbled off afterwards.

In the weeks that followed Mills says he was made to train with the youth team as he was left out of a string of crucial Foxes games in the fight for promotion before sitting down at his family home in Swindon one matchday to see his manager tell Sky Sports that he had been snubbed for so long because Pearson refused to "pick a team on price tags and egos".

Mills said: "I was left thinking, what have I done to this man for him to throw me under the bus like this.

"Since then I have read a lot of coaching manual and management books and there is always an old saying that you chop of the head of the snake and then you won't get any backlash, as it were.

"If he could stamp his authority on the squad and show that he could get rid of the captain then nobody would mess with the manager.

"It worked," he added. "Leicester got promoted and I just happened to be the fall guy."

 

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/nigel-pearson-city-matt-mills-4437861

 

 

[Guest Electric Yetis]

39 minutes ago, RoboFox said:

 

Love reading these old threads and people's opinions of the time. 

Would love to read some of the stuff said about Vardy and the signing of Morgan.

[Guest SO1]

Anything for.money.

[UpTheLeagueFox]

6 minutes ago, davieG said:

"If he could stamp his authority on the squad and show that he could get rid of the captain then nobody would mess with the manager."

Pearson wasn't afraid to have big and/or vocal players in the dressing room - he just wanted the right ones.

For all his failings - and let's not sugarcoat them - he was a terrific builder.

I doubt we'll see him as our manager again (and probably rightly so) but he was the right man at the right time on both occasions he arrived.

As a journalist, I have more respect for Pearson (and a tiny bit of fear, although much less so than when he managed us) than anyone else in football.

And whatever he's done elsewhere (more bad than good) it doesn't change the massive impact he had on our club.

 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

"Leicester got promoted and I happened to be the fall guy"

 

Clown.

[Footballwipe]

Look how excited it seemed to be when he signed (including the amazing mistake of EMT putting Lee Tomlin's picture instead of Lee Peltier  )

 

 

[davieG]

You're looking a bit overweight Matt

 

[VLC86]

Matt Mills has got a point, he did go on to build the foundations for a miraculous title win while Pearson ended up at Forest.

 

I’ve got that right havent it?

[urban.spaceman]

Matt Mills is in League Two and Leicester City are in the Europa League. You might say Nigel made the right decisions.

[Sharpe's Fox]

 

 

The difference. Mills is a bum.

[RoboFox]

24 minutes ago, davieG said:

"I asked if we had a problem because all I was trying to do was have a conversation but he just proceeded to do something that I probably shouldn't mention so will leave up to other people's imaginations - but I stumbled off afterwards.

"I was in the middle of telling Nigel how unhappy I was about being dropped and he wasn't saying anything, then it caught my eye... He had his hand rested on his desk and he'd made one of those circles with his thumb and index finger. It stopped me in my tracks. When I looked back at his face, he was grinning like a maniac"

 

"He got up without saying a word, walked around to where I was sitting and proceeded to give me the biggest dead arm imaginable. I stumbled off afterwards."

[TWUKO]

Is this around the same time nigel said that some had delusions of grandeur (my favourite saying).

 

It was always a strange signing, Reading were arguably a better side at the time, so the motivation was purely financial, we were splashing the cash at the time, we were a bit like QPR spending stupid money on half decent players.

 

I imagine this period is why we got a FFP fine from the football league after our promotion to the PL.

[Sampson]

I remember the hype when he originally signed was on the back of his performance in the play-off final (in which Reading concedes 4 goals).

 

Yet Reading fans at the time told us he was shit and massively overhyped and they were laughing at the fee we paid . Didnt take long to realise they were right.

 

Then Nigel came in, had to get rid of Sven's big money flops. Then bought the actual best defender in the division in Wes Morgan for 1/5th of the price...

 

Matt Mills had a few more years as a mediocre Championship defender then dropped down the leagues. While Wes became a legend.

[surrifox]

1 hour ago, Bert said:

The hype around him signing was immense as well we thought we were getting the best defender in the league. 

I thought his defensive partner at Reading was a better player (can't remember his name !) and wondered if we signed the wrong one.  at the time Curtis Davies was the player we should have committed to .