Question for Leicester fans

[Shev]

Hey all, Wycombe fan here. I have a question (to satisfy my curiosity, more than anything) to pose to you all.

 

How would you describe the journey from L1 to present day, but rather than the obvious (winning the league was awesome, FA Cup was brilliant) instead focusing on the nuance of how it affected you personally in relation to your club and to the game itself. Were there unexpected aspects to how you felt after the league win? Was there nothing but a sense of "now I can die in peace", or was here a deflating aspect to reaching the mountain top after the fact? If the latter, what got you hooked again? And where has it all left you present day? Are you as passionate as you were before you had won the league? Less? more? How has dining at the top table with the giants of the sport made you feel about the soul of the game?

 

Hopefully you all see what I am trying to get at. I am fascinated by "the journey" Leicester fans have been on, as it is quite unique, but I feel there must be a lot of subtle aspects to how it has all gone for each fan personally that may be missed by fans of other clubs.

 

Cheers!

Edited 18 January 2022 by Shev

[ozleicester]

I've noticed among other fans ( not myself I hope) an attitude of entitlement. (Top4/6, regular European matches)

 

Still in my mind I don't quite believe it...League champions AND FA cup winners.

[peach0000]

It's a weird one for me because obviously everything is amazing. But it subsequent seasons I've definitely felt a little bit flat like nothing ever compares. My love of watching football and my club is definitely not a strong as it used to be. Maybe there's other factors at play but it's kind of a sense of nothing will live up to the enjoyment so what's the point. I will say the FA cup win was almost comparable a feeling for me and definitely has helped me rediscover the feelings I used to get from watching football.

 

Being at the 'lower table' if that's what you want to call it was definitely a more wholesome experience for me. I find the top a bit toxic and ridiculous especially on the internet. Also I feel in a lot of ways the game has been rigged to stop a 'Leicester' from happening which I didn't really realise before. 

Edited 18 January 2022 by peach0000

[1972 Fox]

Thank you for your post. These are my personal thoughts.....

 

Firstly I would say that none of our wonderful journey could have happened without our incredible owners taking over our football club. They have made it all possible and I will be forever grateful to them for this.

 

It has been an almost unbelievable journey for LCFC in recent years. I have followed my team/club for over 50 years now through thick and thin and I never thought I would experience the joy and level of success that we have managed to achieve.

 

You have a point about the "I can now die happy" feeling, as that was exactly how I felt after we won the PL in 2016. I can remember how desperate I was during the title run in for us to get over the line and win it, as I had the feeling that this opportunity would never come round again, so we had to do it there and then.

 

The next season we followed it with our Champions League campaign which was another great journey to the QF's.

 

After that I started to get a bit of an anticlimactic feeling, as in it can't get any better than this and the only way is downwards, whilst still being so appreciative of what we had achieved. But after a while and coming down off the high, I started to enjoy following us again in the same way as I always had done during the bad times and the up and down years. If you have experienced the bad times it makes the successful times taste so much sweeter when they do come along.

 

With the success that we achieved there then becomes a certain level of expectation, and unfortunately amongst some supporters a level of entitlement, which sometimes can be a bit difficult to bare.

 

Most recently we have been competing at the top end of the PL again and I have also been fortunate enough to see us lift the FA Cup at Wembley (another dream come true) as well as having another couple of seasons playing in Europe.

 

Winning and success are great but I don't have an expectation that we will carry on being right up there all the time. There will be some disappointing seasons along the way and who knows what the future holds?

 

That's football (as well as life) and LCFC have been and always will be a massive part of my life. 

[mannyzlcfc]

1 hour ago, ozleicester said:

I've noticed among other fans ( not myself I hope) an attitude of entitlement. (Top4/6, regular European matches)

 

Still in my mind I don't quite believe it...League champions AND FA cup winners.

This....

[cruzFOX]

Personally I don’t feel as a foxes fan at all entitied. I think you have to understand where the frustrations sometimes come from and these are good frustrations. nuances you can call it if you like.

we’ve all come on this magical journey together through thick and thin. Our club and owners have helped instill an immense sense of pride about who we are as a community. We like being the underdogs and if we win we earned it and deserved it.

pundits like to say we punch above our weight but I always found that disrespectful. That’s a masked way of saying we don’t belong at the top competing with the big time Charlie’s.

I hope we never change who we are - our identity. We’ve not come this far to say goodbye to it all and accept less cuz we’re not fashionable or sexy like an arsenal or spurs. Yeh I’m still amazed we won the league but I love the way we did it more.

I hope we continue to win different prizes over the years maybe a Europa cup will be nice to add to the collection. we shall see..,

[The Year Of The Fox]

2 hours ago, Shev said:

Hey all, Wycombe fan here. I have a question (to satisfy my curiosity, more than anything) to pose to you all.

 

How would you describe the journey from L1 to present day, but rather than the obvious (winning the league was awesome, FA Cup was brilliant) instead focusing on the nuance of how it affected you personally in relation to your club and to the game itself. Were there unexpected aspects to how you felt after the league win? Was there nothing but a sense of "now I can die in peace", or was here a deflating aspect to reaching the mountain top after the fact? If the latter, what got you hooked again? And where has it all left you present day? Are you as passionate as you were before you had won the league? Less? more? How has dining at the top table with the giants of the sport made you feel about the soul of the game?

 

Hopefully you all see what I am trying to get at. I am fascinated by "the journey" Leicester fans have been on, as it is quite unique, but I feel there must be a lot of subtle aspects to how it has all gone for each fan personally that may be missed by fans of other clubs.

 

Cheers!

For me the best part/ most enjoyable season was actually the season we won the Championship 🙈

 

Don’t ask me why, but I think with us being shite for so long, getting promotion was really the only attainable and realistic target we could hope to achieve back then. Yet it was still something out of our grasp for 12-14 years however long it was. 
 

Looking back that season seems like one big party. Easy to get your mates of mates who away tickets to bolster the numbers, it being easy to spontaneously jump on to Barnsley away 3 hours before kick off. Obviously absolutely romping the league helped too 😅

 

The survival season, at least the first 7-8 games was unreal and incredibly enjoyable.  Likewise the last 10 games of the same season. My devotion to football stopped a heck of a lot during that season which I put down to a family bereavement (I actually jacked in my ST at this point!.) So I think anything that followed after that- Winning the PL, playing Champions League football is tainted slightly, so I realise what I’ll put below is probably in the minority of LCFC fans opinions.

 

Winning the PL has never been a dream of mine. Purely because it was so far ‘out there’ and so unrealistic that it never entered even my head. Fortunately for myself I managed to get to pretty much every game that season too, so I was there for every important game you could name. Every time we won- Chelsea (h) Liverpool (h) Spurs (a) it just felt like ‘3 points’ 

 

It wasn’t until Sunderland (a) that I actually started to believe we could win the thing after managing to grind them down after it being 0-0 for so long. I went up to United (a) the day before we won the league. And the whole thing just felt so surreal. The words written by my dad before he passed away (7 years ago on Thursday) I’ll post them below) ringing in my head as we made our way up to Manchester. 

 

The whole season just felt like a dream. It’s still not sunk in even now I don’t think. 

 

Winning The FA Cup was probably the most enjoyable thing I’ve been able to mentally process since winning the Championship. Again, because it was actually always realistically obtainable, yet always out of our reach- So last May and 2013/14 was like ridding ourselves of a lot of demons.

 

Part of Dads letter written at the back end of 2014 before he died reads

 

’Following LCFC and England is obviously important to you, but please please get it into perspective, though you will accumulate memories of great wins, near misses and many losses, you will also look back and think how much it has cost you, and not just in terms of money. (He’s on about my ex getting fed up there) Anyway, England have even less chance of winning a/any trophy than do Leicester of winning the Prem. Is it all worth it I ask?’ 
 

 

 

16 months later we won the PL. I was just waiting for us to win the World Cup in 2018 before making part of those words into my new LCFC/England flag

 

 

[TrentFox]

Until Sue Gray confirms that we did or didn’t  win the league and FA cup, I am unable to respond

to your questions as to how I feel. 

[NAKC20]

24 minutes ago, TrentFox said:

Until Sue Gray confirms that we did or didn’t  win the league and FA cup, I am unable to respond

to your questions as to how I feel. 

Her brother Demarai might have a say in her final outcome

[SpacedX]

3 hours ago, Shev said:

How would you describe the journey from L1 to present day?

In order to answer that you need to delve further into our history. We were always a yo-yo club, but at the time of our relegation in 2008, from memory, we were one of only nine clubs never to have competed out of the top two tiers of the English football league. This was out sole season in the third tier and so although most view it as an anomaly it is important to also understand the circumstances that preceded and caused this as much as the events that unfolded subsequently. 

 

I think every City fan on this forum will tell you how fortunate that we have been in terms of our current ownership, and in particular their ambition/vision, and how grateful we are to be able to experience it - (goal music and crappy cardboard clappers notwithstanding)

[Izzy]

I would reply, but you're still not forgiven for Roy Essandoh

[HighPeakFox]

54 minutes ago, TrentFox said:

Until Sue Gray confirms that we did or didn’t  win the league and FA cup, I am unable to respond

to your questions as to how I feel. 

That's 'Post Of The Year' sewn up, then.

[HighPeakFox]

Maybe it's my age, or my stage of life, and I don't know whether the change in me is correlated to LCFC or caused by them, but I simply cannot get AS involved and worked up about football as once I did - and I'd say that goes for the game as a whole, not just LCFC. 

[Koke]

We were only in L1 for one season. Whilst I don't like fans who are entitled and want to compete for league titles, I also don't like how other fans behave like we are a small club who are lucky to even be in the Premier League. Every setback we have, we get fans who'll remind us we played Bristol Rovers 14 years ago. 

[Vacamion]

 

People outside our support might think it was all constantly jolly winning the league, and yes a lot of it was very pleasant indeed , but my main emotions were:

 

a) disbelief and imposter syndrome.  Whilst we actually won by a fairly large margin, many of us refused to believe we might win it until it was mathematically certain.  Even when we drew against Man United the day before the league was won, I feared we might have let Spurs back in... 

 

b) towards the end of that season, it was frickin AGONY as we won or drew by increasingly narrow margins.  There was apprehension and fear of losing what we might, impossibly, win.  

 

Since the league win, yes, I'm more relaxed about it all. 

 

I've lived away from Leicester for many years and for a lot of people, I'm that Leicester fan they know, so it gave people I know something to talk to me about, which was nice. 

 

I will never ever tire of talking about that season or reminiscing about it.  

 

I think we churned through a few managers too quickly after it and expectations have increased amongst the support in general.

 

Our European campaigns have been a bonus to be enjoyed (although many in here got angry we aren't winning trophies in Europe) and the FA Cup last year with THAT goal and THAT save was to be savoured forever.

 

Heightened expectations mean now that Brendan can probably lose two or three games before people in here are calling for him to go, where previously NFP got away with not winning for months on end.

 

I'm not sure I am comfortable with this level of entitlement and expectation.

 

Leicester City weren't very good for most of my life, so it is very apparent to me that we are in a golden period of our history and sometimes, we should sit back and drink it in.

 

[Spudulike]

I think that 2015/16 resulting in many reassessing their relationship with our club. It always felt to me that we fostered a never ending seige mentality in that we were never destined to win either of the two most important domestic trophies and would have to be content with the three League Cups, which to be fair, isn't that bad. Also the club does hold the joint record with Man City for the most Div2/Championship titles (7). However, watching some other clubs that had a lower status win the FA Cup was galling. Why couldn't that be us? 

 

The Premier League winning season is still very fresh in the memory and I think we are still basking in that (and probably will for ever more). As good as it was at the time it became agony towards the end. The series of 1-0 wins in Mar/Apr and the thought that we would blow it made for some agonising times. That was our one shot and I'm not sure how the fan base would've coped had we not seen it through. 

 

The FA Cup was emotional in that it was finally the moment that we have been brought up craving. Our club's name is engraved on it and can't be taken away. My uncle went to see us lose 4 previous FA Cup finals and never saw us win it. That's were my thoughts were. 

 

I'm finding that I'm now watching us play with more enjoyment. I'm appreciating exciting football and enjoying the debate as always. However, the fire in the belly whilst not being extinguished is no longer raging. A look at the clubs honours board should br enough to fill anyone with pride and a calmness. 

 

There's always the next big thing and, for me, I just want to see the status of the club more widely recognised and respected. I'm excited by the infrastructure improvements as I think the stadium upgrade will shift the club up another level. That's all I ever wanted, I suppose. 

[Mark_w]

I remember being so miserable going into the opening day against Sunderland. Nigel Pearson did so much for us (a lot of which has been miscredited) and his sacking was so unjust that I could barely motivate myself to go to that game, it's a bloody good job I'd already renewed my season ticket before he got sacked. My mum definitely wouldn't have renewed and I would've struggled with it. I went to Uni at Derby from 2013-2016, at the time Derby County and ourselves had both been in the Championship for a similar length of time, had similar expectations and were viewed as clubs in similar positions. The biggest difference being their historical success. In my three years at University there I saw us win the Championship for the first time in my lifetime while they lost a play-off final, us complete one of the greatestes escapes from relegation in Premier League history and then saw us win the top flight of English football. I mention this just because I've not stopped feeling smug about it.

I felt (and still feel) like Ranieri wasn't a remotely forward thinking appointment, and he undid a fair bit of the good that had been done in the previous 5 or so seasons. But he was absolutely perfect for managing the group and expectations in that one season and it made it possible for us to turn all of the good things we'd been doing and the joy it had been to follow us into an incredible tangible memory. He, all of the staff, the owners, deserve so much credit for giving us that moment. We've just really muddled along as a mid-table Prem club until Brendan came in after that. But continuing to stay invested after winning the league was really easy. I'd grown up obviously dreaming of us winning the league, but that felt impossible, so my achievable hope was that I'd see Leicester win the FA Cup. The Champions League was obviously so much fun the next season. And then I just went back to hoping to one day see us win the cup. I also managed to start going to a lot more away games which was nice. Being in Wembley with my mum for the FA Cup Final was amazing and gave us that one off match to win the trophy that we didn't really have in the Premier League winning season because Tottenham dropping points at Stamford Bridge got us over the line. This season with fans in stadiums and covid still raging has been difficult, I'm a lot more comfortable missing a game now than I ever was before, but I'm hoping that's just short term anxiety about covid rather than me losing any passion for watching us.

In terms of the 'soul of the game', I mean success in English football correlates hugely with how much clubs spend. I'm so greatful that we were the club that managed to upset those astronomical odds to achieve something so special. The reality of the situation is it's not going to change, and I hope we'll set ourselves up nicely to compete at the top of this hierarchy because I have no hope of it changing. But ultimately it saddens me that the league isn't more unpredictable, that there aren't fans of more different clubs who get to have an experience like ours.

Edited 18 January 2022 by Mark_w

[Fox92]

League win was weirdly strange as we never ever thought it would ever happen. Even now I look back and can't believe it happened and I think that goes for everyone.

 

FA Cup was superb as it combined possibility with what everyone has always wanted.

 

Winning trophies is what football is all about. I couldn't care less about "making top 4" unless it's the first position as you don't win anything for finishing top 4. I'd much rather win the FA Cup or League Cup and finish mid table.

 

I will always be passionate as it's football. Winning the league hasn't stopped me wanting more or loving football, if anything I want to win more trophies!

 

Good luck to Wycombe and hopefully you win promotion. It'd be nice as your fans missed out on a whole Championship season. Ainsworth has done a superb job and I'm surprised he hasn't been linked with any bigger jobs (no disrespect). 

Edited 18 January 2022 by Fox92

[RumbleFox]

It broke football for me. Never quite been the same. It’s like playing through a computer game after you’ve completed it. It’s still fun and you can admire the beauty of it but something’s missing. X 

Edited 18 January 2022 by RumbleFox

[LCFCJoe96]

I think the biggest surprise after the title win has been how apathetic I’ve slowly become towards league football, maybe it’s just the Premier League and knowing how impossible it is to consistently challenge for the league without becoming some soulless money pit recycling “stars”, and as/when we end up in a different division that feeling will change, but the league season just feels like this long drawn out process to decide whether next season is interesting (if you get Europe) or mundane (10th) or painful (look set for a relegation battle) to me now.

 

On the flip side, I’ve never enjoyed Cup competitions more, getting to the quarters, semis, even final, causing upsets, days at Wembley, the different teams we’ve played in Europe, it’s the fun side of being slightly below the top, top table.

[Crinklyfox]

5 hours ago, Shev said:

Hey all, Wycombe fan here. I have a question (to satisfy my curiosity, more than anything) to pose to you all.

 

How would you describe the journey from L1 to present day, but rather than the obvious (winning the league was awesome, FA Cup was brilliant) instead focusing on the nuance of how it affected you personally in relation to your club and to the game itself. Were there unexpected aspects to how you felt after the league win? Was there nothing but a sense of "now I can die in peace", or was here a deflating aspect to reaching the mountain top after the fact? If the latter, what got you hooked again? And where has it all left you present day? Are you as passionate as you were before you had won the league? Less? more? How has dining at the top table with the giants of the sport made you feel about the soul of the game?

 

Hopefully you all see what I am trying to get at. I am fascinated by "the journey" Leicester fans have been on, as it is quite unique, but I feel there must be a lot of subtle aspects to how it has all gone for each fan personally that may be missed by fans of other clubs.

 

Cheers!

Thank you for the interesting question.

 

I'm retired now and have been a City fan since my childhood so I've seen many ups and downs.  I got used to not expecting too much from my team, but all the while living in hope.

 

I felt terrible when we were relegated to L1, relieved when we were promoted back to the Championship and I was in tears when we won the Championship.  I've seen many clubs rise and fall, some of those that fall never come back so I was incredibly happy when we made it back to the PL.  I was afraid that we would go back down the next season and was elated when we secured our place in the PL  through an incredible run at the end of the season.

 

I was very happy when we started the next season so well, but didn't expect it to last.  In most games we didn't have a lot of possession and were on the back foot for a lot of the time, but we were resilient and when chances came we took them well.  I watched the matches that season hardly daring to believe that we could win the PL, but we did.  Apart from the joy of the achievement, I felt that we had done something for every club.  It doesn't matter if your name is Leicester or Wycombe or any other league club, you can reach the pinnacle of the game.  And that is our legacy.

[VG Fox]

40 minutes ago, Vacamion said:

 

People outside our support might think it was all constantly jolly winning the league, and yes a lot of it was very pleasant indeed , but my main emotions were:

 

a) disbelief and imposter syndrome.  Whilst we actually won by a fairly large margin, many of us refused to believe we might win it until it was mathematically certain.  Even when we drew against Man United the day before the league was won, I feared we might have let Spurs back in... 

 

b) towards the end of that season, it was frickin AGONY as we won or drew by increasingly narrow margins.  There was apprehension and fear of losing what we might, impossibly, win.  

 

Since the league win, yes, I'm more relaxed about it all. 

 

I've lived away from Leicester for many years and for a lot of people, I'm that Leicester fan they know, so it gave people I know something to talk to me about, which was nice. 

 

I will never ever tire of talking about that season or reminiscing about it.  

 

I think we churned through a few managers too quickly after it and expectations have increased amongst the support in general.

 

Our European campaigns have been a bonus to be enjoyed (although many in here got angry we aren't winning trophies in Europe) and the FA Cup last year with THAT goal and THAT save was to be savoured forever.

 

Heightened expectations mean now that Brendan can probably lose two or three games before people in here are calling for him to go, where previously NFP got away with not winning for months on end.

 

I'm not sure I am comfortable with this level of entitlement and expectation.

 

Leicester City weren't very good for most of my life, so it is very apparent to me that we are in a golden period of our history and sometimes, we should sit back and drink it in.

 

I echo these thoughts....been watching the city since the mid 70's, spent 30 yrs there then moved away.....was the butt of many jokes when we were poor and then the focus of attention during the great escape which increased massively with the miracle of 15-16....People still want to talk to me about it ...then we go and win the FA cup which only added to the myth 

 

I will admit to not enjoying the latter end off 15-16...every attack by the opposition made me feel sick.   the West Ham home game I left the pub heartbroken thinking we were done only to get home and find Ulloa had equalised...I couldn't get my head round we might win the PL.. I knew the chance wouldn't come round again...Now I reflect regularly using all the platforms available to relieve the magic whenever I need a lift.  

[miles2lcfc]

It’s an interesting discussion. I have spent some time with an Olympic gold medalist this last week. We have talked mental health and how he struggled after achieving, and battled with drugs. Once you have achieved everything from a young age what do you aspire. The FA Cup was always my dream. Now in the bag. I think for me I have been more focused on Europe and frustrated by it as we have been capable of doing better. The entitlement discussion is interesting. There’s nothing wrong with having an expectation knowing we are good. Doubt many city feel they are fine if they finish mid table. What has made the recent years better is the fact we went into the 3rd tier and struggled for years in the championship.

[Spudulike]

All this discussion about losing the desire and passion should've been in the stadium when Lookman scored against Liverpool in the last home league match. That second half almost felt like we were back in 2016.

 

We are the lost city. We are at our best when up against it and have been written off. Its our DNA. Underdogs. 

 

It don't matter
I won't do what you say
You've got the money and the power
I won't go your way

[Webbo]

The title winning season was the most stressful ever. When it started most of us would have just been glad to stay up, and then we were top of the league we were just waiting for the bubble to burst, not really wanting to think about the possibility that we might win it. Then when it looked a real possibility we were just hoping not to **** it up, knowing that we'd never get the chance again. 

 

Happy that we won it but tbh more relieved it was all over.