Question for Leicester fans

[Spudulike]

3 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

...we brought that from the Championship....we were that good!!!

 I keep saying it but the Championship win was a dress rehearsal for the Premier league title. 

  The way we went from game to game and did the job, and then went on to the next game,  we were showing an attitude in the Championship only attributed to top 4 teams in the Premiership.  I was expecting to be in the top 10 and pushing for the top 6 when we came up, we were more than good enough to have achieved that.

  You only have to look back at the United 5-3, at 3-1 down, we were let off the leash, we were a force to be reckoned with, it wasn't  luck or one of those special days  that happened, ....if only  Pearson had believed more in the team, and himself. 

I could probably agree with that theory had we won the Premier League in the first season back up. Other than a few indications, such as the ManU match you highlight, it took the first two thirds plus of that season to get a grip on it. That first home match where Everton ripped us apart that we somehow got a 2-2 draw from was a big clue how far adrift we were. Eventually, the team got it in the nick of time when perhaps the Championship experience may have helped. Personally, I think the catalyst was the signing of N'golo and to a lesser extent Fuchs and Shinji coupled with just the right amount of tinkering by Claudio. 

[Big_Nige]

If you start right at the beginning of the journey, which was good old league 1, then I think for many us here we agree it was both our lowest ebb, but also the jolt this football club needed.
 

We’d been in the doldrums for years, and the heady days of Martin O’Neill and regular top 10 finishes and Cup Finals seemed a lifetime ago. You’d look around at clubs like Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds. Clubs who all got relegated around the same time as us and they’d all gone to shite, while in the meantime teams like Blackpool, Wigan and Hull had managed to get promoted and it was thoroughly depressing. I went down though sheer habit, but it never felt so far away as getting taught footballing lesson by teams like Colchester, or signing Collins John but the local paper reporting we’d signed John Collins. It’s hard to describe how rancid that period was in our history. When we finally fell through the trapdoor into League 1 we got what we deserved. Mis-managed on and off the pitch. But we needed that depressing day at Stoke. Every story starts somewhere. 

 

League 1 was a great season, and in a personal level it got my love for following them home and away going again. Hereford away will always stick in mind from that season, just a great day on the terraces watching your team be better than the opposition in every conceivable way while singing non stop for 90’s minutes. That season galvanised the whole club and I’ll always look back on it fondly. 
 

I think fans of most clubs have an idea of their standing within the football pyramid. I’d always seen Leicester as a team who should be either in the top division, or challenging to get in it. Similar to what the WBA’s and the Fulham’s of this world do currently. Yo-Yo around. Getting promoted in 2014 was brilliant. We won it at a canter and after the horrible heartbreak of the Watford play off the season before and there was a sense of inevitability as soon as the season started. We were too good for the division. There was something about the team we had that made you feel we could really make a fist of staying up the following season too. There was a lot of quality there and it’s no surprise to me that mainstays of that XI like Kasper, Vardy, Mahrez etc went on to have the careers that they have. Maybe not the level that have, but you could tell they were far too good for the championship. Nigel Pearson deserves the freedom of the city for what he did in his two spell here. Laid the groundwork for everything that has come to pass
 

Winning the league was something else though. I’ve never been invested as much in anything in my entire life. For months it consumed every thought, especially the run-in after losing to Arsenal on Valentine’s Day. Palace away is something that is hard to describe to people unless they were there, and it still gives me goosebumps thinking about it as I write this. If we hadn’t have won it that season, and we’d imploded, I don't think I’d have ever got over it. It was our time and whatever anyone says, we pissed that league, we were by far the best team in the country for 14 months. 

 

Enough time has now passed for me to come to terms with the magnitude of it. But it did ruin football for a good 2 or 3 years. The following season the Champions League was a nice distraction but there’s no surprises that we performed best in those games, the rest was just a blur of nothing performances and questionable tactics from Don Claudio. Leicester back to the status quo of making up the numbers. For 24 months or so it became very hard to get up for games, we’d scaled the mountain and there was only one way to go, or at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

 

i think for me, football un-ruined it’s self on that terrible evening that Khun Vichai tragically lost his life. While obviously in the aftermath football mattered not a jot, coming out the other side of that disaster in a weird way galvanised the club again. We needed to uphold his legacy which I believe we have done and more. While there might sometimes be a certain entitlement amongst the fan base these days, I think we deserve to have it. I’d say now in the football pyramid we are one of the top 8 teams in the country. Yes there’s the “big 6” who revenue wise we can’t touch, but we’re going about everything the right way off the pitch to slowly bridge the gap. 

it’s been an amazing ride this past decade, and I feel privileged that it happened to my team and I was lucky enough to see it unfold before my very eyes. Football is escapism from the mundane and when the team you follow becomes mundane too then it loses its magic. Luckily we’ve been on a hell of a journey. 

 

What was the question again? 

[Wasyls Pec Deck]

The way I describe the PL win to other football fans was that it was like a cross between your wildest dream and saving / restarting Football/Champ Manager to win most games and go on to win the league (which I may have done a few times). It was that unlikely and crazy.

 

I still have the same passion as prior to recent success, but do think it has strengthened the bond (for want of a better word or turn of phrase) between myself and the club. You can also add to that the downs - notably the helicopter crash. I feel part of a fan base brought together by moments of unimaginable ecstasy and tragic loss. 
 

I’m certainly extremely appreciative of most of what’s happened - the stuff of bucket lists that you wouldn’t have thought possible - but it happened and is something the manner of which few others will experience. And every time I’m having a rough day I play a video of Man City or Spurs away from 15-16, Sevilla at home from 16-17 or the Tielemans thunderbastard - then suddenly everything is all good again. It’s all like the ultimate pick-me-up, and it will make me smile forever until my last breath.

 

* I also listen to those two banging tunes by Dave Henson!

Edited 19 January 2022 by Wasyls Pec Deck

[sacreblueits442]

1 hour ago, Spudulike said:

I could probably agree with that theory had we won the Premier League in the first season back up. Other than a few indications, such as the ManU match you highlight, it took the first two thirds plus of that season to get a grip on it. That first home match where Everton ripped us apart that we somehow got a 2-2 draw from was a big clue how far adrift we were. Eventually, the team got it in the nick of time when perhaps the Championship experience may have helped. Personally, I think the catalyst was the signing of N'golo and to a lesser extent Fuchs and Shinji coupled with just the right amount of tinkering by Claudio. 

... Pearson has said it in a statement, he did not believe we could play the way we played in the Championship!!!

  It was only his adherence to a safety first policy that held us back in the first season back.

  With the last 9 to go I listened to his interview after the previous game and knew he was about to change what we were doing. I went to the book makers on the Monday to put £20 on us to stay up. The price I was quoted at the time was 3-1, which I thought  was ridiculous ( I  haver never placed a bet of over £10 for any bet). I walked out of there, still clutching my money. 

  The foundation was already there, the Kante and experience of Fuchs supported it, out mentality was ingrained into a bunch of players who had never expected to be in this situation, not at that moment.

  You would say the biggest part of the League win was that we did not fold!!!

[Nalis]

@ShevI think the forum's activity tonight might answer a lot of your questions...

Edited 19 January 2022 by Nalis