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jonthefox

The "do they mean us?" thread

By jonthefox, in Leicester City Forum

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Crazy Kop Corner

Crazy Kop Corner

Posted
Posted

Shrewsbury Quarter Final - March 1982 - It was my first game on the Kop and to see my favourite player Mark Wallington cropped by that bar steward Bates and then the injustice of seeing us go 2 - 1 down was nearly too much as a 10 year old.

 

4 goals later,with legend being that the roar of the crowd could be heard on Leicester High Street for the 3rd and 4th goals and justice prevailed. 

 

That game is up there with the Man U 5 - 3 and last years Seville game for sheer exhilaration in a one off game.

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Vacamion

Vacamion

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Posted

 

I recently found a book full of awfully executed drawings by 10 and 11 year old me, copied from newspapers and programmes.

 

Larry May, Mark Wallington, Jock Wallace and especially Alan Young. All of them blissfully unaware that they have been unskillfully immortalised in 2HB pencil...

 

:D

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Webbo

Webbo

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Wookie said:

Anyone able to post the Times’ Norcroft/Puel interview?

Couldn't find it but this is from today. What makes Rod Liddle a football expert I'm not sure.

 


With eight games to play last season Southampton, who had narrowly lost a League Cup final to Manchester United, were sitting quite comfortably in ninth place in the Premier League with 40 points on the board and a goal difference of zero. They were to finish a very respectable eighth, albeit 30 points below fourth place.

The powers that be at St Mary’s took a good long look at this achievement and decided that the best thing to do would be to sack the manager, Claude Puel. There was no great opposition from the fans: Puel was regarded as inculcating in the Saints a certain continental boredom, the ball passed around in anodyne fashion in the middle of the park, the opposing goalkeeper rarely inconvenienced. Indeed, under Puel Southampton scored only 41 goals in 38 games. When you are a fan, and perhaps a chairman, then you are apt to believe that any change must be for the better. And so boring Puel was evicted and in his place came the more flamboyant Mauricio Pellegrino. What a transformation he effected!

Southampton are now scoring less than one goal per game and have a negative goal difference of 15. They have 12 fewer points than at this stage last year and, at start of play yesterday, sat one place and one point above the relegation trapdoor.

I wonder if those fans now yearn for a bit of boredom. They may well get it, because Pellegrino has been sacked and, via the increasingly absurd managerial merry-go-round of the Premier League, in comes Mark Hughes, whose teams are of course noted more for their obduracy than their flair. It may just save them — in which case, Sparky will get a bonus of £2m. (I wonder what amount of money would be an acceptable bonus to save West Brom?) Meanwhile, Puel is at Leicester City, safe from relegation in eighth place and with, yes, 40 points. There is a symmetry in all things.

I wrote at the start of the season that I thought Southampton might go down this year, based largely on their extraordinarily low level of shots on target. In November I suggested that while they were sitting in mid-table their trajectory was inescapably downward. I mention them again because I find it more satisfying to draw attention to things I’ve said that were right than things I’ve said which turned out wrong (such as tipping Brentford as dark horses for relegation from the Championship when they were, by common assent, the best team seen at The Den this season).

Today the Saints contest a nasty FA Cup quarter-final at Wigan as a prelude to a league run-in that might not be more taxing than those of their relegation rivals but, nonetheless, includes games against Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City and a crunch clash with — yes, of course — Leicester City. Symmetry, you see.

The arrival of old Sparky did not quite electrify the good people of Hampshire. There was some good gallows humour on one of the fans’ forums in which they voted on which underperforming player would be first to get lamped by Hughes in the dressing room. Ryan Bertrand won. There was a feeling among some that Hughes was the right kind of person to get them out of the mess they are in, while some visiting Stoke City supporters suggested that this view might well be misplaced.

It does make you wonder why the same old names keep being recycled, with middle-aged managers hopping from one failure to the next and yet still somehow valued by chairmen — Moyes, Allardyce, Pardew, Hughes, Hodgson, Pulis. For example, what made West Brom think that Alan Pardew, who was truly awful at Crystal Palace, could do a better job than Tony Pulis and strike fire into a side who have had relegation certainties stamped all over them since Bonfire Night? Did the trio of clowns who run West Ham not have the imagination to think of a manager beyond the one who had failed spectacularly at Manchester United, Real Sociedad and Sunderland? What, exactly, in Roy Hodgson’s recent managerial record made Crystal Palace think that’s the man for us?

The answer the chairmen would give, I suppose, is that the only names available to struggling sides are those who are already mired in failure, having recently been sacked for either relegating a team or dragging them too far towards the bottom for anyone’s liking. The only exception is Sam Allardyce, who does have a decent and recent track record of salvaging teams from self-destruction, even if this is rarely, if ever, translated into a formula for actual success. It is true, too, that the aforementioned chairmen begin their machinations by making overtures in the direction of Sean Dyche and Eddie Howe, both of whom are far too sussed to be deposited at the wheel of a sinking ship. But I do wonder if there might be alternatives options from down below the Premier League. Gary Rowett at Derby County, Dean Smith at Brentford? So long as they keep their hands off Millwall’s Neil Harris.

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ealingfox

ealingfox

Posted
Posted (edited)

Never really understood why so many teams' fans are so bitter about our administration. We weren't the only team ever to go into admin under the old rules, we didn't profit from it any more than others just because we were the last to go under before the rules changed. We'd still have gone up after a 10 point deduction anyway.

 

Ok if suppliers and partners didn't get paid then that's poor, but that's business, it happens.

 

Maybe I misunderstood the situation as I was only 11 at the time. Is it because we voluntarily went under as it was an easier way of clearing the decks?

Edited by ealingfox
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CosbehFox

CosbehFox

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Posted
6 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

Never really understood why so many teams' fans are so bitter about our administration. We weren't the only team ever to go into admin under the old rules, we didn't profit from it any more than others just because we were the last to go under before the rules change. We'd still have gone up after a 10 point deduction anyway.

 

Ok if suppliers and partners didn't get paid then that's poor, but that's business, it happens.

 

Maybe I misunderstood the situation as I was only 11 at the time.

The reality is as well that we went backwards even with the ‘cheating of administration’. We went into decline after a nothing season in the Premier League. The business plan at the time relied on five years of top flight football to get on any steady ground. 

 

That’s never acknowledged or pointed out by bitter fans. We did our pain, it was just delayed. 

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Babylon

Babylon

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3 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

Is it because we voluntarily went under as it was an easier way of clearing the decks?

Because of the false reporting from the red tops, we were painted as a team that didn't even attempt to rectify the situation by selling players or even try to avoid administration.

 

The fact that it was the last resort available to secure the future of the club seems ignored. So does the fact that we were forced to that point by Eric Hall and his winding up petition, and the fact we sold about £15m worth of players and accepted offers for anyone else (Muzzy bud from Boro). Plus the fact that after we went into administration. It was the administrators who decided that us getting promotion was in the best interests of the creditors as they could get more money. So the administrators chose not to have a fire sale when they could have to raise short terms funds.

 

To this day, idiots form other teams think we got the new ground for free.

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