My Leicester team won at City but we still went down!
Leicester city winning at Manchest e r city? it can happen. it has happened.
Just three years ago, claudio ranieri’s Foxes went to the etihad stadium and won 3-1, a statement that Leicester city could indeed be champions. so it proved.
And the first time the clubs met in the Premier League era, Leicester also won in Manchester. the transformation in both clubs makes it feel a lot longer than 24 years ago.
there were 21,000 there, it was played at Maine road, where Brian Horton was the manager. Leicester had nine englishmen in their team, a Welsh striker in iwan roberts and a Northern ireland defender in colin Hill.
compared to Leicester, the home team were exotic — including Germans Uwe rosler and Maurizio Gaudino and Dutchman Michel Vonk.
But by the end of the day, Mancunian focus, and the country’s, would be elsewhere.
this was a tale of two very different cities. While Manchester’s played at Maine road, Leicester’s ground was Filbert street. it was January 1995 and both teams were struggling to keep up.
For Man city there was the resurgence of their noisy neighbours, United, and for Leicester there was the problem of simply treading water. the hosts were 11th in the table, the visitors were 22nd.
‘Man city were miles away from what they are now,’ says simon Grayson, who was Leicester’s captain then. He had become the first at the club to lift a trophy at Wembley in the previous season’s play-offs.
‘Maine road still had an aura about it, the pitch was massive and the club was still a big club even if it was going through tough times.
‘We had just come up, promoted through the play- offs, and we knew quite early on in the season that we would be at full stretch just to survive.’
Leicester’s first season back in the top flight since 1987 started with three straight defeats. it was mid-september before they won, beating tottenham with a couple of goals from Julian Joachim. When in October new signing Franz carr scored the winner at home to southampton, Leicester were out of the relegation zone.
they returned to it quickly, however, and in November manager Brian Little was offered the job at Aston Villa following ron Atkinson’s departure.
‘Brian went to Villa, he had been an icon there as a player,’ adds Grayson (right).
‘He left good foundations. Mark McGhee came in and he told us the aim was to survive in the Premier League and that we could do it. Whether he really meant it is another matter. ‘He wanted us to be more of a passing team, which is fine, but i don’t know if we had the players for that and over the weeks individual mistakes kept costing us, especially away from home. Doubt creeps in.’ By New year Leicester had won three matches, none of them away from Filbert street. in January they had three consecutive away games and lost the first two, at ipswich and crystal Palace. then came Maine road. the week before there was a last throw of Leicester’s dice, Mark robins joining from Norwich for £1million. robins, 25, had had his football education across Manchester at United.
He may have been motivated by the sight of Man city. On this, his Leicester debut, he scored the only goal of the game midway through the second half, beating Andy Dibble.
the Foxes had at last won away from home. But they could not follow it up. it was to be their solitary away win in a season which petered out into an early relegation.
‘ Mark robins had that Manchester United pedigree and he’d come from a good Norwich team,’ Grayson says. ‘We weren’t scoring loads and i don’t think we got out of our own half much in this game.
‘But we were realistic. We’d come up and we hadn’t made multi-million pound signings.’
When, in early April, Leicester lost 1-0 at sheffield Wednesday to a Guy Whittingham goal, they were down.
But their play- off victory in May 1994 over Derby had been preceded by two play- off final defeats — there was some resilience within the club.
McGhee was soon replaced by Martin O’Neill and suddenly Leicester had lift-off. they were back in the Premier League and just two years after failing to hold their own, Leicester won the League cup and were playing in europe against Atletico Madrid.
robins would later make two substitute appearances for Man city during the third division season — 1998-99 — a measure of what happened to them as Leicester rose.
Few could have foreseen any of this that day at Maine road. Besides, down at selhurst Park, eric cantona was launching himself into the crowd. ‘ yeah, you could say that probably overshadowed our result,’ adds Grayson.