Going early: A once-in-a-lifetime Leicester City matchday experience
My Leicester City theme last week was “going early”. The script was written.
First, I went early with the decision to publish this year’s list of ridiculous things that happened to the club in 2024 when there was still 3 games’ worth of potential nonsense still to come. To say that potential was realised yesterday is an understatement. The second is at Anfield and the third is against the champions.
As I watched that first half ridiculousness unfold, it quickly occurred to me that I’d also gone early suggesting a title of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the previous weekend’s Newcastle match report. Of course there was another one in the works.
As half time approached, I was not alone in relegating us on the spot. Again, perhaps slightly early given it isn’t even Christmas yet let alone the January transfer window. But try watching those goals back and not viewing them as the goals a relegated team concedes.
The theme was settled. The time had come.
I’d never left a Leicester City game before injury time, and even then could count on one hand the number of times I’d left before the final whistle. But by injury time yesterday I was in Bar Babelas on Queen’s Road with a mug of mulled wine, talking to a mate about the Christmas ahead.
A short while later, in the car home, as I ran through my long list of grievances, my dad - not for the first time - muttered “through the good times and the bad, we always back the lads”. He’s not a leaver.
Later, another mate tentatively prodded via WhatsApp about how I’d stayed through all sorts of calamities down the decades and asked what the difference was this time? When I hated people leaving early?
“Excuse me, erm, how do I get out?”
I’d pondered leaving at half time, been persuaded to give it ten minutes, immediately saw Wout Faes warming up for the second half and almost left in that instant. Watched eight minutes of the second half and just had this moment of clarity where I wanted to make a statement, purely to and for myself.
Something that meant, in years to come, this game would stand out among all the other catastrophes, and also to try and gain something from the day before heading home. It seemed like an amusing thing to do and you have to try to make the most of the humour in the situation or football would ruin your life. But then there’s also been a feeling of detachment that’s been building for a while. It was a heady cocktail.
Nobody leaves eight minutes into the second half, in the same way it felt like a strange time to make a double substitution that could have been made at half time. So after hastily arranging a rendez-vous outside with a mate for whom the pull of Bar Babelas was also strong enough, I descended the stairs alone - getting peculiarly close to the ongoing play. A handful of people were drinking in the concourse while half-heartedly watching on the monitors.
I carried on walking before realising I had no idea how to leave the stadium during a game. I’d assumed there would be an open gate. Actually having to ask a steward how to get out felt like a new low (there’s a green button next to each of the turnstiles, should you need it in future).
My “matchday experience” ended with crouching down trying to take an arty photo of the Kop reflected in a large puddle while two other early exiting blokes looked at me in bemusement (still slightly better than the guy next to me who had paid £51 for his ticket and said nothing other than a quiet “That’s not very good” after the second goal).
That matchday experience had begun with a morbid curiosity about the new fan zone installed opposite the stadium.
The weather killed it from the get-go in all honesty. It was still a sight to behold once you’d pushed your way past the on-brand welcome party confiscating the free cans of Chang people had been handed thirty seconds earlier to find a collection of sorry-looking souls huddled under tarpaulin while the band played on.
The image reflected the disconnect between reality and Leicester City Football Club’s version of reality. It had been trumpeted with numerous exclamation marks about how exciting it all was. Christian Fuchs! Ricardo Pereira! The Mercians!
The thoughts of most sheltering from the wind and rain was more: Danny Ward! Because we had looked down at our phones and seen that Shipwreck Steve would be starting a Premier League game in goal for Leicester City as we neared the end of 2024.
Danny and the champions of the world
Had nobody at any stage suggested to Ruud van Nistelrooy or the solitary goalkeeping-related member of his own coaching staff that picking Ward was probably a bad idea? That such a seismically important game possibly demanded the kind of goalkeeper that hadn’t become a meme for his own fans?
Ward’s mere presence is a sad indictment of the contracts dished out to several players who would have long been moved on by more competent clubs. But to then select him despite it being painfully obvious that he would be partially at fault for at least one goal and that the crowd would be on his back from the first minute points to something bigger. It’s that disconnect with reality again. Playing the hits. Ostrich-like behaviour. The idea that we’ll be fine.
If there are any other options, you cannot pick a goalkeeper who gets booed by his own fans and receives ironic cheers for making a save. This was a stunningly predictable scenario for anyone with any recent knowledge of Leicester City FC. Booing players for not being very good is wrong, but it’s an easy get-out to tut-tut at tens of thousands of people when you could have easily avoided the situation altogether with one simple decision.
But this is Leicester City in 2024/25 we’re talking about. To lay the blame on a lone calamitous goalkeeper who will soon be replaced in the starting eleven would be luxurious. Even though Mads Hermansen possibly wouldn’t have conceded any of the goals Ward did, you still couldn’t pin it all on Ward while our outfield players were taking turns to try to expose him.
I’ve reacted to Leicester City conceding goals in all sorts of ways over the years, from quiet resignation to apoplectic rage. After watching James Justin’s twisting, salmon-like leap moments prior to the second Wolves goal and Danny Ward flat on his back as two Wolves players decided which of them was going to score, I couldn’t help laughing.
In that moment, it was laughter not just at the comedic scenes but the sheer audacity of retaining the people who have presided over all this. You look at the team now and you consider the decline from where we were two or three years ago and you see the same people looking down from the posh seats and you wonder if you’re going mad.
Leicester’s grim determination to keep collecting non-scoring midfielders has been a particular low point. Even when we field ostensibly defensive midfielders, the opposition walks through the middle of us at will. Despite being our best player by a distance in the first half, Boubakary Soumare’s age-old allergy to tracking runners was on display for the third Wolves goal.
The defence and midfield are bad enough to condemn us but there is still a huge issue with the attack too. We were always going to be one of the poorest teams in this league. It’s impossible to compile a competent defence from our options. In this scenario, you need players who can get you up the pitch.
You can even make an argument that Stephy Mavididi, Bilal El Khannouss and Jordan Ayew can all achieve that objective in different ways - running, passing, falling over and winning free kicks. But put it all together without Abdul Fatawu to bail you out on the counter and it looks an absolute mess. Not picking Facundo Buonanotte is baffling in the extreme - even if he’s going back to Brighton in January, he’s still a better option than anyone else.
After Ruud van Nistelrooy’s first couple of games in charge, I looked back at what I’d written about his appointment and it seemed a bit negative. “Van Nistelrooy’s first challenge is to find as many as eleven men who don’t cause most fans to tear their hair out”?
Only two games later and it feels like it would be a challenge to assemble a five-a-side team.
Merry Christmas.
