The Fosse Way

Inspired by The Athletic’s report that Abdul Fatawu will be making his temporary switch permanent before the end of the season, we asked our writers which Leicester City loan players they’ve fallen for in the past.

David Bevan went back to the early 1990s and an away day that didn’t quite go to plan.

The day I fell for Kevin Campbell has almost vanished from Leicester City’s recorded history, but I know I spent it wandering around a giant aquarium.

I don’t actually remember much about the experience to be fair. I was 5. But with some help, I’ve pieced things together.

Leicester City were absolutely terrible in the season I was first taken to Filbert Street. David Pleat was the manager. We’d won just one of the first 12 league games and had been bottom of the second division, staring down the barrel of relegation to the third tier for the first time in the club’s history.

After 16 games, we were 22nd of 24 – just two points off the foot of the table – ahead of a home game against second-placed Leeds United.

Making his debut, a young striker on loan from Arsenal. Kevin Campbell watched as Leeds raced into a two-goal lead by half time. Leicester fought back to level but a cheeky Gordon Strachan penalty put the visitors back into the lead before the home side turned things around late on, future Leeds midfielder Gary McAllister scoring the winner in front of the segregated Kop.

I’m not entirely sure what my first game was, but I have a vague feeling it was Campbell’s fourth game in blue – a 2-1 win over Hull that lifted us up to the heady heights of 19th. He still hadn’t scored and he didn’t score that day, but he was remarkably prolific in the weeks that followed.

Campbell got off the mark in a 4-2 win at Ewood Park, scored again in a 2-1 win over Bournemouth, twice in a 3-2 win at Portsmouth on New Year’s Day and he was one of many scorers as Leicester lost a thriller by the odd goal in nine at Newcastle.

All of which meant I was very excited about my first away day following the upwardly-mobile Foxes: Brighton (A).

If you look it up in Of Fossils and Foxes or on the Wikipedia page detailing Leicester’s games that season, you’ll see it listed as a 1-0 defeat on 17th February 1990.

The Leicester team that day was: Hodge, Walsh, Ramsey, Paris, Spearing, McAllister, Mills, Wright, Oldfield, Mauchlen, Kitson. Subs: James for Paris, Reid for Kitson.

No Kevin Campbell in sight.

In fact, he was a substitute for Arsenal at Hillsborough on 17th February 1990, in an unsuccessful bid to try to salvage a point against Sheffield Wednesday.

But that appearance was Campbell’s first since returning to Highbury. And I was deprived of seeing his final game for us.

After I give up on that useless source of information called The Internet, my dad takes precisely two minutes to respond with the exact date.

Rewind two weeks. 3rd February 1990.

Things were different back then. This is when an away day involved British Rail, Division Two and having absolutely no access to any up-to-the-minute information whatsoever.

We drove to Bedford and got the train down, passing through an ominous snowstorm before reaching London. In Brighton, a torrential downpour had left the streets flooded. Another of our group got absolutely soaked from head to toe in comic fashion by a passing van, which is one of my earliest memories.

We made our way to the Goldstone Ground. There’s a Lidl there now, and a TK Maxx, a DFS, a Pets at Home, a Sofology. Nando’s. Burger King. But back then it was the best kind of football ground. The sort that looked a bit like a factory from ground level, but a factory with gigantic, towering floodlights and corrugated metal roofing, a ticket office and a “directors’ entrance”.

And yeah… match postponed.

We stood on the pavement and so did Kevin Campbell, on the very last day of his teenage years.

Without sounding like I’m talking about 1923 or something, this was how close you could get to players in those days. Junior Foxes used to be able to play a game against first-team players in a sports hall. There’d be about 100 of us, and 2 of them.

On this occasion, Campbell came out to meet some of the fans who’d made the long trip to the south coast to see no football and made that trip feel a little bit worthwhile, and that feeling has lodged in my brain ever since.

Plan B for our day out in Brighton? My dad: “This was before you could take 5-year-olds into pubs”.

Plan C, then. He took me to the Sea Life Centre.

NOW READ: I fell in love with a Leicester City loanee – Martyn Waghorn