The Fosse Way

Yakubu

Iain Wright

Feed the Yak and he will score!

Yakubu Ayegbeni, or simply The Yak to those who loved him. What a player.

He first appeared on English soil on loan at Portsmouth back in 2003. With 7 goals in 14 games, he helped Pompey pip Leicester to the Championship title. Those goals turned the loan into a permanent £4m move, where he went on to score 28 goals in 67 Premier League games across two seasons. 

The Yak continued to score goals across the ‘Barclaysman’ era for Middlesbrough and then Everton, before an Achilles tendon injury caused a long lay off and then reduced game time at the Toffees.

This opened the door for Leicester to pull off a bit of a coup by signing him on loan in those early Sven-Goran Eriksson days (who was undoubtedly a factor in the signing). By 2011, it was a long time since we’d had a player of that stature and quality in the team, and he got off to the perfect start with a typically nonchalant strike on debut at Preston. 

He made 20 appearances for the Foxes during his spell with us, bagging 11 goals. However, Sven’s boys fell just short of the play-offs, mainly due to the poor start under Paulo Sousa.

The up and down nature of the results in this period led one fan to famously call Jason Bourne on Radio Leicester to demand Yakubu be dropped as “all he does is score goals” (this same supporter probably spending time today praising Patson Daka’s work rate). You can’t please everyone, but he certainly pleased me. With another year in the Championship ahead, we were unable to make the loan permanent.

The Yak moved from Everton to Premier League Blackburn at the end of that season before he wound down his career in China, Turkey and a couple of lower league EFL clubs.

Yakubu, though, is one of those players in our history who retains a stand-out moment. Say his name and everyone’s minds are instantly transported to Pride Park in February 2011 and that goal in the 2-0 win against Derby County. It has to be right up there in the top 5 Foxes goals of the modern era. Unbelievable strike and iconic celebration.

David Nugent

Becky Taylor

Considering his pretty impressive stats for Leicester, it seems unfair that the core memory most fans have of David Nugent is him running after a squirrel at Loftus Road (in a lovely 0-1 away win).

Maybe, though, it’s the perfect association. If you had to describe him in animal form, a squirrel feels a good fit to explain Nugent as a player. 

He definitely became a ‘fan favourite’ here, always playing with a smile on his face with endless running; the OG Shinji Okazaki with more goals. 

Nugent was also the original partner to Jamie Vardy. Together they terrorised defences, no more so than in the Championship title-winning season in 2013/14 when Nugent bagged 20 league goals. 

That was a very likeable team that Nugent spearheaded. Special mentions go to that 4-1 win at home to Derby and his goal at Liverpool on New Year’s Day. Both really stick in the mind.

Nugent’s record against Ipswich is well-documented, but it’s his goal against Norwich in the FA Cup that is one of my favourites; it was the background of my laptop for many years to follow. At the time, beating Premier League Norwich in an FA Cup upset was big, and I still remember the celebrations now, even with all the subsequent glory we enjoyed. 

He is also the main character in an embarrassing story. In the queue at Nando’s Highcross, I turned around to say the next person could go ahead, I suddenly stopped in my tracks as it was David Nugent. Without thinking I said ‘oh, y’alright’ like he was one of my mates, when he obviously had no idea who I was. I went an bright shade of red and did an awkward laugh. He was super friendly but I still feel daft now!

Michael Morrison

Helen Thompson

It’s interesting that despite only being at Leicester for three years, making 77 appearances in that time, Michael Morrison is still in the Leicester City orbit and speaks fondly of the club. He’s often popping up on Radio Leicester in between still being the captain and playing for boyhood club Cambridge United, alongside pursuing coaching badges.

Morrison is likely best remembered for being one of Nigel Pearson’s first signings as we looked ahead to life in League One for the 2008/09 season. Signed from Cambridge for an undisclosed fee, he was well-regarded and able to play both centre-back and right-back. Signed at the age of 20, Morrison wasn’t necessarily signed to be a regular starter but an injury to Patrick Kisnorbo ensured he played more frequently.

Morrison’s time at Portsmouth followed a period of success and regular game time at Charlton, then Reading. I kept up with his career more than most and I’d virtually forgotten about his one season at Fratton Park. He didn’t get a goal for Portsmouth, one of the only clubs he’s played for but not scored for.

It’s fitting that he played for both teams because I associate him with the two chaotic games which saw us travel to Fratton Park twice in four days (and the yellow kit we wore at the time). A Tuesday night League Cup game that we won 2-1 where Morrison scored the opener, followed by a league game on the Friday night where we capitulated early on and lost 6-1. Morrison had a moment of madness ten minutes in, throwing his arm up to block the ball and give Portsmouth a penalty. Then Miguel Vitor saw red for a rugby-style foul on one David Nugent and it was downhill from there.

He was handy at attacking set pieces, scoring a few headers in his time, something he’s continued throughout his career. Forming a good friendship off the pitch and understanding on it with Andy King served him well. Morrison never really did too much wrong at Leicester outside of not being at the level we were targeting and when Nigel Pearson left, he had rocky times with the style of football that Paulo Sousa demanded, that didn’t appear to suit the more traditional defenders like him. And when Sven-Goran Eriksson got the job, that was the end of his time at Leicester.

(It’s quite hard to find Michael Morrison’s Leicester City highlights on YouTube, so this is the closest we could get…)

David Connolly

David Bevan

David Connolly, born in Willesden and who represented Watford, Wolves, West Ham, Wimbledon and Wigan during an accomplished, if well-travelled, career, set his string of Ws aside in 2004 and took an L by joining Leicester City.

The situation when Connolly joined was similar to the one we faced this summer – after automatic promotion in 2003, we had been relegated before the final day of the following season and expectations had to be reset in a more challenging Championship scenario.

In general, Leicester had worse players in those days than we do now, but Connolly was one of the few exceptions. He was lively and he had an eye for goal. He was unfortunate to play in one of the worst Leicester sides I’ve seen in my time supporting the club.

Connolly’s strike partners were Dion Dublin and Mark de Vries – not players whose Leicester careers are remembered with much fondness, but who scored famous FA Cup goals that live long in the memory: Dublin at Charlton, De Vries at home to Tottenham.

Connolly, meanwhile, scored 17 times including a hat-trick against Stoke, but didn’t provide a memorable moment in quite the same way. It says everything about Leicester’s league exploits at the time that we remember cup goals from the period far more and if you didn’t score a league goal from the halfway line, you don’t remain on any highlights reels today.

When Micky Adams departed the club in October 2004, a brief Dave Bassett/Howard Wilkinson axis gave way to the Craig Levein era. All bets were off from then on in as a procession of SPL alumni streamed into the club and, fittingly, everything went south.

That feeling was deepened by Connolly’s departure to Wigan in August 2005. By the time he left Portsmouth ten years later, he had just one club left to play for, heading back to a new-look AFC Wimbledon for whom he’d enjoyed his most prolific spell earlier in his career.

His final league goal came in the 93rd minute of a League Two game against Luton: classic Connolly, running onto a flick from an archetypal big man (in this case, Adebayo Akinfenwa) to round the keeper and score the winner. W.

Ritchie De Laet

Jamie Thorpe

It’s amazing how viewpoints can change over time. Being a Leicester City fan is especially prone to this, as is only natural when you support a club that consistently swings from the sublime to the ridiculous. As our circumstances change, so do our viewpoints on players.

For one, I now cannot believe that I once thought Gareth Williams was a silky, underrated player, especially when compared to the central midfielders we have since witnessed. However, with Ritchie De Laet he is viewed in a much kinder light.

Signed in 2012, De Laet was one of several Man United players to join the club, along with Matty James, Michael Keane and Jesse Lingard all reuniting with Danny Drinkwater who had signed the season before.

Straight away it was clear that he brought something different to what we had seen before. Previous incumbents of the right back berth had included Lee Peltier, John Paintsil, Robbie Neilson, Kerrea Gilbert and Alan Maybury.

If Leicester were going to even come close to the lofty aspirations of their owners they needed a step forward in quality, and De Laet was one of several astute signings in that bracket. He was lightning fast, solid defensively and liked to get forward and at the Championship level he stood out, playing 38 times in our 102 point season.

A stand out memory of De Laet is one that sums him up perfectly. That game against Man United at home in the Great Escape season, we all know the one. De Laet presses bravely and snaps into Juan Mata, winning the ball strongly, before having the composure and crucially, the quality, to deliver the ball to Jamie Vardy who scores one of the most memorable goals in our history to make it 4-3.

He then went on to become the answer to an elite pub quiz question as the only man to have won both the Premier League and Championship in the same season, before being sold to Aston Villa.

De Laet may not quite make the pantheon of Leicester greats, but he is in that dependable, well-respected group under Nigel Pearson, who raised standards and in doing so, built the foundations for Leicester to go on and achieve greatness.