At some point in the future, we will each be handed some kind of Google Glasses-type technology after our full body scan at the turnstile. We will be contractually obliged to wear these glasses for the next 90 minutes (and any injury time that arises) and, between the deluge of adverts for alcohol, junk food and unlicensed crypto casinos, we’ll be fed stats to Give Important Context to the game we’re watching.
The battle for control of these stats will be an interesting one. Because although I didn’t attend the game last night, I’m willing (if unable, in this country with our official front-of-shirt sponsor) to bet that the big screens at either end of the pitch didn’t show the same stats with which Sky Sports bombarded its viewers.
For those who crossed the invisible picket line, here are a few highlights: Prior to last night, Leicester City players had covered the shortest distance per game in the Championship (107km), only two teams had fewer sprints than Leicester’s 118 per game and there was only one team that had made more errors leading to goals.
We were playing against them, and we needed a robbery of epic proportions to win the game.
Anyway, that’s just a small part of the reason why there was a boycott last night.
The only thing predictable about Leicester City is that we will regularly find ourselves in uncharted territory as we negotiate supporting this craziest of football clubs.
The new scenario over the past few days has been the moral quandary of this boycott for the visit of West Bromwich Albion.
It’s been tough watching friends and family wrestling with their thoughts over whether to attend the game or not. It’s been demoralising to see the growing divide among the fanbase online. It’s been sickening to learn of violence in the stands perpetrated against those who wish to protest the running of the club.
Ultimately, it was heartening to see that action to try to rouse the decision-makers at Leicester City from their long slumber is possible.
The sheer number of empty seats last night was a jolt to the system even for those of us who supported and participated in the boycott. It was mentioned on Sky Sports commentary at the start of both halves and then again after the final whistle and it gained coverage in the national press. This is just the start.
Since Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha’s interview with the club’s media man about wanting to get closer to the supporters (“Khun Top, we are here in Bangkok”), the sum total of changes has been the appointment of a person with questionable credentials to what should be a key post.
In fact, things have got worse if we take into account the catastrophically-handled change in the Christmas payment date for staff and the jumbled communications over food vouchers for stewards.
That’s just the off the pitch stuff. On the pitch, we went 4-0 down before half time at QPR and have been humbled twice by Sheffield United. We even lost to Watford, for heaven’s sake.
The results have been one thing but it’s the manner of this team’s performances that have been truly remarkable. 30-minute periods within games where our players – many of whom have achieved things in their career, many of whom are paid more than handsomely – are just wandering around while their opponents do as they please. At Bristol City, it was the entire second half.
It’s almost impossible not to lose a little investment in the club’s fortunes when this is what we are watching. All of which has led to this latest, craziest uncharted territory: not so much the mass of empty seats (we saw that from minute 80 onwards for most of 2025) but a stunning 94th-minute winner against the run of play, the kind of goal you dream about, being greeted by a laugh and a shake of the head from many watching. I know for a fact I wasn’t the only person who reacted like this.
The only way it would have been more ridiculous is if Hamza Choudhury’s 83rd minute volley had flown in rather than Abdul Fatawu’s 94th minute one.
West Bromwich Albion’s previous visit had supplied one of Choudhury’s career highlights to date. More accurately, Choudhury had supplied it himself: an extraordinary performance involving three last-ditch goalline clearances as Leicester fought to maintain a 2-1 lead until the final whistle.
That this also ended 2-1 was despite Choudhury’s efforts rather than because of them. There are lots of players and lots of moments you could pick to sum up the complacent culture that has been allowed to set in at Leicester City since the FA Cup win in 2021. The reverse angle replay of our vice-captain slowly walking in one direction while the dangerous opposition winger he is supposed to be marking makes a dashing run to meet a long ball was immediately an all-timer of an example.
The narrative dictates that we should instead talk about a Man of the Match display from Jakub Stolarczyk, that rocket of a winner from Fatawu or a largely invented premise that the team bravely battled through adversity to claim three points. It’s Choudhury’s performance I’ll remember as much as Fatawu’s winner.
It had all started brightly, with Leicester on top and no sign in the first 20 minutes that the Baggies would pose any problems. Leicester scored a frankly brilliant opening goal involving the kind of sharp interplay that exposes the lie this team isn’t capable of any better than mid-table.
Jordan James was, predictably, at the heart of it and he added another assist to his excellent output. Jordan Ayew finished it, but that was practically his sole contribution of yet another evening that proved we need something else up front. We’ve somehow contrived to follow a season in which it was patently clear we couldn’t ever have Ayew and Bobby Decordova-Reid on the pitch at the same time (without sacrificing an awful lot of potential energy that could be provided by players who can still run) with a season where they play more than an hour up front together. And we wonder why what happened next in this game keeps happening over and over again.
Because Leicester then did that thing where they got scared by the other team putting in a bit of effort and shrank from the basic task of competing for the ball (West Brom won 61% of the 107 duels in the game and were particularly dominant in the air – probably didn’t show that one on the big screens either).
Ayew and Decordova-Reid are part of the problem. They’re far from the only issue. The full-back positions are a nightmare whoever plays. In Choudhury’s defence, the other option at left-back is demonstrably even worse. Oliver Skipp and Jordan James are both likeable and James clearly offers a lot going forward but we still lose control of the midfield for long expanses of time. Jeremy Monga got a welcome start but looked like a freestyle footballer dropped into a real football match and a better manager would surely be able to integrate him into the side more effectively than this. Fatawu turns it on when he feels like it. In this league, that’s sometimes enough to paper over the cracks. Sometimes it isn’t.
Just before the half hour mark, Choudhury should have conceded a penalty for a shove on Aune Heggebo which cleaned out both Stolarczyk and Ben Nelson, with Ricardo Pereira needing to clear the subsequent shot off the line.
When it inevitably arrived, the equaliser was impressive from the visitors’ perspective but also involved some more woeful defending from our non-existent midfield and both right-sided players. Fatawu was too wide and Ricardo too narrow, allowing acres of space for the pass from Alex Mowatt and the finish from Karlan Grant.
That’s now 20 games without a clean sheet – a run that began, following the goalless draw against Coventry, with a 1-1 draw at The Hawthorns. You may remember the Faes-induced West Brom opener in that game and the ludicrous 90th minute Josh Maja miss that enabled Leicester to equalise three minutes later.
You may also remember the previous time we went to The Hawthorns and won with almost the last kick of the game thanks to Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s lung-busting run and a sliding finish from Harry Winks. There’s something about West Bromwich Albion that brings out what must be an infuriating version of Leicester City to play against. We can be as bad or as lucky as we like and we will still win.
We needed Stolarczyk’s saves and a good, old-fashioned head-it-and-kick-it performance from Caleb Okoli to help give us the platform here.
Still, the winner came out of nowhere. A tiny amount of late pressure, a ball stood up to the back post by substitute Stephy Mavididi, a swish of Fatawu’s left boot and the ball flew into the net.
It was very on-brand for this Leicester side, sporadically conjuring moments of genius to distract from the other 89 minutes or so of turgid football. But there was nothing about this winning goal or this display that would convince anyone about Marti Cifuentes as a football manager. Perhaps that is a pointless path to pursue, given we appear to have no money to sack him with, nor to give him any new players. But take the winning goal out of this and it was the kind of game that gets a manager sacked. It had that stench about it.
The Google Glasses though – they’ll just say: 2-1.
The Fosse Way 
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