Manchester Utd, Tottenham, West Ham: What’s the greatest Leicester City comeback?
With Leicester mired in the relegation zone and in need of another Great(ish) Escape, it’s time to relive some of our greatest moments in recent history. Can this list of comebacks generate some good vibes for the run-in?
To be honest, I'm struggling to remember the last Leicester comeback. I can't remember the last time we scored in stoppage time either. The one that springs immediately to mind was during the title-winning season, against West Ham.
Although it was only a draw and both teams got very soft penalties, to twice fight back from behind at home against a team who were challenging for Champions League football and keep our title hopes alive illustrated how much character and fight that team had.
I'll also add the comeback against Sevilla in the last 16 of the Champions League. Although that was over two legs, Vardy's away goal in Seville felt like a winner at the time and kept us in the tie and Marc Albrighton's goal sparked the biggest celebrations I think I've ever seen at the King Power.
The seeming lack of fight and character in this team is especially alarming, considering the likes of Bournemouth have managed to win five of their last 10 including against Liverpool at Tottenham away. I think that will probably be enough to keep them up now, meaning it's likely to be between us, Everton and Leeds as it looks like Southampton and Forest are almost certain to go down.
I think we need four wins from seven, but hopefully we won't be relying on comebacks or stoppage time winners to keep us up!
Jordan Halford
I want to say that Manchester United game because every home game, seeing Cambiasso's goal on the screens reminds me of how crazy that turnaround and win was. But I suspect that is a popular choice. So let's go a little left field and take a trip down memory lane. Nothing beats a late goal, right?
I'm going back to 2006. Leicester City were 2-0 down to Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup. They were flying relatively high in the Premiership at the time and we were in the Championship, managed by Craig Levein and with a pretty questionable squad.
The Foxes turned around a first half deficit to level things with goals from Elvis Hammond and Stephen Hughes. It looked like a replay at White Hart Lane was on the cards before Levein favourite, and enigma, Mark de Vries bagged a 90th minute winner.
Looking back at it now, I'm not convinced its onside but hey, no VAR worries back in 2006. You could celebrate wildly and have no worries. I always enjoyed getting one over Tottenham too after the League Cup loss at Wembley in 1999. Guess some things don't change.
Maybe it's just extra memorable because at the time we were still travelling from Grimsby to games. On the journey home, we had a flat tyre on the M1 and got home a lot later than intended. Who cares when you've just won in the dying seconds of a game?! It's a game I have strong memories of still, which is a little odd when I had to check who we drew after. It was Southampton and they beat us 1-0, maybe that's why I'd forgotten it.
Helen Thompson
There are definitely more important and more memorable comebacks in our club's history, but my personal favourite is the FA Cup win over Spurs, which landed during a terrible period for the club.
The squad was littered with forgettable names, the manager was out of his depth, and we were sitting precariously towards the bottom of the Championship. On reflection, I'm not sure if I can recall another genuine highlight from this season other than this win, and that's what makes it so special to me.
This flawed Leicester side somehow fought back from two goals down against a good Premier League side, and the goals came from players who were rightly written off on a weekly basis; Elvis Hammond, Stephen Hughes, and everyone's favourite target man, Mark de Vries.
This was without doubt his best performance for the club, outmuscling and outmanoeuvring Michael Dawson all game. It almost started to make sense why Levein was so keen to bring him to the club. We signed Matty Fryatt from Walsall the following day and thankfully never really looked back.
I'll never forget how time seemed to almost come to a halt as de Vries opened his burly frame to slot the ball past Paul Robinson. It really was a uniquely euphoric moment in the ground, particularly for the visibly emotional de Vries.
Matt Jedruch
The 5-3 against Manchester United back in 2014. The sort of occasion where not only was I grateful to be there, it made me cast my mind back to other incredible games over the years that I'd experienced and feel sad for those no longer with us who missed out on it. My Grandad would have loved it.
The match, on a gloriously sunny September Sunday, live on Sky Sports, was truly sensational. Manchester United were only a few years post SAF at that point and had spent big in the Summer under Louis Van Gaal. The line up had a dizzying amount of talent, the sort of players we'd missed seeing during our 10-year absence from the top flight. Rooney, Di Maria, Van Persie, the list went on and on... but the next Premier league legend was actually lining up in blue making his first start in the big league.
A pulsating first half saw Van Persie and Di Maria, with a goal of the season candidate, score for Manchester United and Ulloa head in a sumptuous Vardy cross for us. However, just before the hour mark, Herrera made it 1-3 and it looked over. No disgrace against that team, we'd done OK, but what came next defied logic and created memories to last a lifetime. Cambiasso and Dean Hammond (!!) suddenly got control of the midfield and Wes Morgan and Liam Moore started winning the battle vs their all-star attack.
Incredibly, we began to dominate. Vardy, who'd done well all game suddenly turned on beast-mode and was ripping them apart. Nugent dispatched a penalty won by Vardy and moments later when the ball broke to Cambiasso on the edge of the box, what followed can only be described as pandemonium! From my seat in SK1, I could see the gap he was going to slot it into as was celebrating before it hit the net. Unbelievable... but we were just getting started!
Ritchie De Laet rampaged into space and timed a pass to Vardy who found himself with the whole of the opposition half to run into, calmly placing the ball past De Gea and wheeling away into an iconic knee slide. I used pandemonium to describe the previous goal, sadly I've not got the vocabulary to describe this one, so I'll just stick with limbs. One of those hug your friends, hug your family, hug the person behind you and anyone else nearby moments.
The noise, the euphoria, the stadium actually vibrating! Stay in the moment, drink it in and remember to breathe.
At this point I was sitting on a £1 bet of 4-3 at 500/1. No idea why I'd placed it but in the carnage of the game, the realisation hadn't dawned on me, until Vardy won another penalty with a couple of minutes plus injury time to go. Ulloa crashed it home for 5-3 and the ecstasy continued. Although the money would have been very (very) nice, confirming the most incredible of wins in a game for the ages was worth far more. We were back!
It was days like this I thought back to in those dark days of Covid when were unable to go to matches and missing that shared experience of loving your team felt like a distant memory. Occasions like this are why there is nothing quite like football.
Iain Wright
For me, the best kind of comebacks are the ones you least expect. So while we’ve had some amazing ones in recent years, at least we were already a pretty good team with some capable players.
In 2007, we were not a good team and you wouldn’t have trusted some of our players to face the right way at kickoff.
The season didn’t end well. It started with one manager and ended with another, and in between we had Gary Megson.
This, Megson’s second game in charge, was only a League Cup second round tie. It wasn’t a Champions League knockout match or a key clash in a title race. But it still had a lot of edge to it.
For one thing, we hadn’t won at the City Ground for 35 years. For another, our pre-King Power club seemed to be in turmoil. Most of all, the original game had been abandoned at half time after Clive Clarke’s medical emergency with Forest leading 1-0 and, as a result, in the rematch we’d let Forest goalkeeper Paul Smith stroll through our team uncontested to open the scoring.
While East Midlands Today treated it as worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, at time, up the other end of the ground, I had no idea what was happening. I assumed it was some bizarre pre-match ritual Forest had - you can never tell with that lot.
So that was one reason it was all the sweeter when we turned things around late on. Another was that we nobly waited until Forest’s Neil Lennon (!) was substituted before we ruined their evening.
Trailing 2-1 in the 88th minute, Richard Stearman’s slightly awkward pivot and shot squirmed under Smith for the equaliser. In injury time, Stephen Clemence curled home from the edge of the area.
We wouldn’t win at the City Ground again until 2013, but that one was worth waiting for too.
David Bevan
