What Leicester City’s relegation means to me
Does it matter which division you’re in if you don’t love the team in front of you? Just give us what really matters, says Joe Brewin: a club we can all get behind
I don’t remember my first Leicester City game. I couldn’t even tell you what season it was.
Most football fans seem capable of recalling the finest details of theirs with computer-generated accuracy: the opponents; the scoreline; who goes down in the personal annals as the first goal scorer in their supporting lifetime. They’ve got the programme stuffed in a box at home because their parents were savvy enough to keep it.
I just remember Filbert Street. I remember blokes getting irate about events I didn’t understand. Swearing on a fascinating scale. Ironic chants about watching Brazil. The thundering rasps of palms on corrugated metal. At a guess, I’d say 75% of those early years was more like an exercise in anthropology than one in football.
And I absolutely bloody loved it. It felt like the most exciting place on earth.
Kaebi to Kanté
Roughly 25 years and another relegation with this baffling club later, I’m reminded that little has really changed. I might be able to form some opinions that don’t belong to my uncle these days, but football is still very much about the people who follow it. What happens on the pitch is merely a sideshow.
The most beautiful thing about this game is the way it gives us all purpose; how it connects human beings through the ages, brings us together and makes us feel things that nothing else in our lives can. God knows we’ve seen both sides of that.
Such emotions are fleeting but visceral in how they leave an imprint – and ultimately, it doesn’t matter how and where they come. It’s enduring the agony of 10 minutes against the cosh, but it’s also Mark de Vries knocking in a last-minute cup winner; Anthony Knockaert getting you into the play-offs; missing a penalty; Troy Deeney bulldozing you out of them; Kasper Schmeichel clawing away a certain goal in an FA Cup final. A late VAR check. The referee’s whistle that confirms you’ve finally won the thing. In sickness and in health, this is the life we chose.
But we never picked it for the players who wear the badge. And we never will.
When I flick back through my time supporting the club (let’s call it c.1998-present for argument’s sake), there’s no shortage of good memories from life in the Championship and League One. The latter was supposed to be our lowest ebb, yet on a fan level it did everything it was supposed to: reset the club after a period of horror, gave us a team to enjoy again and new places to watch them in. I’m not being thick – of course we’re mourning the distance between what we’ve experienced from 2014 onwards – but for me… well, it’s just not the end of the world. It’s never made a difference to me whether it was Izzet, Sylla, Cleverley or Cambiasso.
I still remember those years fondly because my life has changed; I’m now a dad of two, living outside of Leicester and not able to attend matches like I did religiously back then. It gives me a slightly different perspective on being a supporter, but simply being Leicester will never change as the best part about it. It’s the Saturday pilgrimage and those you share it with, but it’s also the group chat, forum, podcast or social media venting platform. No division can ever alter that.
Pain and pleasure
In a perverse way, 2022-23 was actually enjoyable for those very reasons. In times of crisis, you fall into community. Last season birthed this very site for starters, which has somehow grown rapidly the worse we’ve got – proof if any that the dirty secret is out: people love the off-field nonsense far more than what happens on it. It also birthed the Big Strong Leicester Boys podcast, which began brilliantly, got better and ended the season with Ric Flair a local hero recording in his caravan. I’ve loved taking the piss of this pathetic experience on WhatsApp groups; LCFC Twitter finding hilarious new ways to melt down on a weekly basis. It’s all part of the nonsensical journey of being a football fan: good stuff isn’t supposed to happen every year.
A football club should also mean something far more than what its players achieve. Every one of us is connected by the city we’re from, family ties or some other magnetic force drawing us in – and it’s that which should never be forgotten as the most important thing. In today’s footballing climate, the pursuit of success comes with major sacrifices. Want serious investment on another level? Yours, providing you don’t mind the human rights violations. Or even more humbly, your staff to get paid on time? An added bonus in the EFL, seemingly. Our owner and his late father might hail from 6,000 miles away, but together they’ve demonstrated an unwavering loyalty to this city and its people. Give me that over a rotten moral trade-off any day of the week.
In a footballing sense, the horrible truth is that we’ve been set up for a fall like this ever since that lot of 2015-16 did something incredible. That we rode the wave for so much longer afterwards was even more remarkable – it was a genuinely stunning string of seasons that delivered far more than they ever promised, even accounting for a pair of fifth place near misses. Sadly, where reality is concerned, it was always unlikely to be sustained.
At times last season, I asked myself what it would take to genuinely, truly enjoy watching this team on the pitch again. What would actually make me satisfied to be a Leicester fan? UEFA might have made its best decision in years introducing the Conference League, but the biggest achievements are generally reserved for the same bunch of clubs with the most money. Newcastle will establish themselves as financial forces soon enough, but until they and Brighton cracked the top six last season, only three clubs outside the usual suspects had done so since we returned to the division in 2014: West Ham (once), Southampton (once) and us. Three times. While the Seagulls and Aston Villa’s surge might nod towards brighter skies, however, the Premier League is an increasingly narrow funnel – for those two clubs, seasons like theirs will be the exception rather than the rule.
So as ever, you go back to basics. What do I really want from my club? I want them to consider its fans in everything it does – to understand who they are and where they come from. Don’t treat them like criminals or cash machines: communicate with them – and ideally, listen to them too.
I want my club to be aligned on its direction – not to have a pseudo-soap opera play out in a manager’s press conferences. I want my club to have a plan when it comes to the biggest decisions. I want them to learn from mistakes. I want them to feel like part of the local community; to be Leicester as well as having global ambitions.
Mainly, I just want my club to care.
The actual refresh
The 2022-23 season was a numbing one. While the final day’s brief glimmer of hope might have stirred something within us all, the general mood was one of apathetic resignation weeks – months? – before the final game confirmed our fate. Everton stayed up at our expense, but I’m not sure how much I genuinely envy them. What does next year hold? More of the same at best? At least we get to rip it up and start again.
My resentment for this squad had grown such that a few days before the West Ham game, I genuinely didn’t know whether I wanted us to win it or not. It proved a coping mechanism of sorts in the end, but the blue sky thinking wasn’t about being in the Premier League. It was the prospect of having a team to love once more. If that meant the Championship over another scrap for 17th, then so be it.
That’s not quite how I felt on the day, but a couple of weeks on, I don’t feel particularly bad about the drop. It’s not an issue of entitlement, but right now I couldn’t give a toss about trying to scrape survival with this team in these circumstances. Across two divisions and eight years, we fell in love with the boys of 2013-21 for their heart and soul. Without that, what are you left with?
Instead, it’s on to something new but familiar. A novelty experience fit for a novelty club. I’ll admit that the Championship could turn out to be a cesspit of despair if too many wrong decisions are made, but for now I’ll take some enjoyment from the very necessary rebuild to come. And I know I won’t be alone: we’re all suckers for the storylines. A new manager. A lorry load of new arrivals to compensate last summer’s wasteland. More memes about Jon Rudkin.
Of course it’s more fun watching great football in the top flight – that’s still the aim. But when it’s not possible, we fall back on what really means the most.
I don’t care where we are. I just care that we’re Leicester City.
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