A start to the year to forget: When Aston Villa struck 8 past the Foxes
While Leicester City supporters may be concerned about the threat posed by Aston Villa this Saturday, there was one miserable afternoon in 1932 when this Midlands derby went even worse than Foxes fans could have envisaged.
“Leicester City’s 8-3 defeat against the Villa was more than a rout - it was a debacle!
Better, however, that it should come now while there is yet time to remedy matters than that it should have been delayed till so late in the season that remedy was impossible.
One could sense this debacle coming. For weeks past it has seemed in the air - threatening, impending.”
So began the Leicester Evening Mail’s report of a humbling reverse at the hands of Aston Villa on 2nd January 1932.
Miserable weather had descended upon the Midlands, with showers before the game affecting the attendance. The gate of 13,714 was nearly 11,000 down on the Boxing Day crowd for a 3-1 defeat to Bolton.
And there may have been even fewer after half time. The players ran out for the second half with the scoreboard reading Leicester City 2 Aston Villa 5.
The reporter for the Birmingham Daily Gazette was understandably beside himself:
“There was nothing much wrong with Leicester City on Saturday. The fact was that they met a Villa team playing superlative football, exhibiting perfect team work and possessing individuals capable of turning every opportunity into effect.
They were actually more overwhelmed than the wide margin of five goals suggests. Had it been twice as much no one would have been surprised. Perhaps the Villa players heard the home supporters pleading “please, don’t rub it in too much”.
They eased off the pressure during periods of the second half, except that when Leicester did appear to be going to take undue advantage of this by reducing the lead, the Villa centre-forward rebuked them by scoring two more goals.”
That centre-forward was George Brown, whose five goals that day were among 79 he scored in the league for Villa in 116 interwar appearances after arriving from Huddersfield for £5,000 in 1929.
Leicester’s own star striker between the wars was Arthur Chandler, then nearing the end of his stellar career at Filbert Street. He remains Leicester’s record goalscorer - his total of 259 league goals for City looking pretty insurmountable in modern football given even the timeless Jamie Vardy still ‘only’ has 175.
The Birmingham Daily Gazette’s reporter was unimpressed by Chandler’s efforts and praised his direct opponent, Villa’s centre-half Alec Talbot, who was playing with a plaster over his eye.
“The ex-England centre-forward was completely subdued. When he was allowed opportunities he messed them up badly - the worst effort being when with an open goal yawning a yard in front of him he in some inexplicable manner sent outside.”
One later sub-heading in the Leicester Evening Mail article was damningly titled ‘8-3 Does Not Exaggerate’.
Yet the final tally of 8 wasn’t even the most we conceded that season. Five weeks earlier, we’d lost 9-2 at Goodison Park to Everton, for whom the great Dixie Dean scored four.
And the season had begun with bad omens. The opening day away fixture at Villa Park was delayed by 11 minutes after the team’s train was late into Birmingham and then the charabanc driver taking the squad to Villa Park went the wrong way. Leicester lost 3-2 and had to explain events to the FA to avoid a fine.
You can imagine the response if a team ships 8 goals on the second day of January this season. And while 1932 was long before the days of winter transfer windows, there was still a call for reinforcements from the Leicester Evening Mail:
“What is needed? Well, a class wing-half and a class full-back are vital and immediate needs and the management should act at once to supply this want unless Leicester City are going to slip still further back.
As matters are now, the defence has become so shaken and lacking in confidence that the team is relying on a continuance of the failings of Grimsby and Blackpool to save them.”
In the end, it wasn’t Blackpool that saved Leicester - it was West Ham who went down with the Mariners. The Foxes also benefitted from the return of Peter Hodge, the man who had been the club’s first full-time manager from 1919 to 1926. Hodge oversaw a miniature great escape of three wins and a draw in the final four games to ensure Leicester remained in the First Division.
Aston Villa finished 5th, eight points behind champions Everton - the only two teams in the division to reach 100 goals with those heavy victories over Leicester proving helpful.
