Disco 2000: When Leicester City won at Chelsea
In September 2000, Chelsea were about to welcome a new manager who would become a Leicester City legend. But it was one of the least successful managers in our club’s history who triumphed on the day.
Leicester City’s first away win against Chelsea came at the 20th attempt in August 1960 against a team including Peter Bonetti, Terry Venables and Jimmy Greaves.
This kickstarted a period of success at Stamford Bridge that also included a 3-1 win in 1961 and a 2-0 win in October 1965 when goals from Derek Dougan and John Sjoberg exacted a modicum of revenge for defeat in the League Cup final six months earlier.
Leicester have only registered two league wins at the Bridge since the 1960s. Most recently, James Maddison set Jamie Vardy clear of the Blues defence in 2018, prompting those iconic howls into the London sky in front of a jubilant away end.
But arguably Leicester’s most impressive victory at Stamford Bridge came in September 2000. The news agenda was dominated by two things - on the front pages, fuel shortages and subsequent panic-buying at petrol stations up and down the country; on the back pages, the Sydney Olympics and the emergence of a prodigious 17-year-old Australian swimmer named Ian Thorpe.
This is how the streets of London looked at the time:
In the pubs around west London, there would also have been plenty of talk about the successor to Gianluca Vialli, sacked by Chelsea chairman Ken Bates on 12th September 2000 after one win in the first five games of the season.
Even in the pre-Abramovich days, Chelsea had been spending big.
The two lineups demonstrated the gulf in resources:
Chelsea: Cudicini, Panucci, Desailly, Bogarde, Hasselbaink, Wise, Le Saux, Di Matteo, Flo, Morris, Zola.
Subs: Hitchcock, Melchiot, Gudjohnsen, Terry, Harley.
Leicester: Flowers, Rowett, Izzet, Lennon, Savage, Eadie, Guppy, Gilchrist, Elliott, Akinbiyi, Impey.
Subs: Sinclair, Collymore, Royce, Davidson, Cresswell.
After the game, the former Chelsea youngster Muzzy Izzet said: “Chelsea brought on subs who cost more than our team”. He probably had a smile on his face when he said it, reflecting on the ease with which he had ghosted between two of Chelsea’s high earners - Marcel Desailly and Winston Bogarde - to head Leicester into an 8th-minute lead.
Bogarde became infamous for his spell at Stamford Bridge, having been given a four-year contract worth £40,000 a week in the final days of Vialli’s spell at the club and then making just 11 appearances in total.
He once responded to criticism by saying:
“Why should I throw fifteen million euro away when it is already mine? At the moment I signed it was in fact my money, my contract. Both sides agreed wholeheartedly. I could go elsewhere to play for less, but you have to understand my history to understand I would never do that.
I used to be poor as a kid, did not have anything to spend or something to play with. This world is about money, so when you are offered those millions you take them. Few people will ever earn so many. I am one of the few fortunates who do. I may be one of the worst buys in the history of the Premiership, but I don't care.”
Winston’s nephew, Lamar Bogarde, is already well on his way to surpassing Winston’s Premier League appearance record despite only making his debut in August during Aston Villa’s 2-1 win at the King Power Stadium.
Stan Collymore added Leicester’s second goal in the 82nd minute from a Steve Guppy cross. Essex-born Peter Taylor - who had played the majority of his football in the capital with Crystal Palace, Tottenham and Leyton Orient - had triumphed over the money men.
“There's a great spirit at Leicester and that's down to the players,” said Taylor after the game. They're a great bunch and it's a very happy place to be at the moment”.
Of course, this was one of very few high spots for Taylor in his time at Leicester.
Henry Winter’s report is an interesting read with the benefit of hindsight:
“The spotlight burned fiercely and unforgivingly on Chelsea’s flaws yet second-placed Leicester deserve great credit. Peter Taylor’s side are everything Chelsea are not: unified, unglamorous, more than the sum of their parts and unashamedly British (all of Taylor’s 16-strong party were born in Britain).
Few teams protect leads better than Leicester’s cohesive unit. Defending from the front, Darren Eadie and Ade Akinbiyi both tracked back with impressive diligence, while Izzet kept snapping into tackles in midfield, including one of excessive force on Dennis Wise that brought the pair squaring up to each other.
If Chelsea’s overpaid and underachieving stars were trying to impress their new head coach yesterday, they failed the audition in spectacular fashion. As theatrical productions go, this West Side Story was part-farce, part-tragedy and comfortably capable of being transferred from West London to the West End. On the embarrassing evidence of a 2-0 defeat which saw Chelsea drop to 17th, Claudio Ranieri cannot start soon enough.”
The Chelsea team had been picked by Ray Wilkins, who managed the side that day alongside Graham Rix. Wilkins said afterwards: “Mr Ranieri certainly wouldn't have been satisfied with a lot of things that happened out there today.”
The BBC’s match report opened with the line: “Chelsea fans chanted Gianluca Vialli's name after watching their team get comprehensively beaten by Leicester at Stamford Bridge.”
But it was soon another Italian whose name the Chelsea fans sang. This would be the first of only 3 home Premier League defeats all season as Ranieri steadied the ship.
Meanwhile, Leicester plummeted. Waking up as a Foxes fan on 4th March 2001 after a 2-0 win had drawn City level on points with their opponents, 4th-placed Liverpool, things didn’t seem too bad. But Leicester lost their next eight league games and dropped like a stone down the table.
It was the start of a long-term decline that was only truly reversed with the appointment of Nigel Pearson, who put the foundations in place for Mr Ranieri to arrive at another team in blue.
