Every time Leicester City fall apart, it brings us together
Like most Leicester City fans, I’ve spent the past week trying to process my thoughts surrounding the neverending news cycle that is the club’s financial situation, and ended up thinking I’m falling out of love with it all.
Not all financially questionable football clubs are the same. When it was first reported that Nottingham Forest’s spending was under scrutiny, it was like receiving a newsflash about a Pope wearing a big hat or a bear that lives outdoors.
Where Leicester are concerned, although the finances have been a point of interest for some time, it was more a case of wondering why we’d been through the hell of the 2022 summer transfer window, or indeed the 2024 January window, if we were going to fail these tests anyway. And if it was a potential issue last summer, why did we spend all the millions on Conor Coady and Harry Winks? There’s so much that just doesn’t make sense.
Switching off
One natural reaction is anger. As a supporter of a football club, surely the thing that should make you most angry is the notion that the current custodians of the club are putting its long-term future at risk.
Yet I’m seeing, and feeling, not so much anger as detachment. I don’t want to need a financial degree to know where my football club is likely to end up in the league table this season, or the next.
For those of us who care passionately about the club’s fortunes, it takes a mental toll and this detachment is probably a defence mechanism. It’s impossible to truly switch off from it but that’s what our brains are telling us to do. In fact, mine feels like a drunken friend outside a kebab shop at 2am yelling at me about how the club isn’t worth it.
After such a period of unprecedented success, coping with relegation was tough and we’ve seen a microcosm of that this season too - adapting to losing after winning every week. On top of all that, to find that we might have got ourselves relegated, sold our best players to Champions League-chasing sides and still be facing a points penalty makes you wonder what is the point.
Just like when anything bad happens to Leicester City, however, I have found the answers in community.
It’s one consistent theme that runs through tragedies, like the death of Khun Vichai in 2018, traumas, like relegation, and even trivialities, like Patson Daka skewing a shot wide when it would be easier to get promoted. I struggle to make sense of my emotions, look around, see others that are feeling the same and instantly don’t feel quite as bad.
Where community has helped is in the reaction to the news, and the reassessment of priorities. It started off with our first meet-up of TFW writers before the Middlesbrough game. Sadly, the result meant the more superstitious among the group have refused to meet any of us ever again. But I did catch up with one of them before the QPR game. Sadly, that result made me think maybe I should stay home for the rest of the season.
The fact is that neither of those defeats ruined my day, because the football was secondary.
Photo: Ruth Green
Shout outs
This shouldn’t have been a revelation. The value of communities centred around, or related to, Leicester City has been apparent for a long time. The food bank collection organised by Union FS ahead of the QPR game was merely the latest in a long line of positive impacts they’ve had on the city. And that’s what truly makes you proud of being associated with a football club, what makes you fall in love with football in the first place - as Ric from BSLB said last week: it’s not the club, it’s the fans.
That interview demonstrated the value of the BSLB podcast’s output to those who are struggling, whether that’s with the football or just life in general, as well as the community-focused events they’ve helped to organise, which have benefited those attending as well as the charities supported. It’s all about bringing people together and football, as a shared passion, has the power to do that so well, but it takes individuals building relationships to make it happen.
Recently, the New York Foxes have been hosted by various groups in Leicester and our previous TLL interviewee Clayton Stage has returned to follow the team with friends away at Leeds, as promised. These are both examples of enduring friendships built on a love of the club but which aren’t dependent on the club’s fortunes. In fact, they’re probably all the stronger for the ups and downs.
There isn’t a day that goes by without some Leicester City-related group bringing something positive to the table, whether that’s the inclusivity of Foxes Pride, the civic pride of Cool As Leicester or, to give a specific example from the past week, Jordan Halford’s appearance on Matt Piper’s new podcast, all of which are reminiscent of the Union FS mantra: Leicester helping Leicester.
It reminds me of attending the first meeting of the Foxes Trust in a backstreet city centre pub in 2002 as fans struggled to make sense of the financial situation, shaking a bucket outside the Walkers Stadium to raise money and clapping players who were playing for free.
We’re not in that kind of situation again now, thankfully, but the same negativity towards the name of Leicester City will come from supporters of other clubs. It’s only natural that we’ll close ranks and look local. Start to wonder whether we’d feel better if the team was packed with players from the academy or by abandoning it altogether and start following a non-league club instead.
It’s clear to me what we’re doing there. We’re imagining falling in love with football all over again.
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