The Delia Smith guide to supporting Leicester City in 2022
It's moments like these when you empathise with Delia Smith for striding onto the pitch at Carrow Road, a bottle of Riesling deep, and thinking you can somehow rouse a bunch of no-hopers into doing something. Anything.
Suddenly, five pints after a work do feels like the optimal time to write something about Monday night's game against Nottingham Forest – the sort of fixture that honestly should feel like a fun game on your mobile phone at this stage of a Premier League season, rather than an era-defining event.
But that's what it is. With the news that our masochistic owner is flying in to watch his first game in over six weeks, Brendan Rodgers' future couldn't be more on the line if he was an apprentice tightrope dancer. If the majority of us are stunned that he's remained upright this long, there's nothing quite as decisive as a home fixture against your most local newly promoted (relegation?) rivals to nudge him off once and for all.
You might remember Brighton at home from February 2019 quite well – it's the day we won quite convincingly in front of our new manager post-Puel; a manager I affectionately poked fun at as a "Colgate-powered Caesar" for the way he drank in the crowd's good grace that night.
But it's funny how things turn full circle. Monday night is pure Caesar theatre: a one-off, thumbs up or thumbs down event to decide whether our manager keeps his job. Whether it should have reached this point is a moot discussion. How is a more pertinent one worth interrogating for another day.
While Rodgers' future is riding on the thinnest of lines, that too is a moot subject. We're done with that: on a night like this, the only thing that matters is the team and backing them to within an inch of their Premier League existence. It's the sort of night where current prejudice just has to be put aside.
Because Leicester City proving that they can be unpredictable beyond comprehension over the last decade also works both ways. We can pull off a great escape; we can win the Premier League title; we can ruffle some feathers in Europe; we can come within a Bournemouth afternoon of cracking the top four; we can win the FA Cup and almost upset the natural order once more after that.
But we can also be shit. Not Junior Lewis shit. Not Josh Low and Elvis Hammond shit. Not 2007-08 shit, followed by Matt Mills shit. Just normal, shit-happens shit. We can moan about the current regime, we can ponder how it's got to this point, but it won't do any good when our red neighbours roll into town feeling a similar level of trepidation. So forget whether this game will decide how the next chapter of our club is decided, and instead focus on what we all can do.
If there's one thing we know, it's that this team isn't bottom-of-the-league material. The masses want Rodgers gone yesterday because they feel it will give the squad confidence – but in the meantime, there are almost 30,000 people who can give it to them instead.
At least just for one night, let's put aside the angst. It's a lot more productive that way.
Let’s be ‘aving you.
