{"id":10814,"date":"2025-02-14T17:21:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T17:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10814"},"modified":"2025-02-16T01:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T01:02:07","slug":"a-nine-a-nine-my-kingdom-for-a-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10814","title":{"rendered":"A Nine, a Nine, My Kingdom for a Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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And so to the King Power Stadium for the early Saturday game, just a mile from Richard III’s crypt in Leicester Cathedral, which provides a cheap and cheesy headline. Cheap and cheesy might also be a Walker\u2019s crisp flavour, right up there with Cajun Squirrel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before our first visit to Leicester, on Monday, January 7, 1895, up to three inches of snow had to be swept from the pitch. Teams of men with brushes were set to the task after a heavy overnight snowfall with the country in the grip of Dickensian wintry weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Woolwich Arsenal eleven travelled up that morning by train. They needn’t have bothered. Out of sorts and out of form, they were down by two goals after 11 minutes and three with 20 minutes to go. Young Scottish inside left Peter Mortimer scored our goal a couple of minutes from time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our fourth loss in five games left us mid-table in the old Second Division. Early season hopes of promotion were dead. Leicester Fosse would finish fourth in their debut season in the Football League, missing qualification for the Test matches, a Victorian version of the playoffs, on goal average, a Victorian version of goal difference that would last until 1978-79.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many places and institutions in and around Leicester, its football club owed its name to the Fosse Way. This Roman road between Exeter and Lincoln ran through Ratae Corieltauvorum (now Leicester, but how prescient of the Romans to anticipate Vardy). The club was started in 1884 as Fosse FC by members of a chapel bible class and former pupils of Wyggeston Grammar School, whose lengthy list of distinguished alumni includes Sir David Attenborough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founding XI, mostly still teenagers, lived in or around Fosse Road, which tracked the old Roman road. Fosse played its first game in a field off Fosse Road, winning 5-0 against Syston Fosse, a team from a small town northeast of Leicester, through which the Fosse Way had also run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the only time the Fosse played there before moving to a succession of grounds in the city, including the county cricket ground at Grace Road. In 1891, newly admitted to the Midland League, it settled at the Walnut Street Ground, whose entrance was off Filbert Street, the name the ground would adopt from the turn of the century. There are still Brazil and Hazel Streets and an Almond Road nearby. Nuts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many Victorian-era teams, the Fosse acquired a geographical anchor to their name during the passage from local to regional and eventually national football. Royal Arsenal and The Wednesday are other examples. However, the club’s accounts for 1893-94, its last season in the Midland League before election to the Football League, were still in the name of Fosse FC. The Fossils, as they were inevitably nicknamed (Foxes is post-World War Two), played in the Football League as Leicester Fosse until the First World War, after which the club, having fallen into financial straits, was reformed as Leicester City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the rest, as they say, is for another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirteen games into his tenure at the King Power Stadium, Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record reads: P13 W 3 D1 L 9, although Old Horse Face has good cause to feel aggrieved that the most recent of those losses, in the FA Cup last weekend, was a miscarriage of offside. In the league, the Foxes sit atop the relegation zone, a point clear of Ipswich but two short of the salvation of seventeenth, currently enjoyed by Wolves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Leicester, van Nistelrooy has gone with a 4-2-3-1, not the 4-3-3 he deployed with some success with PSV in Eindhoven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young Dane, Mads Hermansen, is his preferred glove butler to Wales’s Danny Ward. Hermansen will likely be behind a back four of James Justin, who has one England cap, Wout Faes, who has 25 Belgium caps, Jannick Vestergaard, who has 51 Denmark caps, and another young Dane, Victor Kristiansen, who has 17 caps for his country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Nistelrooy has been rotating his centre-backs, saying he has been picking the pairing best suited to the opposition. Yet, there is a sense that his two best players in the position, last season’s regulars Faes and Vestergaard, do not have the chemistry of the best pairings. He needs to find it: Leicester have conceded 53 goals in 24 league games, more than twice as many as the team has scored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vestergaard and Kristiansen have had knocks but should be fit to play. If not, the nippy but error-prone young Italian Caleb Okoli, who was called up by the Italy squad for their Nations League games earlier this season, or ex-Wolves skipper Conor Coady, who reportedly tried to return to his former club in the January window, would step in in the centre. Luke Thomas, a Hoffenheim target in January, or the versatile Woyo Coulibaly, a January signing still waiting for his first start, are the cover at full-back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boubakary Soumare and Wilfred Ndidi are van Nistelrooy’s preferred double pivot. Ndidi strained his hamstring in December and only returned last weekend. He did not complete the whole game, and Leicester’s defensive performance noticeably dropped once he left the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, van Nistelrooy will start him, and his stand-in, Harry Winks, signed from the neighbours in 2023, will drop to the bench. Plan C would be Oliver Skipp, a \u00a320 million purchase from the same marshy quagmire last summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leicester’s attacking midfielders\u2014Jordan Ayew, Bilal El Khannous and Bobby De Cordova-Reid\u2014have experience, quality and experience, in that order. Stephy Mavididi, Facundo Buonanotte and Kasey McAteer will come off the bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The veteran Ayew, signed from Palace last summer for \u00a35 million plus \u00a33 million in add-ons, has over 100 caps for Ghana and is joint second in Leicester’s goal-scoring chart this season with four, behind only the beloved Jamie Vardy. Belgian-born and raised, El Khannous, 18 years younger than Vardy, is already well-established in Morocco’s national team. Bristol-born De Cordova-Reid, another summer signing, on a free from Fulham, remains a regular in the Jamaica national squad, but has been in and out of the Leicester side since suffering Achilles heel problems in November. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buonanotte, a 20-year-old who has earned a couple of Argentina caps in friendly matches and is on loan from Brighton, would be the next choice, followed by either McAteer, a young Ireland winger whom Sunderland attempted to sign in January, or Mavididi, formerly of this parish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closest Mavididi came to a first-team game in red and white was twice being an unused substitute in a league cup match. We sold him as a 20-year-old to Juventus’s B team for \u00a31.25 million; the Old Lady sold him to Montpellier two seasons later for four times that. Montpellier moved him on to Leicester for \u00a31 million more than they paid for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another formerly of this parish, Bless Akolbire, has been named to Leicester’s PL Under-21s squad list, but the 18-year-old, a box-to-box midfielder, is unlikely to be on parade for the senior side on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up front, Vardy is likely to return from injury. He is the Foxes’ top scorer this season with seven goals plus three assists. From the bench, when those speedy but ageing legs tire, van Nistelrooy can call on Zambian international Patson Daka, for whom Leicester paid Red Bull Salzburg \u00a325 million in 2021, and Odsonne Edouard, on loan from Palace but who has not played a minute under van Nistelrooy and was barely used when Steve Cooper was still manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Havertz hamstring news, I had drafted this paragraph as, ‘Refreshed and revived from a week in Dubai and unencumbered by domestic cup involvements, the team can now focus on the two prizes that matter. There are 14 games to go in the league, each a must-win, and up to seven in the CL, pretty much the same.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least the second sentence holds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine of the team pick themselves. Calafiori or Lewis-Skelly and Sterling or Merino are the questions. One plus is that van Nistelrooy won’t have any better idea of how Arteta will set up without Havertz than I do. Trossard has mainly played as a false nine in a 4-4-2 when \u00d8degaard was out, which does not help the second-guessing. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d8degaard, Partey, Rice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nwaneri, Trossard, Sterling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is not much more to say. We must win. The game is a potential banana skin. Vardy is eternally tiresome: he has scored more often against us than any other team (11 goals in 17 games). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Leicester fans are planning to stage a protest on 14 minutes over how the club’s transfer business is being run (theirs, not ours, I assume, but one can’t be sure). It would be nice to think that we would be a goal up by then (Nwaneri nodding in a corner, having been given a piggyback by MLS \u2014 Nicolas Jover’s innovative solution for replacing Havertz’s height) and settling in for an uneventful three points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be more of a grind than that. Yet, 2-0 should be doable against a team that has lost its past four home league games without scoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game ‘holics, far and near.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so to the King Power Stadium for the early Saturday game, just a mile from Richard III’s crypt in Leicester Cathedral, which provides a cheap and cheesy headline. Cheap and cheesy might also be a Walker\u2019s crisp flavour, right up there with Cajun Squirrel. Before our first visit to Leicester, on Monday, January 7, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10814"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10819,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814\/revisions\/10819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}