No. 86: King Power Stadium [Leicester City]

Sunday, 13th September 2015
Leicester City v. Aston Villa [Premier League] 3-2

I've already revisited one city I used to live in on this odyssey, and this weekend I was able to spend a wonderful weekend in another - the east Midlands city of Leicester.

Having a friend who grew up in rural Leicestershire and follows the Foxes, I proposed a weekend in said fair city with our wives whilst taking in this exciting clash, and so it was we found ourselves arriving in the city early on Saturday intent on taking in what Leicester had to offer.

King Richard III's resting place. Inset: KRIII Visitor Centre.

The very welcome find was - it actually has quite a lot to offer. First stop was always going to be the brand spanking new Richard III Visitor Centre, which opened in 2014 next to the council car park where the body of the last Plantagenet king had been rediscovered a year earlier.

Richard III statue & Cathedral

Since he was re-interred earlier this year beneath an impressive granite slab in the nearby Leicester Cathedral, this city has gone King Dick III mad, and the visitor centre is an impressive focus for this mania.

Charting the doomed monarch's path to Bosworth and his skull's unwelcome meeting with a halberd, the exhibition then leads onto a remarkable section on the events leading to the excavation in 2013.

The final section deals with the science behind identifying his remains and how he met his untimely demise, including a replica of Richard's skeleton with fancy glow in the dark bones where you can play forensics and decide what actually killed the twisted-spined swine.

If you have any interest in the history of this fine country of ours, it's well worth a visit.

Richard has certainly been taken into the city's heart - there are KRIII banners all over the city, most shops seem to be selling something Plantagenet-related and even pubs have been re-named in his honour.

But he'd have a long way to go to rival the city's favourite son - England football legend and smug TV pundit, Gary Lineker.

Lineker's Fruit&Veg, Leicester Market. Inset: Gary working the stall in 1985.

When I lived in Leicester in the mid-80s, Lineker was the local hero still playing for his boyhood team at Filbert Street, and if you were lucky you could even catch him helping his dad out on the family fruit 'n' veg stall in Leicester market now and then, like in this video of him on the stall in 1985 just before his move to Everton.

I remember regularly dragging my parents to the glittery 'Linekers' sign that used to hang in the middle of the market, in the hope of buying an apple off of our Gary. Sadly, I never did glimpse him, and I think my chances have rapidly diminished today, as he's clearly too busy sitting atop a mountain of crisps in London, no doubt.

He's certainly not paying for the fancy glittery sign anymore, anyway.

Grillstock's Smokehouse Combo: A lot of dead animal.

After trying to find the toyshop I used to buy Star Wars figures from (I since found out it closed earlier this year!), it was time for a spot of lunch - and may I recommend to all and sundry the fantastic Grillstock on St Martin's Square? OK so this isn't exactly unique to Leicester, and this is a chain restaurant too - but I've genuinely never had better BBQ outside America. Fantastic.

That evening, following a walk we took in a couple of wonderful pubs in the city centre, downing some fine locally brewed Everard's Ales in The Globe as I reminisced about my childhood growing up here. Although I left here when only 10, I was amazed at how much of this unexpectedly beautiful city I recalled as I walked around.

Leicester Town Hall & Fountain: Civic Beauty.

Leicester is known for becoming the first city in Britain with white people as a minority - a milestone it was estimated to have passed a couple of years ago. It's only about 50.5% non-white today, but Leicester's diversity is very noticeable. It's one of the fastest-growing cities in the UK and the main growth has been from the Indian community - so there was clearly only going to be one option for this Saturday night's evening meal.

However, we spent too long getting pissed up on Tiger Bitter in the Globe, and all the restaurants were shutting when we tried to get a late table. I even pleaded with one waiter that I had travelled all the way from Oxfordshire for a curry in Leicester! His response was a very polite but firm "Please continue your journey."

The Hindi Elephant Deity Ganesh points the way to Leicester's Golden Mile.

I know when I'm beaten. So we had little choice but to opt for a cheeky Nando's and reconvene on the Golden Mile for a pre-match Sunday lunch.

Masala Dosa & Fried Spinach Pakora. Yum.

The Golden Mile is a promenade of Indian restaurants and shops centred on Belgrave Road to the immediate north of the city centre.

Like many places nicknamed 'something mile' in various UK cities, it's a slightly underwhelming first sight if you were expecting something akin to the Las Vegas strip.

But similarly, this is clearly the place to go for a dose of Indian culture, and more to the point, a delicious and authentic Indian meal.

The choice is pretty limitless, so we just picked a place that looked busy, and ended up here in the 4 Seasons Chaat House - where we overdosed on masala dosa, having already drowned in tasty fried potato and spinach pakoras for starters.

The walk to the King Power Stadium afterwards was a hard slog with all that pakora and dosa batter swilling around inside me. But it was an exciting matchday in prospect, so I managed to push past the post-prandial torpor as me and my friend quick-stepped along the banks of the River Soar to Leicester City's new home.

Well I say new - but they've actually been at the King Power (née Walkers) since 2002, the new stadia built just a few hundred yards away from their old home.

Today, Lineker Road that cuts through the middle of the wild grasses now sprouting from what was once Filbert Street is the only clue to what was once there. The old turnstiles that used to stand between terraced houses on Burnmoor Street have now disappeared - and a couple of houses I assume had regained front rooms.

Site of Filbert Street. Inset: Turnstiles now turned back to housing.

The new place is - well, it could be anywhere, of course. It's a great big modern single-tiered bowl - very comfortable, very neat and all that, and the glass frontage at the main entrance is actually a little different.

But once you are inside we could be in Southampton, or Swansea, or even Derby...these bowls all look the same. Which I think is a shame of course (have I ever mentioned that before?!!), but there is always an argument for progress and the need for a modern accessible ground, and I guess there is no reason why a ground like this can't whip up an atmosphere to rival an old terrace if it's packed full of excited and noisy Leicester fans.

King Power: Looks good from the riverbank.

And it was.

A great start to the season under new manager Claudio Ranieri had Leicester riding high in the Premier League. The club that sacked Ranieri in 2004 to make way for Mourinho's first wave were already 4 points behind his Foxes side going into this weekend. A win over Villa this afternoon and Leicester would pull even further ahead and into a vertiginous 2nd place. Unprecedented.

We heaved our masala-filled stomachs into our seats in the South-East corner, near the noisy buggers making all the noise in the corner of the South 'Spion Kop' Stand. And they did create a good atmosphere.

Modern Football: Fan Clappers & Cheery Mascots.

Albeit at times drowned out with the continual thwacking din of those fucking awful cardboard fan clappers that these days seem to be an officially-approved alternative to singing songs in top flight football fandom.

The Leicester side didn't respond the the Kop's rallying call in the first half and to be honest, it wasn't the most entertaining 45 minutes of football. Villa shaded it for sure, and deserved to be in the lead going into the break.

We were a little hungover and jaded after a heavy weekend and by the time the second Villa goal went in just after the hour I was already dreaming of my bed after the two-hour drive home to come. It had been an OK game with a few decent chances for both sides, but Villa had grinded out a good away win, and Leicester's early-season bubble of optimism under Ranieri had burst half-way through September.

...or maybe not.

First, a Ritchie de Laet volley on 72 minutes.

Then Jamie Vardy prods home the equaliser 10 minutes later! Tremendous scenes, what a comeback to salvage a point for the home side.

Surely there wasn't time for a winner was there?

Yes! Yes there was! What a comeback and deadline-day signing Nathan Dyer, on as a half-time substitute, bravely sneaks his head onto the ball before the onrushing keeper gets there - he gets poleaxed, but the ball trickles over Guzan and into the Villa net.

"These Foxes never give up!" says my companion. And neither would you if being chased by a pack of Villains I'm sure.

I wonder how far Leicester can go this season? I don't for a minute think even the most positive of Foxes fans would seriously believe Ranieri will keep them in the top four come May. But I wonder if he perhaps sees them safely mid-table by Christmas, that those still upset at Pearson's dismissal might start to warm to the jowly Italian.

It's a truism that when you have a finish to a game like that, you come away screaming to all who will hear you that it was an AMAZING game. You just forget that for the first 60 mins you were wondering why the game hadn't ended yet. As it was, by the time the game ended, I could have easily sat through another 60 mins!

Memory Lane, Leicester City.

But no, it was time to get home after a great weekend. Leicester was another pilgrimage for me - a quite literal trip down Memory Lane to a place I once lived in, and an unfashionable city that surprised me in what a genuinely pleasant space it was to spend a weekend.

I heartily recommend it.


The only other thing to say is that the Walkers factory in Leicester is the largest crisp production plant in the world. I couldn't find anywhere to segue that into the narrative above, but I just wanted to mention it anyway, hope you don't mind.

With thanks to John Fyfe (@jifyfe) & Kenny Laurie (@kennylaurie)

NEXT UP: Coventry City's Ricoh Arena! October 3rd!