As part of a new series here on 90minutes, we’ll be looking at all of this season’s promoted teams.
It begins with Leicester City, who were promoted from League One as champions after finally finding some measure of managerial stability.
Prior to promotion Leicester’s fortunes had taken a turn for the worse, having gone from the UEFA Cup in 2000/01 to relegation from the Premiership the next season.
This turn for the worse came, not uncoincidentally, with the end of Martin O’Neill’s five year stint as manager in June 2000. He’s widely regarded as the Foxes’ best ever manager, having guided them out of what was then Divison One (now the Championship) in 1995/96 after Mark McGhee got them relegated from the Premiership the previous season and legged it to Wolves.
O’Neill won the club’s last piece of silverware before this year’s League One gong, picking up the League Cup in 2000, and he went on to pick up a lot more at his next club, Celtic. To be precise, in five years he won three League titles, three Scottish Cups, one Scottish League Cup and a runners-up medal in the UEFA Cup.
Some might say it’s no big deal to win things with Celtic, but they only managed one League title and one Scottish Cup in the 90s, and O’Neill is largely responsible for the fact that they actually managed to compete with Rangers today.
Unluckily for Leicester O’Neill built his Celtic side around some of his Leicester linchpins, namely Neil Lennon and Steve Guppy, while Emile Heskey had already been sold to Liverpool for what is still a club record £11m.
Much like Sam Allardyce, O’Neill is said to get the best out of many average players and this was most evident in the signing of Stan Collymore on a free from Aston Villa after he had received treatment for clinical depression. Collymore scored five goals in 11 games, including this belter as part of a hatrick against Sunderland.
Peter Taylor took over from O’Neill and oversaw an FA Cup humiliation at the hands of Wycombe Wanderers as well as an unprecedented splurging of cash at what had been until then a fairly frugal club. Of the £23m he spent, £5m went on what was to become the laughing stock of the 2000/01 season, Ade Akinbiyi.
Taylor was duly disposed of early in the 2001/02 campaign and Dave Bassett was brought in to guide to club to relegation, although he became director of football just before the end of the season, allowing Mickey Adams to take the dubious honour of filling the hot seat come the end of the season. Still, Adams did manage to ensure the club’s last game at Filbert Street wasn’t as disastrous as the rest of the season, ending in a 2-1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur.
Following relegation more players left, including another Leicester linchpin Robbie Savage, and the club moved to The Walkers Stadium. Things got worse in October 2002 as debts of £30m led to administration knocking on Leicester’s door. The purse strings were firmly tightened until a consortium led by former player and Walkers enthusiast Gary Lineker stepped in, but the results of their administration were to have repercussions outside the East Midlands.
It was because of Leicester’s restructuring of their debts that the Football League changed its rules and now deducts 10 points from teams going into administration.
Despite having practically no money to spend Adams lived up to his former billing as one of England’s most promising young managers by winning an immediate return to the Premiership. He finally received some cash at the end of the season, which he spent on Ricky Scimeca, Les Ferdinand, Keith Gillespie and Ben Thatcher amongst others, all of whom helped ensure the club’s return to the Premiership was short lived.
Consequently the start of the 2004/05 season saw them down in the newly-christened Championship, where Adams was given the boot after a poor start to the campaign.
Come back tomorrow for part two of the Leicester City story, when the managerial merry-go-round really starts turning.