Cheer up! We were in jail

I SEE so many differences between this Leicester City side and the one I played in almost 20 years ago when the club last suffered relegation from the Premier League.

We’d just been promoted, so, from the outset, we knew we were in for a long, tough season. For this Leicester team, it’s all come as a bit of a shock. Quite a few, including the players, have been caught off guard.

Micky Adams brought in a host of players ahead of that 2003-04 season. The squad was full. Most of us had plenty of Premier League experience but coming to the end of our careers, the likes of Les Ferdinand and Paul Dickov. We had good, steady players but not many match-winners.

Muzzy Izzet was the standout player for us, as he so often was. He ended the season with 14 assists, the most in the Premier League that season, and in a relegated side. That takes some doing, especially when we were a side that battled more than anything, digging in and working hard. Les and Paul did well in front of goal.

The ability was there but not at the level that some of the current boys possess like James Maddison and Youri Tielemans.

So there was a nagging feeling from the off that maybe it wasn’t going to be our season but that didn’t affect the morale. We rarely dominated but were always in games. We just made a habit of conceding late goals.

We were more like the Leicester side that came up — and then stayed up — under Nigel Pearson. The first three-quarters of that season was a similar story. For us, we couldn’t close the margins. They did and it culminated in the Great Escape. For us, it was a step too far. I wasn’t there for the finish as I joined Ipswich on loan. But in the end relegation seemed inevitable.

That season will always be remembered, too, for the ‘La Manga affair’ when Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Keith Gillespie were falsely accused of sexual assault while we were on a training camp at the Spanish resort.

That was huge at the time. We weren’t superstars but we were Premier League players. It was on every news channel, every front page. We soon realised the severity when eight of us spent two-and-a-half days in a prison cell before the other three lads who were charged were in there for another week on top of that. I was with Gillespie, Dickov, Lilian Nalis in one cell. Danny Coyne, Nikos Dabizas, Sinclair and James Scowcroft were in another. Stefan Freund was also questioned but released. It was like a dungeon. Dank, cold, miserable. Bars from ceiling to floor. We got fed bread and water. We slept in our clothes it was so cold.

I remember us being taken in a meat wagon to a holding cell at the court at 6.30am. Eight of us in a cell built for four people all day. We were released one by one and while the other three were charged and got an extra week in jail, all charges were later dropped.

In some ways, Micky Adams should take credit. He tried to use it to bring us together in the face of adversity. We did beat Birmingham while the three lads were still in prison.

It’s tough to put your finger on what’s gone wrong with this current Leicester side. It’s a combination of a few things. Recruitment, or lack of it. Some of the messages coming from Brendan Rodgers didn’t help.

Leicester played a way that wasn’t working for too long. They’d play how they wanted to against teams who wanted them to play that way. They’ve been too open at the back, at set-pieces and in open play. They kept making the same mistakes, falling into the same traps and paying the same price. You get on a slide that becomes very difficult to halt.

There was always a belief that fortunes would turn because of the quality of the players Leicester have. Yet some of those top players haven’t performed as well as they might and, perhaps, we’re seeing a reflection of some of the others’ true capabilities.