Kevin Drinkell
On Tuesday night the lowest ever crowd to attend a league
game filed through the Ricoh Arena turnstiles. Only 12,054 turned up on a cold
evening to watch the Sky Blues not only fail to beat Crystal Palace but also
fail to gain any ground on the teams above them. With City’s appalling away
form – now 10 successive defeats and the worst run since 1930 – it is vital
that every home game yields three points and Tuesday’s slip, and it was two
points dropped despite the point saver by Cody McDonald, could, ultimately,
prove to be crucial.
City’s gates have been holding up reasonably well,
considering the team’s fixture in the bottom three and the poor home fayre,
especially before Christmas. There were only 12,309 at the Reading home game in
September and I predicted the Ricoh low (12,292 v Doncaster last season) would
be broken at the midweek game with Blackpool three days later, but it wasn’t.
Between then and Tuesday, there were six sub-14,000 gates, four of them
sub-13,000 and it was only a matter of time before the record fell. Only large
away followings from Southampton, West Ham and Leeds have kept the home average
as high as 14,500, but that is still over 10% down on last season’s final
average of 16,307. If the average doesn’t improve between now and the end of
the season the home gates will be at their lowest level since 1993-94 when the
average was 13,352. The lowest average since then was 14,632 in 2003-04.
1993-94 was the season that Highfield Road was only open on three sides as the
East Stand was being built and with the capacity reduced to just over 17,000
the other three sides of the ground seemed fairly full most of the time. The
biggest home crowd that season was 17,009 for the visit of Manchester United.
Sammy Clingan’s penalty miss at The King Power Stadium was
the second miss by a City player this season – Lukas Jutkiewicz missed the
first in injury time in the home game with Reading. Sammy’s penalty record for
the Sky Blues is not brilliant – he has only scored one out of three – he
missed one at home to Swansea in 2009 and his solitary success was at home to
Ipswich earlier this year. Jutkiewicz was the first choice penalty taker before
his miss against Blackpool but as the team didn’t win any further spot-kicks
between that miss at Lukas’ move to Middlesbrough in January we don’t know if
he had lost his position. Sammy duly scored against Ipswich, a week after
Jutkiewicz left but the Northern Ireland international was missing for the home
game with Leeds and Gary McSheffrey deputised and duly scored twice from the
spot. By all accounts Gary is now the first choice penalty taker again.
Paul Konchesky became the second Leicester City player to be
sent off against the Sky Blues this season, following Darius Vassell’s dismissal
in the opening day game at the Ricoh. Despite the red cards Leicester still
managed to do the double over the Sky Blues for the first time since 2002-03.
Leicester are the first team to have players sent off at home and away against
the Sky Blues in the same season since Millwall in 2005-06. Then Canadian
Adrian Serioux was sent off in a 0-0
draw at the Den and Matt Lawrence saw red at the Ricoh in a 1-0 Coventry win
later in the season.
Legends Day is almost upon us again and the Former Players
Association are working hard to bring a record number of former City players to
this year’s event which takes place two weeks today at the Portsmouth home
game. 40 legends have already committed and the final figure is hoped to be
between 50-60. Amongst the players definitely booked are Roy Barry, Ernie Hunt,
Ian Gibson and Kevin Drinkell. Places at the lunch in the 1883 restaurant are
still available from the football club.
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