The accidental chairman, and the making of modern Leicester

Lottery banter is pretty passé these days, a rare aspect of ephemera not repackaged and sold back to us as new. And yet, who can forget those halcyon mid-90s days when it was cutting edge; those searching questions about what you’d do if you won the jackpot?

For most normal folk, the answer was simple – buy my football team – even trickier nowadays, unless by “win the lottery” you mean “pull off the biggest corporate heist in history”, or “need to whitewash a plutocracy built on slave labour”. But for Jon Holmes, it actually happened; from January to May 2003, he served as chairman of Leicester City, helping rescue his hometown club from administration.

So, how was it? “It’s a rubbish job, rubbish,” he says. “It ruins your enjoyment of the game because all the time there’s other bits: the manager wants two new players, the box-holders want better sausages, and you have to talk to chairmen of other clubs, most of whom are not people I’d have in my garden. I’d rather sit with my mates in the stand and take the mickey out of the players.” Ah.

Holmes has held a season ticket since 1957. At the time, Leicester were struggling against relegation, but gradually improved and reached the FA Cup final in 1961, only for Len Chalmers to break his leg early on. With substitutes still not allowed, he spent the rest of the game hobbling about on the wing, and eventually Spurs wore them down, winning 2-0.

The following season the team went backwards, but Matt Gillies, the manager, made two inspired signings, Mike Stringfellow and Dave Gibson – still the best player that Holmes has seen. “A fantastic midfielder,” he says. “He scored a goal or two but was a brilliant tactician, a marvellous passer of the ball; he was all-round terrific, the spark of the side really.”

And a decent side they were too, coming close to the double in 1963 before ending up with nothing. Then, the following season, they won the League Cup, and came close to defending it, losing narrowly to Chelsea in a two-legged final.

In 1969, Leicester were relegated before Frank O’Farrell took them back up and to yet another Cup final defeat; he was poached by Manchester United in 1971. So Jimmy Bloomfield came in, buying Keith Weller, Frank Worthington and Jon Sammels to offer supporters a tease of success. But inopportune injuries meant that they never quite got anywhere, and eventually Bloomfield fell out with the board to be replaced by Frank McLintock; he lasted less than a year, long enough to get them relegated.

Holmes, meanwhile, was now a sports agent. Peter Shilton, another local lad, was his first client, and soon after he moved to Nottingham Forest in 1977, Tony Woodcock, Martin O’Neill and John Robertson signed-up too.

And so did Gary Lineker, whose goals, along with Jock Wallace’s unique charm, carried a young Leicester squad to promotion in 1980. But they weren’t ready for the top division, collapsing after a reasonable start; Wallace was replaced by Gordon Milne, who got them back up, before Lineker’s departure in the summer of 1985 triggered a downturn in fortune that ultimately led to relegation in 1987.

For the club, it was a while before things improved, but for Holmes, all was well – he now represented Gary McAllister, who was making a name for himself at Filbert Street, as well as Neil Webb, John Barnes, David Gower, Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Will Carling, Rob Andrew and Brian Moore. Leicester did manage one more promotion, under Brian Little in 1994 – again, they lasted just one season – but then O’Neill was installed as manager, delivering promotion, a League Cup, and four straight top-10 finishes.

Though he joined Celtic in the summer of 2000, he left his successor a large pot of money from the sale of Emile Heskey to Liverpool. Naturally, Peter Taylor spent it on Richard Cresswell, Trevor Benjamin and Ade Akinbiyi; amazingly, Leicester went down a year later

“After O’Neill left,” says Holmes, “they appointed Taylor. He made a complete Horlicks of it and they got relegated just as they were building a new ground, and then ITV Digital collapsed.”

Alone, each of these expenses was tolerable; together, they sent the club into administration in October 2002. So Greg Clarke, a director, sought to assemble a consortium of local people to put together a rescue package; one of them was Holmes. “I didn’t put a fortune in,” he says. “I put a hundred grand in and got back about five, because the way we did it, I got EIS relief. Fortunately I could afford to lose that amount – I anticipated I would lose that amount – and I suppose I felt it was part of my birthright. Leicester football had been good to me, and I owed my business to the club, so thought I’d put a bit back in, and when no one else wanted to be chairman, I said I’d do it.”

The job taught him some surprising things. “I had a meeting with Micky Adams, the manager, and he was talking about Akinbiyi and Trevor Benjamin. He says ‘Neither of them can see, they’re both virtually blind,’ so I laughed, and he said ‘No, it’s true, their vision is hopeless.’ I said, ‘didn’t they bother to check that when they signed?’ and he said ‘I don’t know I wasn’t manager then, but apparently not’.”

Under Holmes and Adams, Leicester were promoted to the Premier League but, without the funds to strengthen, lasted just a season. Then, in 2006, Milan Mandaric took over, and a further relegation in 2008 meant that for the first time in their history, Leicester would play in English football’s third tier. So Mandaric appointed Nigel Pearson, who got them up and nearly up again, but “for whatever reason, he didn’t get on with chairmen” and was allowed to join Hull; Mandaric replaced him with Paulo Sousa, then sold-out to Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.

Sousa lasted three months, before Sven-Goran Eriksson confounded the world by failing expensively and spectacularly. This prompted Alan Birchenall, a former player, to recommend that Srivaddhanaprabha get Pearson back, which he did. Again, he got Leicester promoted and then masterminded a miraculous escape from relegation, only to make his position untenable thanks to a succession of non-football-related incidents.

The team he left, though, knew what to do, and a year later, under Claudio Ranieri, were champions of England. “Ranieri cashed-in really,” says Holmes. “Pearson, Craig Shakespeare and Steve Walsh had put together a bloody good side. Schmeichel was actually signed by Eriksson, but apart from that, Simpson was signed by Pearson, same with Morgan, Huth and Fuchs. Kante was actually a Walsh signing, Drinkwater was a Walsh signing, Albrighton was Pearson-Walsh, Okazaki, Pearson-Walsh, Vardy, Pearson-Walsh, Mahrez, Pearson-Walsh. Ranieri actually didn’t sign anyone in that side. He wanted to sign Mendy, but Walsh insisted on Kante. In fact Ranieri signed Benalouane and Inler, who he obviously knew, but neither of them played any part to any great extent.”

Which is not to say that Ranieri did nothing. “Pearson was an old-fashioned policeman-type,” says Holmes. “If you watch the players’ reaction to him, they were wary of him. There was a sort of ‘I’d better not cross him type of thing’. What Ranieri probably did was relax them and he had the good sense not to mess with what was there; he hardly altered the team all season. Early on he changed the full-backs, but Pearson had signed both Simpson and Fuchs so who’s to say he wouldn’t have done that? Ranieri had a way of taking the pressure off because he was so good-humoured – but that was about it, and once Walsh left, he got too involved and basically f****d it up.”

The capitulation, “which showed just how miraculous it all was,” began as soon as the league was won. A year earlier Pearson had arranged pre-season trips to Lincoln, Mansfield, Burton, Rotherham and Birmingham; as champions, Leicester set off on a world tour. The players were treated like film stars, awarded big new contracts, and when they did get around to playing football, it was against Celtic, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.

“I always look at the first game of the season as a pretty good indicator,” says Holmes, “and losing at Hull to a side who were in all kinds of turmoil was pretty bad. They won the odd game against poor sides like Palace, and I don’t know what the hell happened in the Man City game, that was bizarre, but their away form was terrible and the selection was in and out, players swapping round all the time.”

As such, had Holmes still been chairman, he’d have made a decision some time before the board did, with Craig Shakespeare now in charge until the end of the season. “My motto would’ve been ‘ruthless in decision, humane in execution’,” he says. “People say to me, ‘you can’t sack Ranieri after what he’s done’, but, well, Mourinho got the sack didn’t he? That’s football, these people earn a lot of money, and in many ways they expect to get the sack, so that’s why they negotiate themselves big contracts: ultimately, they know they end in failure. A friend asked me, ‘How will Ranieri be feeling now?’ and I said, ‘richer.’”

Had the change not been made, Holmes is certain that Leicester would have been relegated; he now thinks that they will probably stay up. He is not, though, especially confident of beating Sevilla on Tuesday night, though either way is realistic about what’s next:

“The target is to establish ourselves like Southampton or Stoke – we’ve never been a big club, and Leicester isn’t a football-mad town. But it’s a down to earth, entrepreneurial place, not like Nottingham, which was a Cavalier city – Leicester is a Roundhead city. The people don’t get too excited, and they don’t get too downhearted.”

Perhaps so, but for 90 minutes on Tuesday night, that will only be half-true.

-- by Daniel Harris