Our review of the current season issue from Leicester City is now available. The full review is shown below and you can take a look at all of the 2019/20 Premier League issues here.
Leicester have an established track-record of producing high quality programmes and this year’s issue is certainly no exception. The programme for 2019/20 is an 84-page perfect-bound A5 issue, with 63 pages of content – up from 56.5 last year. The club have put the space available to good use, with some high-quality articles, including a terrific heritage section that includes various historical pieces.
‘City Heritage’ is a 13-page section that offers some excellent reading. The features provided include a five-page interview with a former player. For the Newcastle issue, the player profiled was former Foxes winger Matt Piper, whose career was restricted by an injury that forced his early retirement in 2006 at the age of just 24. This is an interview that offers an uncommonly personal and reflective insight into its subject. As part of Leicester’s ongoing partnership with De Montfort University’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture, this season’s Foxes programme includes a page on ‘Football’s Pioneers’ – players who contributed to the growth and development of the game.
Perhaps the pick of the features in the Heritage section is ‘Programme Vault’ which, during the season, is examining Leicester’s matchday issues over 100 years of league and wartime football since the club was reconstituted in 1919. The section includes images of a home or away issue for each season, with notes on its significance, as well as a larger column that traces the evolution of the Leicester programme during the years in question. This is a truly top-notch feature that must serve as a valuable resource to collectors of Leicester issues.
‘The Transfer Record’ is another impressive column, looking at those players whose purchases saw Leicester break the club’s transfer record. The articles recall the player’s arrival and career at the club and include various images from the time. ‘Classic Encounter’ sees club historian John Hutchinson looking back at a memorable game against Leicester’s matchday opponents. The articles sets the game in context and provides a detailed match report as well as line-up details and photographs of key participants. Hutchinson also contributes ‘The State of Play in the Fosse Era’, which looks at the state of football nationally and locally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the club was still known as Leicester Fosse. In the Newcastle issue, the focus was on Scotsman Andy Aitken, who captained Newcastle and became player-manager of Leicester Fosse.
The visitors’ section opens with a two-page photograph from a recent game, with the club’s nickname spread across the bottom of the pages. The section contains nine pages of information about the club in all and opens with notes that set the scene for the day’s fixture with analysis of the visiting club’s recent form. Various stats are provided, some of which show comparisons between key players in the opponent’s ranks and their equivalent figures in the Leicester team. There is a full-page profile of the visiting manager, with a sidebar that shows his playing and management career record. The section does not cover all the visiting players – rather it identifies ‘The Main Threat’ and a ‘Key Three’ group of players to watch. ‘In Their Words’ sees one member of the visitors’ camp reflecting on recent results and looking ahead to the day’s clash with the Foxes. The most interesting of the columns in this section is ‘One of Their Own’, which profiles a former or current player from the opponents who came through the club’s academy before making their name in the game. For the Newcastle United issue for example, the feature looked at Paul Gascoigne, examining his early development at St James’ Park before his move to Tottenham Hotspur in 1988.
Other related content includes ‘Mutual Friends’, which profiles players who have turned out for both Leicester and their opponents. ‘The Last Time’ meanwhile recounts the last meeting of the two sides, alongside various stats from meetings of the clubs down the years. The main player feature in the issue is an interview that runs to nine pages, five pages of which are taken up by pictures, with the article also providing basic career stats for its subject. There is also a short two-page Junior Foxes section for younger fans.
The programme also includes all the usual club information. There are columns from manager Brendan Rogers, Chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, and club ambassador Alan Birchenall, as well as four pages of club news dotted throughout the issue and two pages on the club’s work in the community. Each issue provides coverage of Leicester’s women’s team, as well as the Academy and Development teams, with results, fixtures, and updates for each side. There are three pages of first-team stats, including a very nicely presented season spread that makes use of the club’s blue and gold colours.
This is another very impressive issue from Leicester that maintains the high standards the club has set for itself. The various historical features are a pleasure to read, with the ‘Programme Vault’ article being one of the best of any issue in the Premier League.