Huddersfield Town travel to play Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. We go there on the back of an encouraging, but frustrating display at home to the Palace on Saturday. Leicester had a bit of a pasting on the south coast, being 0-4 down at Bournemouth before they got two late consolation goals.
Town can recall Jonathan Hogg to the team after his three match ban, but Leicester will be without Wes Morgan after he was sent off for a second yellow card offence on Saturday. They may have Matty James back from injury.
Town's Erik Durm missed last week's match after picking up a back injury in training, but should be available for this one. No news yet on the availability of Ramadan Sobhi.

Tickets: This match is not a sell out. Tickets have now gone on general sale priced at £30 for adults.

A brief history of Leicester City: formed in 1884 as Leicester Fosse, they became members of the FA in 1890 and moved into their long time home at Filbert Street a year later. 1894 saw them elected into the Football League as members of the 2nd division, finally getting promoted to the 1st division in 1907, but getting relegated after one season to be back in Division 2 and so we met in 1910 when we were elected into the League.
They became Leicester City in 1919 shortly after the financial downfall of Fosse and the recent upgrade of the place to city status. This brought about a bit of success, winning the 2nd division in 1925 and then finishing as runners up of Division 1 in 1929, behind Sheffield Wednesday. A bit of yoyoing in the 1930s and they reached the cessation of play for the War as a 2nd division club.

Filbert Street

They were still a struggling 2nd division side when in 1949 they reached the FA Cup Final for the first time. It was against the Wolves, who won the match 3-1 with Mal Griffiths scoring the goal for Leicester. They were almost relegated at the end of that season, but won the 2nd division title in 1954, got relegated again the year after, but then came back up in 1957 with Arthur Rowley netting 44 times and stayed in the top flight for 12 years. In those years they got more FA Cup runners up medals, losing the final to Spurs 0-2 in 1961 and again in 1963, beaten 1-3 by Man Utd with Ken Keyworth scoring the Leicester goal.

They did win their first major trophy in 1964 when they won the League Cup, beating Stoke 4-3 in a 2 legged final. And reached the final again the year after, losing on aggregate this time, 2-3 to Chelsea. Another FA Cup Final in 1969, losing again, this time 0-1 to Manchester City. And despite this near miss, they struggled in the League and were relegated.
Back up again in 1971 and the 70s, 80s and 90s saw the club up and down between the top 2 divisions. They missed out on being members of the newly formed Premier League when they lost the Play Off Final 0-1 to Blackburn Rovers in 1992 and again the year after when they were beaten 3-4 by Swindon Town in the Final. They did win the Play Offs in 1994, beating Derby County 2-1 in the Final, but as quite often in their history, came straight back down again.

They were straight back up again though, beating Crystal Palace 2-1 in the Play Off Final, Steve Claridge bagging the winner in the last minute of extra time. This time they stayed up and became an established Premier League team and won the League Cup again. Firstly in 1997 against Middlesbrough. After a 1-1 draw at Wembley with Emile Heskey scoring, they replayed at Hillsborough with that man Claridge getting an extra time winner again to win the game 1-0. Then they won it again in 2000 beating Tranmere Rovers 2-1 in the Final with both goals coming from their skipper Matt Elliott.

Relegated again in 2002 and then in 2003 they left Filbert Street and moved into the Walkers Stadium. But they were in huge debt and went into administration. This didn't stop them getting promoted back up to the Premier League though as they just carried on with big money players despite the debt and the administration. A lot of clubs complained about this and so after this any more clubs who entered administration were docked points. Success once more didn't last and they were relegated straight away again. This became a slump with the club not looking like bouncing back and then in 2008 under the leadership of our old friend Ian Holloway, they were relegated for the first time in their history to the 3rd tier of English football, by now known as League One. It was just a one season stay down there, winning the divisional title. And were back into the Championship Play Offs in 2013, losing famously at Watford with Troy Deeney bagging a late winner coming seconds after Anthony Knockaert missed a last minute penalty at the other end. They did win the Championship the following season to end a ten year absence from the Premier League, celebrating the title win with a 2-0 victory at our place.

Unbelievably, in 2016, under the leadership of Claudio Ranieri, they actually won the Premier League. Former non league clogger Jamie Vardy being the main man for them, bagging 24 goals and hosting a party for his team mates as the title was clinched whilst they watched on tv as Spurs bottled it in a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge.

Head to Head



Town lead in the overall head to head with 28 wins to Leicester's 22, with 10 draws.

Match no.7 in the history of Huddersfield Town's Football League career was on the 22nd of October 1910 against Leicester, who were still known as Leicester Fosse back then. It was played at Leeds Road in front of a crowd of 6,800 and the Fosse won it 2-1. Henry Hamilton, who earlier in the season had scored our first ever league goal, scored in this one. Leicester won the reverse fixture to do the double over us. Our first victory came the following season when we won 2-0 at Filbert Street with goals from Ellis Hall and Arthur Cowley.
The first top flight meetings came in 1925/26, the season we became the famous Thrice Champions. Leicester had just been promoted and we beat them 3-0 at home with two George Brown goals and one from Joey Williams. Leicester won the match at theirs 2-0. The 1920s and 30s saw us gain the upper hand in the head to head, winning six matches consecutively as Huddersfield Town continued to dominate English football.
We had 18 seasons together up to the start of the 2nd World War, but since then this is only the 12th time we have shared league status. One of those was the 1969/70 season when we won the 2nd Division (Championship) title. Both games ended in 1-1 draws with Jimmy McGill scoring in the away game and Frank Worthington scoring at Leeds Road. Leicester didn't come up with us, but did so the year after and therefore we met again in the top division in 1971/72. The home game was the opening match of the season and again finished in a draw. Two all this time with Frankie getting on the scoresheet again as well as Trevor Cherry. Leicester won the away match 2-0.
Meetings between the two clubs became rarer and rarer until 2012/13 when we met each other four times in the Championship and FA Cup. We lost the first one 0-2 at home with two brilliant goals from Anthony Knockaert and then got stuffed 6-1 at theirs on New Year's Day. Two more from Knockaert, two from another pain in our backsides Chris Wood that day. Scott Arfield getting our consolation. But we did get our own back in the next few weeks after drawing 1-1 at ours in the Cup, after Wood had equalised a Lee Novak penalty late on, we went down to the Walkers Stadium for the replay and came back with a shock 2-1 win. Adam Clayton put us ahead early doors with a superb free kick only for Michael Keane to draw level a couple of minutes later. But with extra time looming super Sean Scannell dribbled his way form the wing past the entire Leicester defence to poke the ball home past Kasper Schmeichel to give us victory and the prospect of being humiliated live on TV in the next round against Wigan.
Last season we met for the first time in the now called Premier League. The match at the John Smith's was goalless in the first half but then Laurent Depoitre scored in the first minute after when a great many supporters were still queuing for pies. Jamie Vardy equalised from the spot shortly after before a controversial offside decision denied Elias Kachunga his first premier league goal. We lost 0-3 at the King Power, again on a New Year's Day debacle.

So what's happening at the Walker's Crisp Factory?  Managed nowadays by Claude Puel, the former Southampton manager. He played his entire career at AS Monaco and then managed them. He also managed Lille, Lyon and Nice.
As a manager he won the French League in 2000 with Monaco, took Lyon to the Champions League and got Southampton to the 2017 League Cup Final, where they lost 2-3 to Man Utd. The Saints finished 8th in his one and only season there and despite that League Cup Final, he was dismissed because the board considered his tactics too defensive.
And so in October last year, he was appointed as successor to Craig Shakespeare at Leicester. They were struggling at the time, but by the end of the season they had finished 9th, well above Southampton.

Club Connections:- Frank Worthington was absolutely brilliant for both Town and Leicester. His flamboyant style of play was loved by the fans, not so the management of the England team though. He only got 8 full international caps, all in 1974, after Sir Alf Ramsey had left the job and with Joe Mercer in temporary charge. An impressive unbeaten record for both Mercer and Worthington, with big Frank scoring twice in this run, which included winning the Home Nations Championship. But then the FA took on some knob from Leeds called Don Revie and Frank never played for England again.
These England caps came as a Leicester City player, but it was at Huddersfield Town that Frank started his career and won his only title. That was the 1969/70 Second Division (Championship) title, under the leadership of Ian Greaves. He scored 41 goals for us in 171 matches and then went to Leicester in 1972 following our relegation, via a rather unsuccessful medical at Anfield.
At Leicester he stayed for five seasons and scored 71 goals for them from 210 matches, before moving on to play for Greaves again at Bolton and scoring the goal of the century in a match at Burnden Park against Ipswich Town. A perfect bit of keepy uppy with his back to goal and as the defenders rushed out, flipping the ball over his head and volleying the ball into the net. If one of your modern day players could score a goal as good as this one, the internet would explode!
Anyway, that was his playing career peaked, but he still went on playing for years, still going in his 40s at Halifax Town in 1992. He had one job in management, a couple of seasons at Tranmere Rovers in the 1980s.
He still comes down to the John Smith's Stadium to watch the team, but unfortunately is not in the best of health.

Danny Drinkwater, came on loan from Manchester Utd to Huddersfield Town, under the tutorship of Lee Clark and scored within 5 minutes of his home debut, coming on as a sub and scoring in the 7-1 win over Brighton. He made 33 appearances in a Town shirt that season, but didn't score his second goal until April, another big win, 6-0 at Stockport. Unfortunately his last game for Town was at Millwall in the Play Offs when Town wimped out, which led a lot of Town fans to say he wasn't good enough and it was with a collective apathetic shrug of the shoulders when he was let go at the end of the season back to Man Utd.
He then had loans at Cardiff, Watford and Barnsley before in 2012 he signed for Leicester City. He was a permanent fixture in the Leicester side and they won promotion to the Premier League in 2014. Then to everybody's amazement, that lad Drinkwater, who wasn't good enough for Town, had himself a Premier League title winner's medal in 2016.
He signed for Chelsea last season for £35m, but was injured for most of it, only playing in 12 Premier League games.

Ben Hamer: was born in Somerset, but moved to Germany as a 3 year old and so therefore speaks fluent German. Well that's gonna be an advantage at our club. The family returned to England and Ben joined the Reading Academy, but never progressed to their Premier League side. Instead he went on loan to Crawley Town, then still in the Conference, and was named their Player of the Season. He followed that with a couple of seasons on loan at Brentford (then of League 2), before returning to Reading playing in their Cup games. But he still couldn't establish his place at the Majdeski and was loaned out again to Brentford (now of League One) and later to Exeter City.
In 2011 he finally cut his ties with Reading and made a permanent transfer to Charlton Athletic, signed by Chris Powell. In that first season he kept a clean sheet against us in the game that ended our record breaking unbeaten league run as the Addicks beat us 2-0. They won automatic promotion that season, ahead of our Play Off victory and the following season played against us in the Championship. The season after that, he played twice against us early doors at the John Smith's (one of them in the League Cup) and was on the receiving end of two spectacular Joel Lynch thunderbolts.
He moved to Leicester in 2014, and as deputy to Kasper Schmeichel, his prospects were limited. They became even more limited when Schmeichel got injured and they brought in Mark Schwartzer ahead of him. In his three years there, he played 19 games, including one Champions League game and had a short loan spell at Bristol City.
In the summer he came to us on a free transfer and surprisingly to most people, he started the season as first choice. He played in the matches against Chelsea and Manchester City, but then got injured early on in the match with Cardiff City.

Ben Chilwell came on loan to us in 2015 shortly after making his Leicester debut in a League Cup match away at Hull City. He was the first signing made by David Wagner and made his Town debut in a 0-2 defeat at home to Middlesbrough. A week later though, he played his part in the first win of the Wagner era, a 2-0 win at Birmingham.
He was highly rated in his time with us and unfortunately after his loan period finished with a 2-0 win at Bolton, Leicester recalled him and he immediately went into their FA Cup match with Spurs, earning a draw at White Hart Lane but then losing the replay. He didn't make the Premier League team that season as they went on to take that surprise Premier League title, but did play in one of their Champions League matches the following season (0-5 defeat at Porto) before finally making his Premier League debut in a Boxing Day home defeat against Everton. That was the first of 12 PL appearances that season, scoring his first goal in a 1-6 defeat at home to Spurs.
Last season he became established as the regular left back and played at the John Smith's in that 1-1 draw. And now this season, still only 21 years old, he gained his first full England cap, coming on as a sub in the friendly match at the King Power Stadium against Switzerland.

The hero of Hillsborough, goalkeeper Danny Ward signed for Leicester in the summer and has still to make his debut. He made 43 appearances for us in the promotion season of 2016/17, famously becoming a penalty saving legend. Before that he'd had spells on loan at Wrexham, Tamworth, Morecambe and Aberdeen. The move to Leicester seems a strange one as he's going to spend most of his time on the bench again, which at least is one up from his time at Liverpool where he was mostly third choice. At 25 years old, it's time he became first choice somewhere if he wants to add to his 4 Welsh international caps.

Uninspiring Town manager Mark Robins played 56 times for Leicester in the 1990s. He was a sub in the 1996 Play Off Final which they won to get promoted to the PL. And he also won a League Cup winners medal with Leicester the following season against Middlesbrough, again as a sub at Wembley and in the replay.

Others to have played for both include, with varying amounts of success, Danny Cadamarteri, Jermaine Beckford, Bobby Davison, goalkeeper Keith Mason, Lee Peltier, James Vaughan and Paul Reid, who played 162 times for Leicester before going to Bradford and on to us and being one of the unsung heroes of the Neil Warnock era.
Any more?


Recent form: Town are 18th in the Premier League with 2 points, Leicester are 11th with 6 points.

Results so far this season:

Town 0-3 Chelsea
Man City 6-1 Town (Stankovic)
Town 0-0 Cardiff
Stoke 2-0 Town (League Cup)
Everton 1-1 Town (Billing)
Town 0-1 Crystal Palace

Man Utd 2-1 Leicester (Vardy)
Leicester 2-0 Wolves (Doherty og, Maddison)
Southampton 1-2 Leicester (Gray, Maguire)
Leicester 4-0 Fleetwood (League Cup) (Fuchs, Iborra, Iheanacho, Ghezzal)
Leicester 1-2 Liverpool (Ghezzal)
Bournemouth 4-2 Leicester (Maddison pen, Albrighton)






Leicesters's line up at Bournemouth last week:
1 Kasper Schmeichel - ex Darlington, Bury, Notts County and Leeds keeper.
14 Ricardo Pereira - £25m Portuguese full back.
5 Wes Morgan - club captain but suspended for this match.
15 Harry Maguire - played for Sheff Utd at Wembley when we beat them on pens.
3 Ben Chilwell - gained first England cap v Switzerland this month.
25 Wilfred Ndidi - good name for Lineker style puns, oh yes.
24 Nampalys Mendy - french midfielder signed from Nice.
31 Rachid Ghezzal - born in France but plays for Algeria.
10 James Maddison - signed from Norwich in the summer for £20m.
7 Demarai Gray - signed from Birmingham in 2016.
9 Jamie Vardy - ex Stocksbridge Park Steels, FC Halifax Town and Fleetwood Town striker.

Substitutes
6 Jonny Evans - got the Baggies get relegated then jumped ship.
8 Kelechi Iheanacho - 21 year old, cost £25m from Man City.
11 Marc Albrighton - ex Villa winger.
12 Danny Ward - penalty saving Town legend.
18 Daniel Amartey - Ghana international midfielder.
21 Vincente Iborra - midfielder signed from Sevilla last season.
28 Christian Fuchs - sounds like he should've been a Carry On character.

(20-09-2018, 14:11)talkSAFT Wrote: Brilliant thread, Snooty.
I must have missed that thrashing of Man City (Results So Far This Season) - that was some result!