'If Leicester can do it...' - The triumph of little over large
“I think it’s great how you can keep supporting a club like Grimsby,” his friend sympathetically informed the bemused Mariners. “I mean, you don’t ever win anything.”
For Carey, a former United player who went on to spend a good chunk his subsequent career in the lower leagues — now a respected coach, he’s currently between roles, as they say — the well-meant but entirely patronising comments of his friend summed up one of football’s narrowest mindsets.
“I think supporters of big clubs just don’t get it,” he says.
“They look at these clubs as if, ‘surely you don’t want to watch them every week.’
“But people are as passionate about these clubs as anyone else. It’s in the blood. I mean, we used to get about 20,000 at every home game.”
The ‘we’ is Leicester City, the club the Cork-born defender joined after four years at Old Trafford and with whom he experienced the thrill of promotion to the Premier League under Brian Little in 1994, as the Foxes beat Derby County 2-1 in the play-off final at Wembley.
Unfortunately, Carey would get to enjoy just the one season in the sunniest uplands as Leicester were relegated the following year with Mark McGhee at the helm, after Little had moved on to Aston Villa.
Then, as the managerial turnstile whirled again, it was the turn of a certain Martin O’Neill who, after McGhee had departed for Wolves, brought the club straight back up into the top flight.
Under the current Ireland manager, Leicester then enjoyed a decent four-year run in the Premier League, as well as winning the League Cup and qualifying for Europe.
But in the years after O’Neill moved on to Celtic in 2000, the club hit turbulent waters again, their troubles encompassing administration and relegation to League 1, before a takeover by Asian investors and Nigel Pearson’s second spell as manager, heralded the onset of the current era.
Looking back to his time at the old Filbert Street, Carey observes: “Leicester were like a lot of those provincial clubs — Birmingham and Forest, and teams like that — they’d toy with the Premier League for a season or two and then drop down to the Championship or even, for some of them, League One. None of them had been able to sustain success in the top flight.”
Brian’s former ties and enduring fondness for the club mean he has more reason than most to be both amazed and delighted by Leicester’s surprising emergence as the team to catch in the Premier League this season.
The key to it all he told me, when we spoke earlier this week, is that the club have put a huge effort into getting things right both on and off the pitch.
“I think the owners have been very clever,” he says. “Susan Whelan from Dublin is the CEO and they also have a guy called Jon Rudkin who was around when I was there, coaching the younger teams and then becoming academy director. He stuck at it and now he’s director of football and he’s very well thought of there.
“They’ve been very astute in getting the background right. Like, they spend something like 10 or 12 grand every home game putting those cardboard clappers on the seats, and it does create a volume of noise.
“Football, of course, is primary but they also seem to have cracked it — like they’ve done in Germany over the years — in terms of turning each game into an event.
“And the reports coming out of the ground are that people don’t want to leave at the end of a match. They really feel part of something that the club has created, and I think that’s fantastic.”
As for the team’s stunning achievements on the pitch, Carey reckons the seeds were sown during last season’s great escape.
“I would give a bit of credit to Nigel Pearson,” he says.
“He did a decent job and the run they went on towards the end of the season was remarkable.
"Having said that, it’s not to easy to come in and follow that, and Claudio Ranieri has done that. He’s created a fantastic environment, I have to say, where all the players are right onside. And they’ve got some really good players as well.
“They’ve clearly got the recruitment side bang on too, which is really important. And they’ve obviously got their training methods right because they can produce energetic performances time and time again, even towards the end of the season.
“There doesn’t seem to be any sloppiness creeping in. And I think it suits them playing against somebody that’s better than them because they can sit behind the ball and then break with the blistering pace they have.”
Even before the destiny of this year’s title is decided, the view has been expressed that the rise of Leicester City is a blip, a one-off, a freak occurrence.
That next season — with Guaridola at Man City, perhaps Conte at Chelsea and maybe even Mourinho at United — looks destined to see an immediate return to big business as usual.
“People ask the same question about Jamie Vardy, coming from non-league,” Brian points out.
“Is he a freak, a one-off? Or are we coaching players to death? Because he was just left to do his own thing and he turns into a world-beater.
“I hope Leicester’s success is a sign of things to come, that the likes of Norwich, if they stay up, could be up there next season.
“But can Leicester do it this time? If they can keep people fit, they certainly can. And if they do, it wouldn’t just be fantastic for Leicester — they’re flying the flag for all the other smaller clubs and giving hope to all those supporters too.
“If Leicester can do it, then maybe one day Grimsby can do it too.”
Catching up with Damien Duff in Dublin this week and listening to him speak candidly and entertainingly about retirement, coaching, the European Championships, and a whole lot more, was to be reminded of how much we in the media missed out on through all the years he was wearing the green, solely because of his reluctance to put himself in front of the microphones.
For the Duffer when he was playing, it was always and exclusively about the football.
But, observing that the kids have many other things to distract them these days, he told how a young player with whom he recently spoke was entirely unaware that Stoke City manager Mark Hughes had once been a rather handy striker.
“And it was the player who I was comparing to Mark Hughes so I was giving him a compliment,” said Damien.
“I could talk to you about players from the 50s or 60s, I’ve heard of everyone. Nowadays, they’re on Facebook, taking photos, chatting up girls or whatever.
“I hadn’t even kissed a girl when I was going to England at 16. It’s sad, I know.”
Is it any wonder Claudio Ranieri’s Ma used to love him?
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