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Martin O’Neill has worked wonders at Leicester but, as John Williams explains, his mentor’s title-winning achievements are out of reach 

Earlier this season Leicester City, playing at home in the Worthington Cup and stinking out even Filbert Street’s Shanks and McEwan Stand (sponsor’s motto: “For all your waste needs”), found themselves two goals down to a Fulham side late in the match. The visitors had run the game and at most clubs this might already have been given up and put down as just a bad night. Not here. A whirling Martin O’Neill signalled a final throw, a new City partnership up front.

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Dear WSC
The article in WSC No 144 about the strange man who looks after the FA Cup reminded me of another story involving the same trophy. Back in 1980, I was working on Record Breakers (look, we’ve all got rent to pay) and I suggested we do an item about football that involved getting all four major trophies (the League, the Charity Shield, and the FA and League Cups) into the studio. Come the day the championship trophy and the Charity Shield were delivered by Securicor from Liverpool. Both were in highly polished wooden boxes as you would expect. The League Cup was delivered from Molineux, also by a security firm and also in its own polished wooden box. The FA Cup, however, was delivered from West Ham in a black cab – wrapped in a pillow case. To cap it all, the cabbie turned out to be a right miserable bugger. Handing me the pillow case he said, “I’m a West Ham fan and this is the first time I get a call to go there. Do I pick up anyone involved in the club? No, I get a fucking pillowcase to deliver.” I didn’t tell him what was in the pillowcase. It’s always given me great pleasure to think that there’s a London cabbie out there who’s missed a great opportunity to say, “’Ere, you’ll never guess what I had in my cab the other day…" One of the carpenters in the studio was a West Ham fan. Heartbroken at the way his club had treated the FA Cup, he built a mahogany box for it. The Cup was returned to the Hammers in the box. Ten years later, Spurs won the cup and it was brought into the LWT studios where I was then working. It was still in the box built by the BBC carpenter.
Robin Carr, Chesham

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Dear WSC
Whilst I agree with Tony Dolan’s point (Letters, WSC No 142) that Welsh fans and players alike currently ignore Bobby Gould like your average town centre nutter, I fear that the supernatural hidden powers of everyone’s favourite Celine Dion fan may have been overlooked. I am the Welsh fan referred to in WSC No 141 as having received a letter from Gould during the furore over allegations of his racist comments, in which he advised me to contact (and I quote) “Lori Cunningham (the late)” in order to establish his non-racist credentials. Now, I am prepared to overlook the fact that he evidently thought the legendary Orient and WBA winger had a girl’s name, but to this day I cannot get over the idea that Gouldy (as we don’t call him) apparently has the powers to contact people who are dead. How do they do that, Bobby? It’d be great pre-match entertainment, though, I can see it now. At our next game, in Zürich in March, perhaps Bobby could leave the tactical side of things to the players (rather like against Belarus last month), while he sits on the touchlines with a ouija board soliciting advice on substitutions, whether to use the Christmas tree formation etc, from formerly-alive footballing luminaries. Having witnessed the debacle of Gould’s reign (and our glorious, life-affirming win in Denmark, which was truly astonishing), I’ve finally sussed Gould’s secret. He sees things we’ll never see, he talks to the other side, he may be literally a man of the dark arts. At least that would explain the Celine Dion fascination.
Mark Ainsbury, Wembley

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