Tonight sees the return of French striker Yann Kermorgant to the King Power Stadium for the first time since THAT penalty against Cardiff City in the second leg of the Championship playoff semi final of the 2009/10 season.
It is probably the most infamous penalty in the history of Leicester City Football Club and I'm sure like all other City fans, it pains me to watch/listen to it again. There was even a song recorded by City fan Dave Henson to the sound of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, where he captures the moment perfectly, if not a little harshly: "As we watched our TV screen/ I was sure that he'd have ripped it/ Could not believe what I had seen/ When the stupid wanker chipped it."
That proved to be his last competitive game for Leicester. The season after he was loaned to French side Arles-Avignon, before being released from the club months after his return. Ex City player and coach Chris Powell was quick to snap him up for tonight's visitors Charlton and Kermorgant was a key player as the Addicks won the League 1 title at a canter. He's now a popular player amongst Charlton fans and has found the net seven times this season, despite being out for most of the season through injury.
The reason for writing this blog (and I don't intend for it to sound like a rant) is that it has come to my attention that some Leicester fans plan to boo Kermorgant tonight after what he did three years ago in South Wales. What a stupid thing that would be.
For starters, everyone misses penalties. As he said in an interview with BBC Radio Leicester commentator Ian Stringer which was broadcast yesterday, he didn't mean to miss it. He said the reason he chipped it and didn't just hammer it was: "because the pressure on me, my legs shaking because I was thinking if I tried to shoot hard I would shoot above or outside. If I catched the middle and the 'keeper dived, it is finished. I just didn't do it really well..... I didn't decide to miss."
But what if it had gone in? We would probably have admired his bottle that in a high pressure situation like that, he just nonchalantly dinked it over David Marshall. Who knows whether we would've gone on to win the shootout, as Martyn Waghorn went on to miss his too, although not a lot of people remember that miss.
It happened three years ago for crying out loud. We should move on. As Kermorgant says in his interview, our club has moved on. We have new owners, we are in a better position than we were back then and have a great shot of getting automatic promotion. How can we move forward when we are always looking back at the miss? Just get over it.
And if we do boo him tonight it's only likely to do one thing, make him play better. He will be relishing the opportunity to score against us tonight, just like he was when he scored what proved to be the winner back in August at the Valley, putting his fingers to his lips to the Leicester fans at the other end of the pitch.
After a lacklustre defeat against Huddersfield in the FA Cup, Peterborough in the league last weekend and all our promotion rivals winning at the weekend and falling to fifth, tonight is a massive game. City fans should concentrate all their efforts on getting behind our players, not channeling their emotions on one man.
No comments:
Post a Comment