Leicester have been well served by midfield schemers over the years. Our list of the top ten continues today with numbers 3 & 2.
3. Third on our list is Sep Smith who was on Leicester’s books between 1929 and 1949 making 373 appearances, and scoring 37 goals, in peacetime and a further 213 war-time representative games. For those in the know, Smith is often considered to be the best all-round player in Leicester City’s history as well as being the club’s longest serving player, 13 years as captain. Beginning his career as an inside forward, he established himself as a deeper-lying wing half with exquisite passing ability. It was an injustice that he won only one international cap. Smith was the star man in a Foxes team that struggled in the 1930s relegated from the First Division in 1935, promoted in 1937 and back down on the eve of the Second World War in the 1938/39 season. Remarkably, Smith was still with the club when they began a Second Division campaign in the 1946. Following retirement two years later, Sep became a coach under the manager John Duncan but once the latter had departed, he was unceremoniously axed by his successor. He became a maintenance engineer for Thorn Lighting rarely visiting Filbert Street. He was rediscovered as a Foxes icon later in the twentieth centre and has a suite named after him at the King Power Stadium. Sep died, at the grand old age of 94, in 2006.
2. Davie Gibson, widely regarded as one of the most skilful players in Leicester City’s history, was signed from Hibernian in January 1962 as a 23-year-old. For eight years, wearing the number 10 shirt, he served as the creative spark of the great Matt Gillies side of the 1960s forging a formidable partnership, as an inside left, with left-winger Mike Stringfellow who arrived at the club in the same month as Gibbo. Although I never saw them play, it is said they seemed to have a telepathic relationship with Davie always seeming to know where Stringy would be. Gibson played 339 games for City, all but 12 of his 280 league games in the top-flight, scoring 53 goals. Along with his teammates, Davie suffered the heartbreak of the 1962/3 season when the ‘ice kings’ came so close to glory but he also experienced the joy of the 1964 League Cup triumph scoring in both legs of the Foxes 4-3 aggregate victory over Stoke in the final. He represented Scotland seven times. He was allowed to move on, perhaps too soon, to Aston Villa in 1970 before finishing his career with Exeter City. Moving back to the city after his retirement, Davie became a postman before running a residential care centre in Whetstone. He later moved to Dorset from where he still continues to watch Leicester play when he can.
More on Saturday