Leicester have been well served by midfield schemers over the years. Our list of the top ten continues today with number 4.
Frank McLintock made his name later in his career as a centre half in an Arsenal side that won the double in 1971. For Leicester, his club between 1956 and 1964, he played as a wing half and sometimes as an inside right. Frank was signed by Foxes boss David Halliday at the age of 17. As was common at the time, for the first five years of his Leicester career McLintock was a ‘trade apprentice’ which meant he played football on a part time basis whilst undertaking a painting and decorating apprenticeship. He made his first team debut at 19 in the 1959/60 season (against Blackpool), manager Mat Gillies having to negotiate with his employers to allow the player to get the day off. Despite becoming a first team regular from then on, it was only after appearing in the Leicester side in the 1961 FA Cup final against Spurs that McLintock became a full-time footballer. In fact, as he tells us in his autobiography, he was working – whitewashing a cellar in Leicester - the day before the final and back up a ladder on the Monday after.
McLintock was part of a formidable half-back line at Filbert Street, along with Ian King and Colin Appleton, and of a team that came so close to winning trophies in 1963. In total, during his six seasons at Filbert Street, he played 200 games scoring 28 goals. Frank was, unusually, both a tough and an elegant player and was much in demand, both Leeds and Liverpool interested in his services in the early 1960s.
Frank's time at Leicester began to unravel after the 1963 Cup Final defeat by Manchester United when he was one of the players embroiled in a pay dispute with the club. Sceptical about the ambition of the Foxes’ board, McLintock put in a transfer request at the start of the 1964/5 season and was eventually allowed to leave in October 1964 when Billy Wright’s Arsenal came in with an offer of £80,000, a record domestic transfer fee at the time. To be fair, the City board did offer him a big pay rise to stay – more than double what the other players were getting - but he was adamant about going.
McLintock spent nine seasons at Arsenal, becoming captain and a club legend, before moving on to QPR where he played for three very successful years for the West London club. McLintock’s association with Leicester City though did not end in 1964. 13 years later, he was appointed as Jimmy Bloomfield’s successor as manager at Filbert Street. It turned out to be a very unwise decision. Although he had been an elite player, Frank had no experience as a coach or manager. It proved to be a disastrous appointment with the club finishing bottom of the table at the end of the 1977/8 season, 11 points adrift of safety with only five wins and a paltry 26 goals from 42 games.
McLintock left after relegation was confirmed, resigning because he was unwilling, as the board requested, to move permanently from London to the Midlands. In his autobiography, Frank describes his tenure as Leicester boss as ‘nine months of such torment that my stomach still flips over whenever I think about it’. He sought to defend himself by pointing out he couldn’t, through no fault of his own, call upon the services of the club’s two star players Keith Weller and Frank Worthington and the club was restricted financially, with the transfer budget extremely small preventing the purchase of adequate replacements.
More on Friday.