Taggart relishing the hard graft

Leicester City, long may they reign. Well, if not reign, then at least long may Leicester continue to challenge the stifling orthodoxy of dismissive forecasters who regard England's Premiership as five big clubs competing for the title and the Champions League while the other 15 skirmish to avoid relegation.

Sitting in second place behind Manchester United on goal difference, unbeaten in five games and having not yet conceded a goal from open play in the league, tomorrow Leicester City travel to a club supposedly at the opposite end of the Premiership catwalk, Chelsea.

It should be a straightforward home win, one you suspect that would be relished by football's powerbrokers, who think that Chelsea's ability to challenge Old Trafford's monopoly is not only more realistic than Leicester's but also more legitimate.

Thankfully, Leicester City is a self-contained, self-fulfilling unit. Even the considerable loss of Martin O'Neill has been absorbed by a group of players welded together by their own and O'Neill's commitment. Peter Taylor has come in from Gillingham as O'Neill's replacement and, as Gerry Taggart said yesterday: "Must take a bit of credit for not disrupting anything."

Given a manager's unstoppable preoccupation with making his own imprint, Taylor has done well to restrain himself. But the players also deserve praise for not huffing about their mentor O'Neill's departure and for playing to their potential for Taylor.

Honesty of toil has long been a Leicester characteristic, and of Taggart, but the big Belfast man has also earned himself a reputation for the honesty of his opinion. This was established principally two years ago when Taggart, then with 45 caps, was rudely ejected from the Northern Ireland squad by Lawrie McMenemy, an exclusion never properly publicly explained.

Under Sammy McIlroy Taggart has been restored to the side, as captain, and yesterday said that he had never been given a private explanation of McMenemy's decision. "I think I know why I was left out," said Taggart, "but he never explained why. I even phoned him up but he said it was because I was injured. I wasn't injured, it was a cop out. Sammy knows what playing for Northern Ireland is all about, unlike some English person."

So the dispute centred on McMenemy's nationality rather than any personal disagreement? Taggart hummed and hawed for a couple of seconds and then said: "Well, yeah. What does an Englishman know what playing for Northern Ireland means?

"Even though he had Pat Jennings and Chris Nicholl in the background, McMenemy didn't know. It's a different atmosphere playing for Northern Ireland. Billy Bingham understood that, so did Bryan Hamilton, to a degree, clearly Lawrie McMenemy didn't. I'm not blaming the selection board, they wanted to move in a new direction, but hopefully they've learned a lesson.

"I just think it's a pride thing. In the Republic of Ireland a lot more people live outside it than in it so they are more used to it. In the north there is not so much of that. As a manager you have got to know how to handle teams with few resources."

Which brings us back to Leicester. O'Neill said last season that a provincial club like his or Nottingham Forest could never hope to win championships the way they did in the 1970s, a remark that seemed to contradict the unarguable fact that Leicester were winning silverware and were competing consistently, sometimes, as on Thursday, in Europe.

"Yeah," said Taggart agreeing with O'Neill: "we're achieving, we're doing wonders considering the size of the club, but we're not achieving the ultimate which is to win the Premiership."

While it is disappointing to hear such talk from Filbert Street's Player of the Season as they lie second, Taggart was hardly going to start singing: "We're gonna win the league." At 29 he has become as canny as his club, though he was prepared to concede that meeting Chelsea in their current disarray: "Could not come at a better time. Then again, it might be the kick up the backside they need."

Taggart could give them one, as he did last season when scoring at Stamford Bridge in a 1-1 draw. Having scored against Red Star Belgrade on Thursday, Taggart is Leicester's leading scorer with two this season - the team has five in total - but he has always been a scoring centre-half ever since he joined Manchester City as a 16-year-old trainee. He even played up front for City's reserves.

Disappointed when Howard Kendall told him he had no future at Maine Road, Taggart went to Barnsley and scored on his debut there. A £1.5 million transfer to Bolton in 1995, Taggart then `scored' against Everton at the Reebok Stadium's first game two years later. Only he didn't, the goal was never given. Everton and Bolton finished level on points, Everton stayed up on goal difference.

Bolton were relegated on the last day - at Stamford Bridge. "Bad karma, man" would be Gianluca Vialli's response. But he's gone now. Leicester City and Gerry Taggart, meanwhile, are still challenging.