Leicester hope to party like it’s 1963, Liverpool must find a way to stop Joe Allen scoring and it is eight years since Phil Brown’s infamous Hull City team talk
Every year for more than half a century folks have been hoping for a repeat of the Boxing Day fun of 1963, when the 10 top-flight fixtures produced a record tally of 66 goals. We can’t get an exact repeat of that this year because half of the teams who were in the First Division back then are now in the lower leagues (although, as it happens, Ipswich and Fulham are meeting in the Championship this Boxing Day so Mick McCarthy could point to progress if his team do better than the 10-1 defeat that Jackie Milburn’s side suffered against Fulham in ’63). But this year’s Boxing Day fixture list has thrown up an identical pairing to the ’63 schedule, as Leicester host Everton. Back then, Everton, rather than Leicester, were the defending champions and they lost 2-0 in what turned out to be the lowest scoring match on that record-breaking day. Both Leicester’s goals were scored by Ken Keyworth, who we are going to describe as the Jamie Vardy of his time if we can specify that we only mean he was his team’s most prolific striker. Vardy, mind you, has not been prolific this season but he did score a hat-trick in his last home match and would have been hoping to resume where he left off if he had not gone and jumped into that tackle on Mame Biram Diouf at Stoke. His suspension spares Everton’s sluggish central defence from having to cope with his speed, but Shinji Okazaki and Islam Slimani could pose different challenges. Leicester could find their other suspensions more problematic: the club did not recruit adequate defensive cover in the summer so the absences of Robert Huth and Christian Fuchs give Everton an opportunity to recover from their Merseyside derby disappointment – and avenge the defeat of ’63. PD
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