I know a lot of people have been looking forward to this week’s blog as I’m focusing on Peter Taylor’s disastrous spell at the club. It’s obviously very difficult for me to talk about the man that forced me out of the club I love and I’m sure City fans won’t be all that surprised to see that I haven’t really got a good word to say about him. I’ll try not to be too scathing, I’m saving that for my autobiography, which I’m currently working on.

I remember on Taylor’s first day, he came in, sat us all down and said he wasn’t going to change too much. How I only wish that he was telling the truth. Not only did he change things… he pulled the club apart.

At first I seemed to get on with him ok, but I soon realised he wanted me out and it was quite blatant with the way he treated me. At the end of pre-season training I was ahead of Gerry Taggart in terms of starting the season in the team. We went to Holland and I’d played a game there and it looked as though I would be starting when I began to get an impression that things weren’t right.

He was sending his right-hand man, Steve Butler, to speak to me during training and he was saying things like, “We’re going to make it hard work for you, we’re going to run you,” and asking whether I’d thought about joining another club. There must have been an easier way to just say, “Come on, your time is up.”

He was just offering me different clubs every day and obviously when it gets to that stage you know your days are numbered, but I was thinking about whether I should just stay and see my contract out and maybe I should’ve done and made it uncomfortable for him. But that’s not me. When I’m not wanted I’d rather just leave and I just wanted to keep playing because I knew I didn’t have many years left. I genuinely thought that me and Tony Cottee could’ve still done a job for the squad, coming on from the bench and we could’ve been good in the dressing room.

They just wanted me out though and they’d try any ways and means to do that. I just felt it was wrong and I think that on the day that I did leave, Chairman, John Elsom should’ve overruled Taylor. Obviously you really want someone out of the club, to not even consider offering me a job on the backroom staff, he obviously thought I was a threat to him and his position and the same with Tony Cottee and Stan Collymore. He didn’t waste much time getting rid of the three of us.

His coaching methods were very basic, boring schoolboy style drills and a lot of the players felt that. There was a lot of passing the ball to each other from five yards, right foot, left foot. I remember doing a passing drill with one of Taylor’s big money signings Ade Akinbiyi and the ball was flying around all over the place. The lad just couldn’t pass the ball straight and I was running around collecting the ball every time he spooned it. Taylor was getting me to do press-ups for Akinbiyi’s mistakes too.

Martin left us with a lot of money. Taylor spent between £20million and £25million during his time at the club and his signings were questionable. That was the start of the destruction of the football club.

When you have the amount of money he was left with, everything is set up for the club to go on and succeed, but he spent it terribly. As well as the dodgy signings he improved all of the contracts of the young players like Stefan Oakes before they’d really proved themselves. They were all suddenly on big contracts, probably about twice as much as I was on. That shows you how it was all spent and where it all went wrong.

He was definitely a manager that wanted you to get the ball down and play and pass but a lot of it was very basic. But, you can’t forget that it started off alright and he guided the club to the top of the league. On the back of doing so well the season before, the lads thought, hang on, we’ve still got this team together and it was also a case of everybody wanting to prove themselves to the manager.

Even though we got to the top of the Premier League early on, I knew things weren’t right and I nearly released a statement at that point saying as much. I could sense that he wasn’t the right man for the job and although the present looked good, the future looked to be at risk to me. You could smell it. You could almost tell what was going to happen. I didn’t comment in the end because it wouldn’t have looked that good with us top of the league and the club wouldn’t have been happy about it.

I was slated once for a quote I made in the paper about Taylor systematically dismantling Martin’s team, but looking back, that’s exactly what he did. I’ve got no remorse for what I said or what I did, but I should not have been allowed to leave the club in the manner that I did.

Taylor lost the dressing room and once he lost that spirit it broke the heart of the team. If you take the heartbeat out of the dressing room, and without being too big-headed that was me at the time as I kept the lads together and he just couldn’t see that, which was his big mistake.

I remember on a Monday night before a Saturday game we went to Undecided, Simon Grayson’s bar, for an event he’d put on. Me and Muzzy asked Taylor if we could have a beer and he said it was fine, but even though he was ok with things like that, he was stabbing me in the back and I could see what was going on. I just had this feeling with him and just couldn’t warm to him because he wanted me out; it’s as simple as that.

When Martin left the club, me and Tony Cottee had a chat and we wanted the job and were confident we’d make a good go of it. We already had a list of transfer targets in mind, including Chris Sutton and we knew exactly which positions needed strengthening and had top quality players lined up to bring in.

We were actually interviewed for the job at Luton Airport of all places as Martin George was set to fly out on holiday to Spain. There were about six representatives from the club present, including Martin George and John Elsom and they tried to rip us to bits with questions. But I don’t think they got what they expected from us as we were prepared and had considered answers for everything, and players in mind. So we surprised them, but you could tell in the interview that the job had gone and Martin George was itching to get out of there and get on the plane to Spain.

Me and Tony knew it had gone and were so disappointed walking away. We knew we could’ve kept that team and that spirit together and kept the money in the pot and not wasted it. We were confident we could’ve carried on what Martin had done because the club was set up to go forwards, not backwards and you couldn’t have got a better chance with the money and keeping the nucleus of that squad together, but Taylor just ripped it apart.

I thought he was too quick to spend the money, too rash and not much thought went into the players, signing the likes of Akinbiyi, Benjamin and Junior Lewis, who simply weren’t up to it. Lewis has had seven jobs with Taylor, either as player or manager and it makes you wonder what he’s got on him?

I actually trained with Wolves towards the end of my time with Leicester and that’s something that certainly isn’t common knowledge. Colin Lee had invited me to his house and having worked with me during Mark McGhee’s time at the club, he was really keen to bring me in. I remember thinking at that stage of my career, that Wolverhampton Wanderers just wasn’t going to happen, but Colin reassured me and asked me to come over and train with the lads.

Obviously in terms of distance it wasn’t that far away, but in my heart it didn’t seem right after all those battles against Wolves, and in particular Steve Bull, over the years. I asked him for a lot of money just as a one off payment to play for them and we more or less agreed it. I came back home and just thought, “Jesus, I can’t believe that I’m actually going to do this,” and I couldn’t believe that I’d actually trained with them.

Then, Tony Cottee, who had already gone to Norwich City, phoned me and asked me what was going on. Bryan Hamilton was the manager who I knew from Wigan and Leicester, Iwan Roberts and obviously Tony was there, so there were people I knew already at Norwich and it’s not nice going somewhere where you don’t know anybody. I thought I’d be more at home with those lads. It was a bit of a rash decision, but I was away. It was a case of down to the training ground to get your bag and your boots and you’re going. It was very quick in the end. The players were in shock when I left but a lot of them knew the score and what he was up to. Looking back now I think that group of players probably should’ve backed me up and spoken to Taylor about it. But he was so underhand and that was the way things were done.

It was just his way and his mannerisms with the players. He just wasn’t a Martin O’Neill type of manager. He didn’t have the presence and couldn’t maintain anywhere near the same togetherness in the team. He lost the dressing room completely and people started, slowly but surely to go against him.

He tried to be people’s friends at the beginning and tried to be one of the lads. He had a very creepy way and used his sidekick, Steve Butler, to get to people and to get into their heads. His methods were underhand. He’d deny it now, I’m sure, but Leicester fans aren’t stupid.

His style wasn’t for me. I’m very straight down the line. If people are straight with me then I’m fine with them. If he’d have approached me and said, “Steve, you’re knocking on a bit now, what shall we do? Shall we keep you at the club in another role?”

He could’ve let me go with a bit of respect and confronted me about it, rather then act the way he did. I would’ve accepted that. For me, if you can’t speak to somebody face to face and have to send someone onto the training pitch to try and get rid of me, that’s not right and that hurt me more than anything. You just don’t do that to somebody that’s been at the club for over 14 years.

He’s got a lot to answer for to me, Tony Cottee and Stan Collymore and for taking the club down. I think we’re still in trouble now because of what he did, there’s no doubt about it. Martin had set us up for a long time and it was a shame he left. Life goes on I suppose, but it certainly didn’t go the right way for the club or for me.

Next week, it’s back to the bread and butter of my weekly blog and I’ll begin the countdown to the start of the new season, providing my views on new City manager, Paulo Sousa.

Steve Walsh Blog in association with:

For Steve’s views on other Leicester City managers follow the links below…

Bryan Hamilton

David Pleat

Brian Little

Mark McGhee

Martin O’Neill (Part 1)

Martin O’Neill (Part 2)