Garry Parker's Pre-Season: A Player & Coach's Perspective
The Oxford-born midfielder was a cult icon for Foxes fans in the '90s, scoring 16 goals in 147 appearances for the Club over a four-year spell as a player at Filbert Street.
Parker scored the equaliser in City's 2-1 First Division Play-Off Final victory over Crystal Palace in 1996 and also scooped Leicester's Player of the Season prize during the 1995/96 season.
Following a successful playing career - which also included spells at Luton Town, Hull City, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa - Parker transitioned into coaching at the turn of the millennium.
The former England B international managed City's reserves, was briefly in caretaker charge of the Club's first team, and has also been assistant manager at Celtic, Bolton Wanderers and Hibernian.
Among the most prominent pre-season memories for Parker is the time he spent working under legendary former Forest manager Brian Clough between 1988 and 1991 at the City Ground.
"Cloughie didn’t really do any pre-season training, Archie Gemmill, one of his coaches, did all the running with us, jogging around the local lakes and things like that," Parker remembers.
"You got your fitness from playing in games, that was Cloughie’s thinking. People are different, but for me, if I didn’t have a good pre-season, I’d feel terrible.
"I needed to put all the work in that I could. I wasn’t the quickest player in the world, but I had stamina, and I could run all day. I made sure that I was fit and ready to go because you need to.
"Players go on holiday, away with the family, and just enjoy enjoyed themselves. I’d maybe go on a couple of runs, but nothing too hard, they were light jogs if anything.
"You rest and recoup and then, when you’re back in for pre-season, that’s the time for you to start putting in the hard yards again."
Parker says his first and only pre-season under the management of Mark McGhee at Filbert Street, across the summer of 1995, was the most taxing of his career.
McGhee ultimately left the Club later that season and was replaced by Martin O'Neill, who went on to secure promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs at the end of the campaign.
Looking back to that time in his career, Parker added: "McGhee was my first manager at Leicester and that was the hardest pre-season I ever did!
"He took us to Germany and he’d have us up at 6am doing a run, we’d go back to breakfast and then back out for double training sessions at 10:30am.
"Including the run in the morning, you could call that triple training! It was probably the fittest I had ever been, but it was tough.
"Everyone had to get up at 6am and they’d be out for a run. At that time, in that day and age, the players didn’t do much during their break. You would just go straight into it on the first day of pre-season.
"All the players will moan about it, but you’ve got to put everything into it because you feel a lot better for it after putting in those weeks.
"Now I’m in coaching, I can see how much things have changed. It’s all about bleep tests and a lot players come back fit anyway, so it’s a lot different."
Before O'Neill departed the Club in 2000, to be replaced by Peter Taylor, it was decided that Parker would switch into coaching and he eventually ended up overseeing the Club's reserves.
Parker says his mentality to training changed, mostly due to his responsibility as reserve team coach to motivate the next generation of youngsters coming through the youth ranks.
"I enjoyed doing my badges and I took the reserves at Leicester for a few years," he revealed. "I used to say it’s not about winning… it’s nice to win, but it’s about the progression of players.
"The question I'd ask was: 'Can you become first team footballers?' There’s only one result that matters at the Football Club and that’s the first team, but if you can bring in some youngsters, you’ve done your job.
"I liked to play football in the correct way, so I first and foremost, I wanted the players to enjoy it. If they made a mistake, it didn’t matter too much to me.
"I'd say: 'Go and express yourself, no fear'. I won’t come at you if you make a mistake. When I played, I was completely different, I used to go after people after they made a mistake!
"But I remember Martin saying to me: ‘No pressure, Parks’. Now I get so much enjoyment seeing these kids come through and expressing themselves and that’s what it’s all about."