'The Team Spirit Was Unreal' - Phil Gilchrist On Foxes Career

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, centre-back Phil Gilchrist recalls his career in football, including making over half a century of appearances for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City.

2026-09-08T15:10+01:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

23 Hours 38 Mins Ago

'The Team Spirit Was Unreal' - Phil Gilchrist On Foxes Career

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, centre-back Phil Gilchrist recalls his career in football, including making over half a century of appearances for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City.

John Hutchinson

2026-09-08T15:10+01:00

'The Team Spirit Was Unreal' - Phil Gilchrist On Foxes Career

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, centre-back Phil Gilchrist recalls his career in football, including making over half a century of appearances for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City.

John Hutchinson

2026-09-08T15:10+01:00

'The Team Spirit Was Unreal' - Phil Gilchrist On Foxes Career

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, centre-back Phil Gilchrist recalls his career in football, including making over half a century of appearances for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City.

John Hutchinson

2026-09-08T15:10+01:00

'The Team Spirit Was Unreal' - Phil Gilchrist On Foxes Career

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, centre-back Phil Gilchrist recalls his career in football, including making over half a century of appearances for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City.

John Hutchinson

2026-09-08T15:10+01:00

Phil, born in Stockton-on-Tees, began his career on schoolboy forms with Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, but moved to Middlesbrough in January 1992 and then to Hartlepool United a few months later.

“While playing for Middlesbrough’s reserves, Hartlepool spotted me and I signed because I wanted first team football,” Phil explained. “My Hartlepool debut was against Stoke City and that was the start for me. Playing league football aged 19 was invaluable. We had some difficult times at Hartlepool when we didn’t get paid for a bit, but it was a good footballing experience.”

In February 1995, Phil moved to Oxford. In his first full season at Manor Road, the U’s were promoted to the second tier in 1996, and he went on to play 238 games for them in his two spells playing for the Club.

“After I’d played at Hartlepool for three and a bit years, Oxford came in for me,” Phil recalled. “It was a step up and I played alongside Matty Elliott. We ended up living in the same road. Dennis Smith was the manager. He was a hard man. He told me he had played with a broken leg once! It was a good set-up.

“The Manor Ground was a quirky old place although the pitch was magnificent. The groundsman never let us on it until it was matchday. It was great there. I’d just got married and there was a nice atmosphere of young couples, some with children.

“Matty Elliott was their best player. I made my debut with him and played with him all the way through until he went to Leicester two-and-a-half years before I went there. The rumour was that Leicester tried to sign us both, but Oxford wouldn’t let us both go. I never found this out until later on. Matty taught me a lot.

“I was never the most gifted technically, but I would give everything I had in order to win. Nobody can stop you running. Nobody can stop you trying. We got promoted at Oxford and had good runs in the cup. We nearly beat Chelsea. We were 1-0 up with seconds to go until Gianluca Vialli got a penalty. We lost the replay 4-1 at Stamford Bridge, although I scored.”

In his final season at Oxford, Phil won the club’s Player of the Season award before being transferred to Premier League side Leicester City for a reported fee of £500,000.

“Leicester were looking for a centre-half,” Phil continued. “Steve Walsh was injured. I think Martin O’Neill was looking at the Newcastle centre-half, Nikos Dabizas as well. Oxford wouldn’t let me go until they had found a replacement.

“Luckily Leicester didn’t sign Dabizas. I got a phone call from my agent to say that a fee had been agreed and that Martin was turning up at our house. He pulled up on the drive. I opened the door and, without saying a word, he walked straight past me into the lounge and sat down!

“He said he wanted me to sign, said what I was to be offered and told me to get back him after I’d spoken with my wife. I was always going to sign! This all happened just after the season had started. Moving to Leicester was a big step up for me.

“Martin is a very clever man and one of the best managers I worked under. You were wary of him, but you always wanted to please him. There were definitely similarities with Cloughie. He wasn’t always at training but would come in towards the end. I remember the first training session I had. He put me up one-on-one against Emile [Heskey]. That was a welcome to Leicester!

“We had some good players at Leicester,” Phil continued. “The team spirit and the camaraderie with the staff was unreal. The gap between the Premier League and the lower leagues is huge. The Premier League is probably 75 miles an hour most of the time but then it suddenly becomes 300 miles an hour.

“The build-up is not as frantic as in the lower leagues. The hardest opponent for me at Leicester was Thierry Henry. If you let him have the ball deep, he’d get it, turn and score. If you went tight to him, he’d have the ball over the top.

“He was never the strongest, but he didn’t need to be as he was that quick. I played against Chelsea’s Gianfranco Zola at Leicester. One minute he was here, the next minute he’d have the ball behind you and score. You didn’t know how he’d done it!”

Phil then went on to describe his only goal for us, which was at Anfield in April 2000.

“I’ve got Robbie Fowler’s shirt from that game,” he said. “We won 2-0. TC (Tony Cottee) and I scored in front of the Kop. Anfield was the only ground TC hadn’t scored on. A corner came over and the ball hit my nose and went in. The funny thing was Emile, who had transferred to Liverpool only six weeks previously, was marking me.”

When O’Neill left Leicester in June 2000, Peter Taylor was appointed. Thinking back, Phil’s view was: “The ethos changed a little bit. I was disappointed when Martin went because I’d just signed a new contract. He brought me to Leicester, and I didn’t want him to go. When he left, I was still inexperienced at Premier League level.

“It’s never easy when a manager leaves, especially if he brought you to the Club. When Peter Taylor came, the senior players were big players and rightly so for what they had done. A new manager has to make his mark and to be seen to make the team better. He brought players in that, in our opinion, he didn’t need to bring in. There’s no guarantee that this would work and unfortunately it didn’t.”

During Taylor’s first season, Phil transferred to West Bromwich Albion.

“I moved on transfer deadline day in March 2001,” he explained. “Peter had brought in Callum Davidson, another left-sided defender. I wasn’t playing enough and I needed to play. I spoke to Peter and said that I’d proved under Martin I could play in the Premier League, but he couldn’t guarantee me games.

“On transfer deadline day, my agent told me that West Brom wanted me. I’ve never told the Leicester supporters this, but I didn’t want to leave. They’d been very good to me. We were settled here, but I was 28 and I needed to play first team football.

“I went over to West Brom to talk to their manager, Gary Megson, who was very clear about what he wanted and I respected that. I signed about a minute and 30 seconds before the transfer deadline closed. All the way home in the car, I was thinking how I didn’t want to leave Leicester and was wondering if I’d done the right thing.”

After three years at the Hawthorns, Phil subsequently played for Rotherham United for two years and then returned to Jim Smith’s Oxford, who had dropped out of the league into the Conference. In December 2007, aged 36, a knee injury forced Phil to retire from playing.

After coaching at Leicester City’s Academy and managing Woking Town Football Club, Phil then gained a Sports Science degree at Loughborough University and a Post-Graduate Teaching Certificate at Buckingham University. He has since held senior posts at Ratcliffe College, Plymouth College and Stamford School, where he is currently Head of Admissions.