The Transfer Record: Arthur Lochhead

In October 1925, Leicester paid a Club-record fee of £3,300 (nearly £200,000 in today’s values) for Manchester United’s inside-right, Arthur Lochhead.

Five months earlier, City had been promoted as Second Division champions to the old First Division for the first time since the demise of Leicester Fosse six years earlier.

United were promoted at the same time as runners-up, with Lochhead being their top scorer.

He was born in Renfrewshire in 1897 and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War, on the Western Front and in India.

Arthur joined Heart of Midlothian in 1917, where he played alongside the future Leicester player Harry Graham, who was also a dentist.

He was selected for the Home Scots against the Anglo Scots in a Scotland international trial in March 1920.

Lochhead then moved to Old Trafford in June 1921 and was relegated with them from the top-flight at the end of his first season.

While at United, he only trained on Tuesday and Thursday evenings as he was training to be a teacher, but still scored 50 goals in 153 appearances before his move to Filbert Street.

For the next 11 years, Lochhead became a major figure for Leicester, playing 320 games for the Club. All of his league games for Leicester were in the top-flight.

Only four players in City’s entire history have scored more than his total of 114 goals for the Club.

He was a major playmaker and goalscorer in the Leicester sides which finished third and second in the old First Division in 1928 and 1929.

Arthur also played alongside such legendary figures as Adam Black, Arthur Chandler, England's Sid Bishop, Reg Osborne, Hugh Adcock, Ernie Hine, Len Barry, Sep Smith and Scotland's Johnny Duncan.

In 2002, Smith, then in his nineties, told us that Lochhead was the best player he had ever played with.

There is no evidence in the Club’s archives to indicate that, while at Leicester, Lochhead ever used his teaching qualifications, but there is proof that he went into business.

In 1932, he and his brother set up a radio, music and record shop in Loseby Lane in Leicester's city centre.

The commemorative booklet published by the Club to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Leicester Fosse carries an advert for this business.

Lochhead was so respected at the Club that, when manager Peter Hodge died unexpectedly in 1934, the directors appointed him to the post.

The side he inherited was relegated at the end of his first season as manager but he laid good foundations the following year when Leicester finished a respectable sixth in the table.

He resigned in September 1936 against a background of boardroom dissent, returning to Scotland to become a publican, first near Kelso and then in Musselburgh.

He died in Edinburgh in December 1966, but his name as one of City’s great players lives on. He more than justified the record fee the Club paid for him.