Leicester City’s current crop of players will be hoping to get the Foxes back to the Premier League at the first time of asking following last season’s disappointing relegation from the top flight of English football.
But what about some of the former City players from times gone by that you may not even realise are still playing despite their advancing years?
Let’s take a look at EIGHT ex-Leicester individuals that to this very day are still plying their trade in football.
Davies was only at Leicester for a few months, but they were on a long list of clubs that he put his body on the line for.
The centre-back joined during the 2010-11 season when they were in the Championship, as he was not getting any minutes at Aston Villa, and he contributed to plenty of good results during his time at the King Power Stadium.
On the back of his performances for City, though, Davies managed to get himself a Premier League move once his loan stint was over, joining Villa’s rivals Birmingham.
Davies has since been at Hull City and Derby County, and at the age of 38 he is seemingly finishing his career out at Cheltenham Town of League One, where he is adding his expertise and experience.
A product of the Foxes’ youth academy and an England underage international, Mattock was a promising prospect when he made his first-team debut in 2007 as a 16-year-old.
In the 2007-08 season, just after turning 17 years of age, the left-back featured regularly for City and was even the subject of Premier League interest from West Ham United that year, but in 2009 he joined West Brom despite being in the same league as the club he was departing.
Mattock would never go on to be a top flight player but went on to have a solid career at Championship level for the likes of the Baggies briefly, as well as Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham United.
Nowadays though, at the age of 33, Mattock is in the fourth tier of English football, plying his trade for Harrogate Town.
Mattock is more of a centre-back nowadays as well, rather than a full-back, playing 26 times in all competitions for the Sulphurites in the 2022-23 season.
Another player to graduate from the Leicester academy, Stearman was a teenage debutant at the age of 17 in 2004 and went on to be a regular at the heart of the Foxes defence for three whole seasons.
When they were relegated to League One, though, in 2008, it was Stearman’s cue to move on after 130 appearances and he signed for hometown club Wolves, eventually playing Premier League football with the West Midlands outfit.
For much of his career, Stearman was a very solid second tier defender and in 2019 he was a squad player as Sheffield United were promoted back to the top flight, but he has now started to drop down the levels.
Currently, Stearman is playing for Solihull Moors of the National League, which is a place where he will likely see out his career but is also at a level where he can still probably perform on a consistent basis.
Despite being Leicester’s first-choice right-back in 2011-12, Peltier only lasted one season at the King Power despite being relatively solid.
Signed from League One side Huddersfield in the summer of 2011, the right-back played 47 times for the Foxes and managed to keep experienced Ghana international John Paintsil out of the team, but the decision to sign Ritchie De Laet in 2012 ultimately pushed the Liverpool-born defender out.
He still managed to secure himself a decent move to Leeds though that year, and ever since, he has, in the main, managed to keep himself at Championship level, with the odd Premier League season too.
Nowadays, Peltier, at the age of 36, is at Rotherham United, where in the 2022-23 season he played 36 times at a mixture of right-back and centre-back, showing that he doesn’t really have any plans to hang his boots up soon.
Shinji Okazaki
Okazaki arrived at Leicester just at the right time in June 2015, joining the squad that would win the Premier League less than 12 months later.
The Japanese livewire would only score five league goals in his debut season, but his constant pressing from the front meant he was a menace but also a fan favourite for his consistent hard work.
Whilst Okazaki would never hit regular goals for the Foxes, by the time he left in 2019 after four years and 137 games played, he was a cult hero, and he continued to play on as well.
He headed to Spain with Huesca and then Cartagena, and in 2022 he signed for Sint-Truiden of Belgium, where he is continuing to make appearances off the bench in the top flight despite now being 37 years of age.
Nicky Adams
When relegated to League One in 2008, Leicester paid £100,000 to Bury for winger Adams, having impressed for the Shakers from a young age.
It didn’t really work out for Adams at City though, playing 38 times over the course of two seasons with loan stints at Rochdale and Leyton Orient in that time.
Adams did eventually find his feet though, after moving on to Brentford in 2010, although his real standout season came for Crawley Town in 2012-13 when he scored 11 times.
He ended up being pretty consistent at League Two level in the final years of his EFL career, but now aged 36, Adams finds himself in non-league with Radcliffe FC, who he signed for in June 2022.
As well as still playing in the seventh tier of English football, Adams is also the development squad head coach at Oldham Athletic.
Michael Morrison
Like Adams, Morrison was a signing in Leicester’s League One season in 2008-09, having played National League football before that for Cambridge United.
Morrison made the step up to third tier football pretty comfortably and subsequently the Championship, and after leaving City in 2011 for Sheffield Wednesday, he ended up being a very solid defender for the level for a number of years.
Now 35 years of age, Morrison has been playing back at Cambridge since January 2023, with his career coming full circle after starting out at the Abbey Stadium.
Max Gradel
It’s somewhat of a surprise that Gradel will turn 36 in November, and he is continuing to play at a good level too.
Born in the Ivory Coast and raised in France, Gradel was plucked from Lewisham College by Leicester in 2005 after going on trial with them – that came after the winger spent months trying to impress Arsenal in similar trials.
Gradel ended up playing 33 times for Leicester, but in 2010, he was sold to Leeds United following an initial loan stint at Elland Road.
Going on to play 104 times for the Ivory Coast and still named in their squads to this very day, Gradel has played regular top flight football in recent years in France, England and, most recently, Turkey.
Just this summer, he signed for Gaziantep in Turkey from Sivasspor, and despite being 35 years old, he was given a two-year contract, such is the ability he still has left.
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