LEICESTER CITY
Premier League, King Power Stadium, Tuesday 3 December 2024, 8.15pm
Last time West Ham United visited King Power Stadium, on Sunday 28 May 2023, the Hammers were ten days away from one of the most-famous days in the Club’s history – the UEFA Europa Conference League final win over Fiorentina in Prague.
Hosts Leicester City, meanwhile, ended the day by being relegated to the EFL Championship, their 2-1 victory not enough to keep Dean Smith’s side up due to Everton’s 1-0 home win over AFC Bournemouth. Eighteen months later and the Foxes are back in the top-flight, having pipped Ipswich Town to the Championship title last term.
The man who led Leicester to promotion, Enzo Maresca, departed for Chelsea, with former Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper drafted in to replace the Italian. The Welshman lasted just 15 matches before departing on 24 November, with former Manchester United and Netherlands forward Ruud van Nistelrooy set to take charge of his first Foxes match as manager on Tuesday evening.
As always since it opened in 2002, King Power Stadium will be an atmospheric setting under the floodlights – an atmosphere that helped Leicester win the Premier League title in 2015/16, followed by FA Cup and FA Community Shield successes in 2021.
How to get there…
It takes anything between an hour-and-ten-minutes and an hour-and-a-half to reach Leicester by rail from central London, with regular East Midlands Railway services leaving from both London St Pancras International and London Euston. From Leicester station, it is around 45-minutes’ walk to the stadium, or you can take a taxi. After the game, a single service leaves Leicester at 22.52, arriving into London at 00.23.
If you opt to drive, leave the northbound M1 at Junction 21 and follow the signs for the City Centre for three miles, turn right onto Upperton Road, then take the fifth exit at Liberty Statue Island onto Western Boulevard.
Parking can be purchased prior to the day of the match for £19 per car on the Club’s Filbert Street car park. To book, please call the City Sales Centre on 0344 815 5000 (Option 1). For more information about home matchday parking, please click HERE.
Where to stay…
Leicester has a wide range of accommodation options available to cater for a variety of tastes and budgets, from recognisable budget and boutique hotels to bed and breakfasts, country house retreats and self-catering rentals.
What to do…
There are lots of attractions in and around Leicester for you to visit.
The No1 is the National Space Centre, which has six galleries full of rockets, satellites and meteorites, the UK’s largest domed planetarium, and lots of unique space memorabilia. Sticking with history, the King Richard III Visitor Centre contains grave site, where his remains were buried for more than 500 years and exhibition about his life, death and one of the greatest archaeological detective stories ever told.
Elsewhere, Tropical Birdland is home to over 250 birds from all over the world, while the Retro Computer Museum contains hundreds of old computers, consoles, games, magazines and software from the 1960s to the 2000s.
What’s happened there before…
West Ham United’s results at King Power Stadium have been something of a mixed bag down the years.
The aforementioned most-recent visit in May 2023 ended in a 2-1 defeat. Prior to that, Craig Dawson’s late header snatched a 2-2 draw in 2021/22, and Pablo Fornals, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio were on target in a 3-0 win in COVID-affected 2020/21.
Prior to that, Leicester won 4-1 in 2019/20, it finished 1-1 in 2018/19, and Mark Noble’s unstoppable volley highlighted a 2-0 victory in 2017/18 (pictured, above).
The Irons also went close to becoming one of just two visiting teams to defeat Leicester on home turf during their Premier League title-winning 2015/16 campaign, only for Andy Carroll to concede a last-minute penalty, which Leonardo Ulloa converted to deny the Londoners and secure a 2-2 draw.
