Defender makes Leicester City contract revelation amid dream of Foxes return
The latest Leicester City news as the academy graduate has spoken about his exit from the club and how he felt when City lifted the title in 2016.
Former Leicester City defender Liam Moore has revealed how he always planned to return to the club following his exit in 2016, and actually put pen-to-paper on a new contract before sealing a permanent move away.
The now 30-year-old left the King Power Stadium in the summer of 2016, completing a permanent move to then Championship side Reading. The defender went on to become captain of the Royals, but left the club this summer at the end of his contract and remains a free agent.
Moore spent the first half of the 2015/16 season on loan with Bristol City, a move that he has revealed he regrets making. He returned in January and was around the club as they completed the charge for the Premier League title, the defender has described what it was like for him to be around the club but not involved, having made no Premier League appearances that campaign.
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“The article you might have read is when I said I remember standing on the pitch in tears when they lifted the trophy and there’s a lot of reasons behind that,” he told BallersMindset Podcast . “One, it was amazing to see, I’m a Leicester fan, two, being gutted that I wasn’t involved and I feel that there was an opportunity there, and three, because I knew it was the end of my time there, they were going into the Champions League and I’d just had a failed loan at Bristol, I need to go and establish myself.”
“I remember being gutted a few days after, there was so many things to do, the parade. I was invited to all of it, and I made sure I did it, because it was obviously a once in a lifetime experience .
“You never want to be that sulker, you never want to sit back like ‘I weren’t involved, so I’m not doing it’, but there was a lot of bittersweet moments. We went to Thailand to celebrate it and at times I was like ‘I didn’t do anything here’. I trained with the boys but I didn’t do anything.
“At the same time, people were invited for a reason, I’d obviously been around it for a long time and that was the reason, I worked hard in training but the opportunity never came. So it was obviously nice, I can look back at them memories and the pictures now.”
Just a few months later, Moore moved to Reading, but he has revealed that he was offered, and originally signed, a new contract to stay at City. The defender outlined the plan he had when moving away from the club.
“I signed a contract that didn’t actually go through in the end,” he added. “They wanted me to stay and go out on loan and mature and learn the game but I wanted to have a bit of control over where I went.
“I just didn’t feel entirely comfortable that I had a clear pathway to get back to where I needed to be at Leicester, so eventually we took the contract off the table and it was a case of I’m a Leicester boy, I love the club, I felt like the fans appreciated me, I was at home, the contract was good , but something was missing, I needed to be a man basically.
“I felt like in the environment I was in, I was always going to stay the nearly boy or the nearly kid, so my intention was to always go, play and try and get back, that was always my mentality, I always wanted to try and get back.”
