After 35 years reporting on Leicester City, Bill Anderson must have thought the club had lost the capacity to surprise him. But the Mercury's chief football writer, who retires today, said City's drop into the third tier 12 months ago and subsequent climb back into the Championship this season, completes the roller-coaster journey since he reported on his first City game back in 1974.

Anderson, 62, said: "If City had survived in the Championship, it would not have been as good a story as them going down.

"I didn't want to watch the players sink to their knees at Stoke, but the journalist in me recognised this was a better story."

He also believes the past year in the club's turbulent history has prompted the biggest-ever change within the corridors of the Walkers Stadium.

"To be around a team that has been relegated, well, you would not wish it on anybody," he said. "The team goes down and the place goes down too. Good people lose their jobs and it affects everyone.

"Now the doom and gloom at a losing club has been transformed into a winning environment, and that's down to the manager (Nigel Pearson) and, to a large extent, the chairman (Milan Mandaric)."

Anderson says City now need to build on the momentum, but he added: "Unless by some amazing transformation, Leicester win the Premier League, I think I've just about seen everything that the club has done."

Anderson, whose father, also called Bill, played for City during the war years, filed his first reports from the 1974-75 season when Jimmy Bloomfield was in charge of one of the most feted teams in the club's history.

The line-up included Frank Worthington, Jon Sammels, Keith Weller and Alan Birchenall. Anderson said: "They were a good bunch of guys and fun to watch and fun to cover.

"Weller is the one who really stands out, one of the few players who could bring gasps from the crowd rather than cheers."

Bloomfield was to be the first of 19 managers who Anderson counted in and out of Filbert Street and the Walkers.

But he says the most stable period in the club's history coincided with the unparalleled success the team achieved under Martin O'Neill in the 1990s.

City won two League Cups, reached a third final, played in Europe and regularly posted top-10 finishes in the Premier League.

Anderson says O'Neill was "successful and won trophies", but rates Micky Adams with the best managerial achievement after he lifted the team back into the top flight in 2002-03 amid a financial crisis.

He said: "Micky got the team up through administration when, from October onwards, he was not allowed to sign players or even loan them."

Anderson says he has "fallen out" with all the City managers, with the exception of Pearson, adding: "He's only had a year of me, so no doubt we might have done."

He said his relationship with O'Neill foundered on the La Manga incident in 2000 when the club were thrown out of the luxury resort after Stan Collymore let off a fire extinguisher.

Anderson said: "I was at La Manga but not there for the incident and was thrown out like everyone else.

"That's when I fell out with Martin because I had to report the incident. It caused consternation because it was just before the League Cup final with Tranmere (City won 2-1) and Martin was furious that such a thing had upset the team.

"There was nothing I could do, the story was there and it had to be reported."

Anderson said he was also banned from the ground by Bloomfield and, on a later occasion, by former chairman Martin George. That, he says, answers the accusations often levelled at him by City fans that he turns an uncritical eye to the club's fortunes.

He said: "Fans think you are in the club's pocket, but if you ask the club they think you are an outsider and the enemy.

"So if these are the two perceptions, then that suggests you have got the balance right.

"I've always thought it strange that a fan can complain about me being more positive about their own club than they are.

"Most people know I'm not a Leicester fan (Anderson follows Tottenham), but when you deal with a club week in and week out, you share their ups and downs.

"And I must admit that when Allan Nielsen scored a last-minute goal for Tottenham against Leicester in the 1999 League Cup final, I did say 'oh, no' rather than 'oh, yes'."

Anderson says he leaves the job "satisfied with what I've done and satisfied with all the things I've seen."

He added: "It has been a privilege to watch the evolution of a football club from the ordinary to the big business multi-million industry it is now."

Anderson said the job description has changed through new technology and bemoaned the loss of the Saturday night results paper.

"I was disappointed that the "Buff" ended and, with it, the running reports which made you feel so much part of it. Now you have to be more reflective and newspapers have changed."

And he seems genuinely uneasy about the number of column inches now devoted to the views of the fans.

He senses a "great enthusiasm to go for the negative."

He said: "The best remark I ever heard was when City were near the wrong end of the table and staging a bit of a revival and someone said, 'They've only beaten the teams below them in the table.' I ask you, what do they know? You could say the same about whoever is top."

Anderson said he was "bitterly disappointed" in December to discover that the Mercury letters page had been used "as an incentive" by the Scunthorpe players.

He says: "There were comments from Leicester fans moaning and groaning about their team. So Scunthorpe told their players, 'look they're not that good, they are under pressure and at least our fans are behind us'. That was the biggest disappointment in 35 years and it was just wrong to me.

"But the good times outweigh the bad and I rarely look back.

"You celebrate things at the time and then look forward, as City are now doing.

"The League One trophy has been presented and it is what happens next that counts."