Claudio Ranieri’s men will travel to Merseyside for tomorrow afternoon’s match with confidence flowing through them as they now sit atop the table, two points clear of Arsenal – an unbelievable achievement given that this time past year they were seemingly nailed-on to go down.
Advertisement
“Leicester deserve to be top of the league”.
Penalties in either half from Riyad Mahrez, which took his tally for the season to 13 in the league and 14 overall, and Shinji Okazaki’s strike gave City a battling win against a tough Everton side and Ranieri said he was delighted with his side’s performance.
“I am very honest”, he said.
“What Leicester have achieved from being “relegated” before Christmas to avoiding relegation in May to being top of the league in December is incredible”.
“The other is that when the son asked me, “If everything goes wrong, you stay with us in the Championship?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I will stay here”.
“So the father and the son wanted to know (on each possibility)”.
Mahrez scored his second goal of the game via a penalty in the 65th minute after Tim Howard fouled Jamie Vardy. The Hornets have been in good form of late and Quique Sanchez Flores will obviously be keen to continue with it.
However, for the first time this season Leicester will be forced to utilise their squad as injuries and suspension belatedly start to bite. If Leicester can withstand the storm of chances that Everton will attempt to create, then they have a real chance of winning this game.
Despite continuing to face doubts regarding their aspirations of breaking into the top four this season, the Foxes continue to silence their critics with impressive results.
“You need to see through that and understand that we’ve been very consistent in the last six games we’ve played in the league”.
While many pundits doubt Leicester’s ability to last the pace in the title race, history suggests Ranieri’s team are genuine contenders. In the second we were much better.
Romelu Lukaku scored for the seventh Premier League match in a row for the home team who enjoyed most of the possession only to be caught out by the Foxes’ rapid counter-attacks.
Martinez is looking forward to seeing how his whole team match up, saying: ” Leicester are as good as they’ve been.
And while they do, they’ll also, like the rest of the league, be mindful of how Leicester are doing, if only because this is the team of the moment – or should it be team of the season?
However, like Newcastle, they’re trending in the right direction having won two in a row, and Liverpool are without a win in the same period as they lost to Steve McClaren’s side and needed a late goal to rescue a draw against West Brom.
However, Glenn Whelan clumsily brought down Wilfried Zaha with half-time approaching – Connor Wickham blasting home from 12 yards to send the visitors in front with his first goal for the club.
Advertisement
‘It is not a time to blame the unfortunate action of the referee, we need to be better’.
