I want to leave that to them to take care of.
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CLAUDIO RANIERI, Leicester manager, on their opening-day loss to Hull.
“They have some serious quality in the team and they’ve added to that quality”.
It might not feel like a long time ago with the Euros and the Olympics to keep us occupied but the Premier League returned after three long months today with champions Leicester opening the season against newcomers Hull City.
Hull’s behind-the-scenes staff had turned up yesterday morning to discover large swathes of the stadium scrawled with graffiti and a major clean-up operation ensued.
While Jurgen Klopp would have also strenthen his squad with Sadio Mane, Joel Matip, Georgio Wijdaldum and he would be pushing up for Champions League spot for next season, in the next hand Antonio Conte also intensified with N’Golo Kante, a premier league victor and Batshuayi a quick striker.
With Assem Allam, the chairman, seriously ill, his son, Ehab, is handling day-to-day affairs and is involved in a desperate attempt to offload the club to Chinese investors.
Hull is still without a manager after Steve Bruce left in July, and a club that only secured promotion through the Championship playoffs has been badly hit by both injuries and protests by fans against its owners.
Leicester, however, were sharper for the opening 30 minutes.
England global Jamie Vardy struggled in front of goal.
When Robert Snodgrass struck to give Hull City the lead after Riyad Mahrez had restored parity following Adama Diomande’s opener, Leicester got ever closer to becoming the first team to lay claim to such an honour.
Curtis Davies headed just wide from a corner by Robert Snodgrass – definitely a warning.
Seconds after the restart, Leicester were back in the game.Demarai Gray was going nowhere fast until Tom Huddlestone touched him outside the area and the Leicester man tumbled into the box, Mahrez rocketing home from the spot.
However, spluttering Leicester were only level for 10 minutes.
Schmeichel’s inaccurate throw towards Gray allowed Ahmed Elmohamady to raid forward and send in a unsafe cross from the right that eventually ended up at Snodgrass’ feet and the former Norwich City midfielder fired home.
Ranieri’s response was to throw on Shinji Okazaki and Daniel Amartey in a bid to find an equaliser, and Mahrez nearly delivered with a 25-yard free-kick that Jakupovic shovelled away. “The players enjoyed themselves”, Phelan said.
But Ranieri refused to dwell for even a moment on the Frenchman’s exit.
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“They played better”, said Ranieri.
