“We must concentrate. If we take a clean sheet we can do something”.
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Speaking before tomorrow’s visit of 13th-placed West Bromwich Albion, Ranieri confirmed that Kante would also miss the trip to Watford on Saturday.
Meanwhile, West Brom pulled off a tight 3-2 victory over Crystal Palace last Saturday at the Hawthorns for their second consecutive win, as reported by BBC Sport. Bottom of the standings at Christmas in 2014 and top of them at Christmas previous year, the Midlands club were widely expected to drop points as the season wore on.
“I’m very, very pleased that we played so well”, said Ranieri.
“For me, if you were saying which team would you like to win the Premier League out of those that are up there, it would be them”, he said.
“Our job is done, we wanted to be safe and now there is something new”. We believe in ourselves, we believe until the end that it’s important to fight.
“N’Golo Kante I think we’ll lose for the next two matches”, Ranieri told reporters at his pre-match press conference today. “In my opinion, they are the favourites, then Arsenal, then City”, he said.
19 goal Jamie Vardy has netted a league leading 11 openers this season and trades 10/3 to score first on Tuesday while each of Saloman Rondon’s five league goals this term have been openers and he is a 17/2 shot in the same market or 3/1 anytime.
The only British isle to produce a title-winning boss has a long history of elite managers and ex-Manchester United chief Ferguson, with 13 titles prior to his 2013 retirement, is easily the most successful boss in the Premier League era.
The boss will be philosophical about the result, where the Foxes had enough chances to win, but they must wait for Tottenham’s result on Wednesday to discover if it is a point gained.
“We need to pick up points, we need to do it quickly, we know that we’re running out of games, but we seem to be confident and we’ve got a lot of belief in the group that we’re capable of doing it”.
Winger Michail Antonio scored it by cutting in from the right touchline and muscling past three Sunderland defenders to curl the ball past goalkeeper Vito Mannone.
However, this performance will still have provided them with encouragement ahead of two huge games against Chelsea and Swansea this week.
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“We were not flat, but we were not in the red zone”, West Ham manager Slaven Bilic said. They can not afford to make it a habit, of course, but some of their title challengers have far bigger issues to resolve before they start to close the gap. “We were happy with how we kept them at bay but you have to turn that dominance into wins and points”.
