Claude Puel has urged his Leicester City team to rediscover their ruthless streak in time to navigate a testing run of fixtures as his struggles to convince continue. The under-pressure manager saw his side succumb to a fifth league defeat in eight matches after throwing away a point at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday after twice levelling and has challenged his players to show their quality in their next three matches, against Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
A stoppage-time winner by Diogo Jota condemned Leicester to a third consecutive defeat but Puel is adamant his players are capable of bouncing back in style. Leicester have lost at home to Cardiff and Southampton in the past four weeks but have equally beaten Chelsea and Manchester City in that same time frame.
After being dumped out of the FA Cup third round by League Two Newport County earlier this month, Leicester have the luxury of a 10-day window to prepare for Liverpool at Anfield. “I think the most important thing is I want my players to have a rest, to recover physically and in their minds, and to come back with a smile, with the right intensity, hard-working in training sessions to correct things,” Puel said. “We need to manage our next game to have a fantastic challenge to create another upset.
“I think against good teams we have had particularly good consistency, good focus and concentration since the beginning of the games. I hope we can find this again another time against these teams and give good performance and result. We have shown before good quality and it will be a challenge for the next games. It is important to manage the end of the game, to keep a good lucidity and to be clever in this situation. I think there was a lot of tiredness at the end of the game but we needed to finish it with a good feeling.”
A third defeat in four matches has inevitably increased the scrutiny surrounding Puel’s immediate future, though there remains no obvious candidate to fill any potential vacancy, with two possible contenders, Brendan Rodgers and Rafael Benítez, both in work. Leicester trailed to goals by Jota and Ryan Bennett inside the first 12 minutes at Molineux, which means they have fallen behind in 15 of their 23 Premier League matches this season.
“It is game management and decision-making,” said the Leicester winger Demarai Gray. “It was cheap. We said [about it] on Friday and before the game but we have done the same thing again and put ourselves under pressure. We can only work on it. We have some tough games coming up but we have already shown we can play against any team and beat top teams like we did in December. We are more than capable of getting results.”
The Football Association, meanwhile, is awaiting the referee Chris Kavanagh’s report from Molineux but it is understood the Wolves manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, could face further sanctions after being sent off after running on to the pitch in celebration. The Liverpool manager, Jürgen Klopp, was warned about his future behaviour and fined £8,000 after accepting an FA misconduct charge but was not red-carded for sprinting 60 yards to celebrate with his goalkeeper, Alisson, following Divock Origi’s winner in the Merseyside derby – a game also officiated by Kavanagh – in December. After victory on Saturday Nuno said: “I was sent off and it is the right decision. It was clear and a good decision. You cannot go on the pitch. I tried – but someone saw me.”