Opposing View: Leicester City

Vital Leicester Editor ‘SvensAmbition’ helps us preview Friday’s clash at the King Power Stadium

Vital Leicester Editor ‘SvensAmbition’ (time for a new alias?) helps us preview Friday’s clash at the King Power Stadium

Why have Leicester gone off the boil in recent weeks?

If I could answer that I’d probably be in the job!

We’ve been doing that well throughout the rest of the season I’d imagine we were just due a dip and with the lack of depth in the squad there’s few options to shake things up with under performing players other than replace them with the very players they replaced because they were underperforming.

Some might also say that with such a stated aim as promotion and anything less would be failure.

A slight dip in a single game that wasn’t immediately rectified in the next has led to the pressure exploding on the players at the club and compounding what was a natural dip anyway and possibly extending it because each and every game became a must win to get back on track.

Of course over the last few weeks we’re running out of games anyway so there was little breathing space.

Performances are more back on track now, and we finally seem to have got back to doing the basics better but again the clamour for a win now – even though Bolton gave us a lifeline – well, one win in 11 games speaks volumes really.

With every passing draw, it’s another two points lost and a nail closer to failure based on our boards’ expectations. And that’s playing on everybodies minds, so it’s got to be gnawing at the players.

Will you finish in the play-offs?

Honestly I don’t know how to answer that at the moment.

If we hadn’t have beaten Bolton, I’d have said no.

But I dearly hope we do, but we needed the three points from Palace, had we got them I’d be inclined to say yes.

I don’t think even four points will be enough now though. It has to be a maximum return and you aren’t going to take it easy because you’ve got that mathematical shot at automatic promotion and Forest are in with a shot still of the play-offs.

So for us it needs to be two wins and then we have to hope somebody does us a favour, not exactly the position we should’ve let ourselves get into.

But it’s doable.

How safe is Nigel Pearson’s job?

I honestly don’t even know if Nigel Pearson himself knows.

As said above, failure to achieve promotion will be a failure for the season so will the board go with a new man again, undo the foundations, start from scratch.

Or, have they learnt that demanding success because money has been spent doesn’t mean it’ll come overnight, and therefore stick with Nigel, and allow him to try and put right the mistakes from this season and possibly allow him the chance to attract improvements based on how close we came this time around and give us that depth that at points we have clearly lacked?

I hope they do, because changing managers every season and a half stunts your development really, and you’d like to think Nigel could push on from here if allowed the chance to do so.

Who will be the key man on Friday for Leicester?

Wes Morgan is huge for us in defence, and Andy King is performing well in midfield, but ultimately Chris Wood is our game changer and if he’s on song we definitely have goals in us.

His partnership with colleagues is still a bit hit and miss, especially as Pearson switches around, but he’s definitely somebody who can cause you problems.

One player you’d drive to Watford & one Watford player you’d take in return?

To be honest almost everybody has played their role this season and it would be difficult to say even the more fringe players haven’t at points performed well and done a job for us and it would probably also be a bit unfair to offload somebody for a natural loss in form – our problem has been replacing them during that spell with somebody who had trained themselves into form again.

However, Fernando Forestieri keeps taking the headlines from what I can tell – I don’t have a great knowledge of your team – but if I’ve picked the right player there he would certainly give us an option we seem to lack in terms of ‘style’ of striker.

Any injuries/suspensions?

As far as I’m aware Nigel Pearson has a full squad to choose from, unless something has reared its head in training.

Match prediction?

It’s difficult to see a win regardless of how badly we need it, 1-1.

Cheers SvensAmbition! Make sure to check out VitalLeicester to see how I answered Sven’s questions.