Pearson: Hard Work To Come

The Newcastle fixture presents Leicester with the chance to move four points clear of the drop-zone with a win with just three games of the 2014/15 season to play. 

And while four straight top-flight victories prior to the midweek defeat to Jose Mourinho's outfit have given City a huge chance of finishing outside of the bottom three, Pearson retains the belief that his men must continue their hard work. 

“The bottom line is that I’m sitting here and I’m very pleased with the players that I’ve got,” said the City boss. “We’ll try to manage our own situations as well as we can do. There’s still quite a lot of hard work to be done. 

“The danger at the moment is that there seems to be a strange perception that the hard work is over, and that’s not the case. That’s why it’s important to keep everybody very much on their toes.” 

Pearson again ruled out the involvement of striker David Nugent, who continues his recovery from a calf injury, while both Andy King and Robert Huth will be handed a late fitness test ahead of the clash with the Magpies. 

With his side having played just three days ago, he added: “It’s going to be important that we pick the right side. The turnaround from last Saturday’s game to Wednesday was not necessarily going to be the problem for us, because we had an extra day to recover. 

“But because this is a quicker turnaround and an early kick-off, the fitness and wellbeing of the players is something to take into consideration. 

“There’s always a lot of things to take into consideration when selecting a side, and certainly the opponents come into that as well.” 

Today’s opponents have registered seven consecutive defeats and haven’t won away from home since January. 

But ensuring his side concentrate on their own performance, Pearson added: “It would be easy to look in isolation at their form coming into the game and make assumptions, and I think it would be wrong of us to do that. 

“They are a side who have probably got into the realms of safety quite early, and it’s sometimes difficult to reproduce early form. We’ve got to make sure that first and foremost that we’re ready for the game ourselves, and that our own performance is right. 

“It’s important that we go into the last few games with our own destiny in our hands. That’s always going to be an important element of the last few weeks of the season, because we got four wins on the trot clearly it can shift how people perceive the season, but the key for us is to keep our eyes very much on our own performances and results.”