Matchday With The Manager: Growing Expectations & Sticking To The Process

Harnessing Leicester City's never-say-die attitude, particularly in the latter stages of games, has been key to the Foxes continuing to collect Premier League points despite several injuries, says manager Brendan Rodgers.

2021-03-14T07:00:00.000Z

Harnessing Leicester City's never-say-die attitude, particularly in the latter stages of games, has been key to the Foxes continuing to collect Premier League points despite several injuries, says manager Brendan Rodgers.

2021-03-14T07:00:00.000Z

Matchday With The Manager: Growing Expectations & Sticking To The Process

Harnessing Leicester City's never-say-die attitude, particularly in the latter stages of games, has been key to the Foxes continuing to collect Premier League points despite several injuries, says manager Brendan Rodgers.

2021-03-14T07:00:00.000Z

Matchday With The Manager: Growing Expectations & Sticking To The Process

Harnessing Leicester City's never-say-die attitude, particularly in the latter stages of games, has been key to the Foxes continuing to collect Premier League points despite several injuries, says manager Brendan Rodgers.

2021-03-14T07:00:00.000Z

Matchday With The Manager: Growing Expectations & Sticking To The Process

Harnessing Leicester City's never-say-die attitude, particularly in the latter stages of games, has been key to the Foxes continuing to collect Premier League points despite several injuries, says manager Brendan Rodgers.

2021-03-14T07:00:00.000Z

The Foxes have scooped up four points from tough away trips to Burnley and Brighton & Hove Albion in recent weeks, keeping Rodgers' men sat third in the top-flight standings with 10 games to go.

With Jonny Evans, Ayoze Pérez and Dennis Praet now close to removing their names from the Club's injury list, Sheffield United are the visitors to King Power Stadium on Sunday (2pm GMT kick-off).

City have been forced to demonstrate different qualities of late, standing up to physical and mental challenges to continue accruing valuable points ahead of a decisive run-in of games in 2020/21.

Reflecting on last Saturday's 2-1 win over Brighton, secured courtesy of Daniel Amartey's 87th-minute header at AMEX Stadium, the Northern Irishman pointed to the admirable mentality on show.

"It was an outstanding win, but the first half wasn’t outstanding at all," Rodgers told the media on Friday afternoon. "It wasn’t very good in every aspect of how we would want to play the game.

"The second half was much better, still off the level that we can work at, but that’s obviously understandable with the creativity and the quality that isn’t available to us.

"However, you still need to react, and you still need to show a focus and an intensity to the game. In the second half, hard-working intensity is what we brought to our game.

"That allowed us to then go on and win the game and it showed a great mentality. Our record in the last 15 minutes of games is very good, so that shows you the fitness level, the mentality and that never-say-die attitude.

"It was a very, very important three points for us, considering we weren’t quite at our best."

Four points from a possible six following two defeats - by Slavia Prague in the UEFA Europa League and Arsenal in the Premier League - in yet another exhibition of Leicester's bouncebackability.

While a clear indicator of the spirit within the dressing room, Rodgers also believes the nature of the disappointment which both results provokes shows the heightened expectations at King Power Stadium.

"I think we stick to our process," he explained, describing City's mentality. "It’s something we haven’t dwelled on or been too critical about. We’re very honest and candid when we lose a game.

"We look at it, analyse it, where we can be better, but I tend not to want to dwell on it with the players. It also shows you the expectation.

"We lost two games in a row, to Slavia Prague and Arsenal, and people now are looking at Leicester losing to Arsenal as a massive setback, so that shows the expectancy.

"It shows how well the players have done and what they’ve created over this last couple of seasons. It’s important that, if you do lose games, you remain focused and get back to winning.

"They did that very well in our last game."

For the first time in over two months, the Foxes have been able to enjoy a full week of work at LCFC Training Ground, with no midweek fixture, and Rodgers says it has been hugely beneficial.

"It’s been absolutely great," he continued. "It’s our first time in eight or nine weeks to have had a clean week to allow the players recover and also get some training time in.

"It’s so important to the development of players to get onto the training field and work on aspects. It’s some remedial work from the game, but also the improvement of players.

"That’s been fantastic. We’ve had a really good time on the training field this week, focusing on certain specifics within the game, for players and individuals’ functions.

"It’s been really good and now we’ve got one final day to finalise a tactic and then put everything into the game on Sunday."

Sheffield United, meanwhile, head into the fixture sitting bottom of the Premier League - but Rodgers was keen to reinforce the message that the Blades have always posed a significant challenge for his Foxes side.

"I think they will never give up," he said, speaking before Chris Wilder's departure and the appointment of Paul Heckingbottom until the end of the season at the Yorkshire club on Saturday evening.

"In my time watching them, the players have been really unfortunate. Like a number of teams, like ourselves, they’ve had a number of key players that have been out for them, which makes a difference to performance.

"If you don’t have the depth of squad to replace those, then it’s very, very difficult, but they’ve still gone into every game being very honest and giving absolutely everything.

"They fight, they run and they have quality. Sometimes it goes against you and, unfortunately for them, it’s just gone against them this season.

"We have to be ready, again, for another very, very difficult game. We’ve beaten them in the times we’ve played them, but they’ve always been very close games. We have to be ready for that."

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