Winks: We're Approaching Cardiff With The Right Attitude

- Leicester City head to Wales to face Cardiff City on Friday night (7:45pm kick-off)
- The table-topping Foxes drew 1-1 at Ipswich Town three days earlier
- Harry Winks reflected on that result and how the team can improve
- The midfielder also looked ahead to their upcoming Sky Bet Championship fixture

The Foxes were dealt a late blow at Ipswich Town on Tuesday evening, denied maximum points by a cruel stoppage-time leveller which cancelled out Stephy Mavididi’s first-half opener. Enzo Maresca’s side remain six points clear at the Sky Bet Championship summit, despite ruing missed opportunities to put the Portman Road encounter to bed earlier on.

“It was a difficult game, but a game where we needed to be more clinical, especially in the second half,” Winks analysed. “We had a couple of good chances and we have to take them to kill the game. I think that's a bit of a problem of our season.

“We do so well, we create so many chances, but sometimes we need to be a little bit more clinical. But overall, I think they're a good side, and they're doing really well this year and to come here and get a point, we’re probably happy with that.

“From looking on the inside of the game, it felt like it was very tactical from both sides and very narrow and tight in the middle to play. It was very intense. There wasn't much space. There were a lot of bodies in there and it's something to watch back and look at the game to see how we could have done better.”

The relentless schedule continues at Cardiff City Stadium, just 72 hours on from that trip to East Anglia, with the squad having two days back at LCFC Training Ground before heading across to South Wales.

The midfielder has himself started all but one of Leicester’s 24 league matches so far this term, with six of those coming in December.

“It's difficult, especially at this time of the season,” the 27-year-old explained. “But it’s difficult for everybody, so it's not just for us. But it would be nice to have a few more days recovery in-between games because it's intense, especially with all the travelling.

“And we've been given quite a difficult schedule with two away games and two difficult far away games as well over the Christmas period. But it's one of those things. We just have to prepare right and do everything we can, which is to recover back at the training ground and get in the right shape and frame of mind ready for the next game.

“We know the most important thing we've got to focus on now is Cardiff. We'll probably have time at some point to look back at the [Ipswich] game, but it's about recovery now and getting ready to travel to play Cardiff and try and come back with the three points.”

Reaching 20 league wins before the end of the calendar year would be some feat for the table-topping Foxes at this stage of the campaign, but Winks knows that to beat the Bluebirds, who currently sit 11th in the standings, they must concentrate on ensuring the performance is at the required standard come 7:45pm on Friday.

“Every team in this league is a test,” he added. “There are no easy games. We say that before every game. Whoever we play against, whether it's bottom of the league or top two, top three, there's always different challenges and teams who set up in different ways and have different strengths.

“We expect Cardiff to be another tough game, away from home as well, which is going to be difficult with their atmosphere and their crowd wanting to beat us. We feel every team wants to beat us at the moment.

“But as long as we focus on ourselves and we approach the game in the right way, which we do, we know we're humble enough to go into every game with the right mentality to keep winning and to keep trying to perform.

“Then hopefully we can come away with a good result. You can't control the result, but how we approach it and how we go into the game is the most important thing, because you know that every team has quality in this league. You can't go into games thinking you're going to win, because you get punished.”

All times GMT.