Leicester City travel to QPR seeking for a ninth consecutive league victory, which would equal a club record, but Enzo Maresca can’t stop talking about the potential of failure.
With each victory, City’s manager becomes more convinced that defeat is imminent. Even with his team being strong favourites this Saturday against a QPR club that has lost five in a row.Maresca stated that he “tries to be straight, clear, and honest” with his players in order to keep their feet on the ground, which includes regular cautions about slipping standards. He feels that teams are waiting to capitalise on their complacency
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He’s also encouraging his players to imagine themselves as QPR players, and how they would feel if they were facing the division’s leaders, with the prospect of ending their five-game losing streak. In that regard, it is the “perfect” game for the host team.
We’re winning games, but we’re going to lose tomorrow, and nothing has changed,” Maresca remarked at a press conference. “We need to stay on our current path, the way we want to play and improve.”
“In my opinion, the only way to improve the team is to improve the players.” We must concentrate on how we can improve them. You can’t drop just a small bit since our opponents will be waiting for us.
“It’s a tricky game. It’s the perfect game after five defeats for them. It’s a big game, guys. It’s a big game for us. It will be a tough one, for sure.
“You have to feel like a QPR player in the moment. If you feel like a QPR player with five defeats in a row and the top team is coming to you, it’s the best game you can have. Because with one win, you can delete the five defeats in a row. So it will be a tough game, we have to be 100 per cent focused.”
But then there’s the other side to Maresca that has been seen a lot lately, one that doesn’t want his team to take for granted what they are achieving. Just because City are one of the biggest teams in the division, it doesn’t mean it is easy for them to win matches.
Maresca pointed to the routine victory over Stoke before the international break, with City dominant. The manager said his team were so comfortable because of how well they played, not because beating Stoke is easy, referencing the Potters’ recent wins over promotion contenders Sunderland and Leeds.
He said: “From outside, everyone can think that just because we are Leicester in the Championship, the wins are easy, but it’s not like that. Football, you can see, day by day, things happen.
“When we beat Stoke at home, everyone was thinking it was easy, and then Stoke beat Sunderland and beat Leeds. So it’s easy or not easy? It’s all about the players. The way they behave is unbelievable.
“That’s why we can’t drop. The moment we drop a little bit, they are going to wait for us and probably they beat us. If we continue to maintain the standards they have every day in training, we will win more than we lose games.”
There was a poignancy again to the press conference with Maresca attending a memorial service for the victims of the helicopter crash on Friday morning, with the club marking the fifth anniversary of the tragedy at the King Power Stadium.
