Leicester City ended their three-game losing run in the Championship on Tuesday evening, defeating Sunderland 1-0 at the Stadium of Light.
Victory for Enzo Maresca‘s side moved them onto 81 points with 10 games of the gruelling 46-game campaign remaining.
Ipswich Town and Leeds United both won and remain on the tails of The Foxes in this unprecedented promotion race.
You likely won’t ever see a stronger quartet of sides in the second tier and it’s pretty remarkable that two will have to miss out on automatic promotion.
Despite a return to winning ways last night, former Leicester striker Steve Howard wasn’t pleased with one aspect of the performance.
Steve Howard frustrated at Enzo Maresca
The East Midlanders enjoyed a dominant first-half display in the North East and perhaps should’ve gone into the break two or three up.
The second half was much the opposite, with Sunderland often the side in possession and in the ascendency.
Speaking post-match, Howard told BBC Radio Leicester: “It’s so frustrating at times to watch Leicester City and you’re just thinking to yourself, change it. But it never changes and obviously that’s the way the manager wants to do it. He sets his game plans out and he sticks to his game plan.
“But sometimes I think you’ve got to slightly adapt to places like this and change your game slightly.“
The BBC pundit further noted City have a tendency to overplay: “There’s always times where Leicester will overplay and it drives me nuts watching it. I get frustrated and think ‘well what are you overplaying there for?’. You’re away from home, just do the simple thing and don’t invite that pressure.
Enzo Maresca admits players are ‘tired’
Whilst Maresca’s team did secure three points last night, it certainly wasn’t a vintage performance by any means and there were cracks on show in the performance.
City looked very leggy towards the end and massively struggled to get going for much of the second period. Perhaps on another day, Sunderland could’ve secured a point.
The Italian head coach did admit, speaking post-match, that his players were tired: “I think also probably second half we were a little bit tired. We are at the end of the season, to be honest day by day I’m more in love with the team because they do an unbelievable effort.
“We have many players, as we said many times, like Ricky (Pereira), like Jannik (Vestergaard), like JJ (James Justin), players that in the last two to three years, they didn’t play a lot. Now they are playing, so we are at the end of the season, it’s normal that some of them can be tired. Harry Winks, also, he play every game. But now it’s important that we recover energy and we go again Saturday.”