Early defeats to Reading and Bristol City put a sizeable dent in Leicester City's aspirations but since the first weeks of the season the Foxes have steadily been improving. Everything came together nicely on Saturday evening when they thumped East Midlands rivals Derby County by a four goal margin.
Leicester have been creeping up for several weeks but a tough fixture list prevented them from climbing too far up the table. Goaless draws at Cardiff and Middlesbrough in recent weeks will probably turn out to be excellent results at the end of the campaign. Beating Southampton 3-2 proved that the squad do have the stomach for the fight and they were unlucky not to beat Nottingham Forest.
Now Leicester sit on the edge of the play-off spots and will be expected to push on. There was some disquiet about Sven-Goran Eriksson's management during the bad start - as ever the Swede has drawn heavily on his contact book to bring in players and really this is a season of promotion or bust for the ex-England boss.
Not many teams at this level can go out and get the likes of Swiss international midfielder Gelson Fernandes, albeit on a loan basis. He played under Eriksson at Manchester City, as did Michael Ball and Michael Johnson whose arrival has filled out the squad.
The Swede has also been able to acquire the likes of Jermaine Beckford and David Nugent to go with another of his former England charges, Darius Vassell. At the back and in midfield, Neil Danns and John Pantsil are players who can reach Premier League level.
Inevitably, when Eriksson takes over a club there is an awful lot of movement in the summer. The Championship is a tough division in which to bed in new players but now that 10 games have gone the team has begun to gel.
The fixture list eases up from here and there's every reason to think that the club will become firmly established in the top six as the autumn unfolds. The trigger-happy Milan Mandaric is no longer around as club chairman but it's a fair bet that Sven-Goran Eriksson has to win promotion to earn a contract extension at the KingPower stadium.
No comments:
Post a Comment