October is still in progress. Enzo Maresca, the manager of Leicester, is not getting carried away
Despite James Justin’s goal moving Leicester eight points clear atop the Sky Bet Championship after a 1-0 victory over Sunderland, Enzo Maresca maintains that Leicester is not the only team in the league that could win the championship.
After 12 minutes, Justin proved to be the Foxes’ unlikely hero, heading in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s corner from the left to secure the point and an eighth straight league victory.
Stephy Mavididi and Kelechi Iheanacho both had shots deflected off the post by the home team, who missed several opportunities to increase their lead. Black Cats substitute Abdoullah Ba missed a fantastic opportunity to tie the score late in the game.
“We are happy, but we don’t think we are the only club in the Championship trying to get promoted,” Maresca stated.
“It’s common to lose more football games than wins. We’ve won 12 of the last 13 games right now, which is abnormal. The players and supporters should be proud of themselves after being demoted.
“We are aware that these records will be significant if we meet our goal because they demonstrate the actions of the players and that they are abnormal, but October is still early.
“That’s great, we’re not the only team building to win the title, and in our case, we changed 14 or 15 players from the previous season. We would like to have the same situation in March and April.
“We were very aggressive and quite good on the ball; it was a very difficult game and probably the one I’m most happy with in terms of handling a different kind of game.”
Despite Sunderland’s third straight league loss, Black Cats manager Tony Mowbray was pleased with his team’s performance and thinks Leicester, who have had an incredible start to the season, will likely win the championship.
“We thought we could come here and win the game, we missed some really good chances,” Mowbray stated. I challenged the players to test their desire to play in the Premier League one day.
We simply lacked the poise needed at the top of the pitch, despite the fact that we competed really well. We will win enough games if that is the level we perform at each week.
All we have to do is make the final product better. Though we had a few excellent opportunities to put the ball in the net, we were unable to score.
“I believe Leicester City will win the league; we won’t finish above them. Last season, Burnley had the same number of points as we do at this point, so the outcomes will speak for themselves.
We’re not a big team, so we work hard to defend set plays; a free header has cost us two straight games.
