Leicester City need to win both of their remaining games to even give themselves a chance of staving off relegation, Jamie Vardy believes. City remain two points from safety after their 3-0 defeat to Liverpool on Monday night, with hope diminishing quickly among supporters at seeing such a one-sided encounter. In their final two matches, City play Champions League-chasing Newcastle at St James’ Park and then host West Ham, and while two draws feasibly could keep them up, Vardy says six points are the “minimum” required. Even in that scenario, they would need at least two of Nottingham Forest, Everton, and Leeds to slip up in some capacity. If either Everton or Leeds were to win next weekend, a defeat to Newcastle would send City to the Championship.
Despite the club’s predicament and the current run of results, Vardy still reckons there is the required quality in the squad for City to pull off an escape.
Jamie Vardy said: “We’ve got to focus on the next two games, and we’ve got to pick two wins up. It’ll be tough, but we know we’ve got the talent in that dressing room. It needs to click. We’ve got a lot of voices in that dressing room. Everyone knows the severity of what we’re in now, so we’ll all get back, work on it together. It’s not just the players that start, it’s the subs that come on as well. We’ve got two games left and the minimum we can have is two wins just to give ourselves a chance. So, we’ll get back on that training pitch, spend all week looking at Newcastle, how we can exploit the weaknesses and how we stop their strengths. And we’ve got to make sure that we put the 90-minute effort in next week to pick up a win.”
If City can sustain how they played in the first half-hour against Liverpool across a full match at Newcastle, they may give themselves half a chance. Scoring the first goal, something they have only done once in the past 19 matches, would also give them a boost. They have shown over recent weeks that when they concede, they are fragile, and they often lose their composure, resulting in more chances, and more goals, for their opponents. Reflecting on the loss to Liverpool,
Jamie Vardy said: “The first 30 minutes, I think we were in the game, then we concede and I think it’s a bad reaction to that. Before you know it, it’s 2-0. If it weren’t for Dan (Iversen), it probably would have been 3-0 straight from one of our kick-offs. We’ve created chances to start with. They’ve not gone in. If we’re getting in at 0-0 at half time, for instance, it’s a completely different ball game, and nerves are probably starting to get into them then. If you ask anyone, did the better team win? Yes. It’s more disappointing about how we’ve probably conceded the goals because that first 25-30 minutes, we created some ourselves. We were on the front foot and something changed after 30 minutes. We’ve just got to find a way, as an 11 on that pitch, of defending as a team, not conceding and also making sure we’re getting chances at the other end.”
