James Maddison wants to score more scruffy goals as he pushes for his first Leicester City start since June. The attacking midfielder is fit again following a hip problem that ruled him out of last season’s run-in, and, after a cameo in the opener at West Brom, he could now be ready for a place in the starting line-up against Burnley this Sunday. Maddison has scored eight Premier League goals from outside the box over the past two campaigns, more than any other player, but he wants to find the net with efforts that perhaps don’t make the end-of-season highlight reel.
James Maddison said “I want to build on the numbers, more goals, more assists, more games, with the Europa League as well, and finish as high as we can in the Premier League, I want to score a few more scruffy goals, I want to get in the box more and score a few more scruffy goals, like a tackle in a goalmouth scramble. Scoring the free-kicks is wonderful as well, but they all count at the end. I scored seven in my first season, nine last season, so I want to keep building, keep improving, and give my best to the manager and Leicester City. Being injured is the worst as a footballer. You have no control. Watching that United game in the director’s box, with my crutches to the side of me, it was heartbreaking. But I’m back fit now. Sometimes when you’re injured, you get your hunger back, you really get the bit between your teeth. I’m ready to go. We were very disappointed (with how last season ended). We put ourselves in such a strong position to finish in the Champions League. We came so close, it went down to the wire, we just didn’t quite have enough. But it’s a step in the right direction and Europa League football this year will be good for us, it will benefit us. A lot of the lads haven’t played European football, including myself so that will be a new challenge. We definitely weren’t good enough from the new year onwards. We sat down and said that. The statistics speak for themselves, we didn;’t get enough points, nowhere near enough. We’ve looked at what we can do better and why we were so good in the first half of the season and not so good in the second half of the season. Hopefully we can put that right and have more consistency. We struggled when we had three games in a week, especially in the busy period after Christmas when we played Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday. The level wasn’t quite there. The games are coming thick and fast (this year). We’ve looked at last year and how we weren’t doing it, so hopefully we can now put it right. We’ve got to go out there and do it.”
