The Leicester City players need the fans’ support more than ever, Ayoze Perez has said after admitting boos from the stands do affect the squad.
Ayoze Pérez said: “We’ve got to be honest, it’s not a good feeling. I can’t say the opposite, I would be lying. They are there to express what they feel. We always try our best, sometimes it doesn’t go the way we want the games to go. You have to respect it. We would love in those situations to get support, more than when you are winning comfortably, or just winning. (In matches where City are losing) that’s when you need that little boost to play even better, and to keep pushing. At the end of the day, we need to make our stadium a place that teams think is really tough to come, and that’s not only us. The players are obviously the main thing, but in football it can give you extra, that one or two per cent, if the crowd is really pushing with you and you feel that extra energy. It’s a good feeling. We need to play to our best level and try to win games and show our good football to our great fans. And at the end, the main thing is the results. That’s what we’re trying to improve.”
Brendan Rodgers sparked a conversation over the booing when he said he was “disappointed” by the reaction from the crowd at the weekend. The manager also irked supporters with his suggestion that City had “over-achieved” in past seasons, a line repeated by Perez. But it is that overachieving position that they are striving to get back to.
Ayoze Perez said: “Since I signed for Leicester there’s been a couple of years where we’ve succeeded, we’ve won a couple of things, we’ve over-achieved, and now we are in a different position. We know we are struggling in terms of results but from the inside what I am sure is we are not far from getting back to what we were a couple of years ago. The sooner we get positive results it’s going to help us to get that confidence again and from that, we can start building that momentum which is going to take us to better results and better places. There’s still a long way to go until the end of the season.”
