Schmeichel: We’re in big trouble now
Kasper Schmeichel admits that Leicester City’s Premier League title defence has been “embarrassing”.
And the Dane believes his side are in serious danger of being relegated following yesterday’s 3-0 defeat at home to Manchester United.
The Foxes, still without a goal in 2017, are just one point above the drop zone after goals from Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Juan Mata gave United a comfortable victory.
Goalkeeper Schmeichel said: “It’s not good enough and it sums our season up.
“Let’s not talk about last season – last season’s gone, as you can clearly see.
“We need to stand up and be counted. This season, from top to bottom, hasn’t been good enough.
“It’s not a situation that’s comfortable at all. We’re the reigning champions and quite frankly it’s been terrible, it’s been embarrassing.
“We have to improve right now. It’s time for every single one of us, right from the top to the bottom of this club to stand up and be counted because if we don’t we’re going to end up getting relegated and nobody wants that.”
When asked about a supposed rift between some of the players and boss Claudio Ranieri, Schmeichel added: “I’m not going to comment on any newspaper speculation. I know what’s going on.
“We’re low on confidence but certainly not low on fight. We’ll fight to the end.
“I can guarantee every player is hurting.”
Ranieri said: “Until the first goal, we were in the match. We tried to press and do something good, but we lost our strength at 0-1.
“Their third goal was too easy. Confidence is low.”
United stayed sixth but are now just two points adrift of fourth-top Arsenal.
Boss Jose Mourinho’s tactical change worked well, and he said: “We went to 4-4-2, the same system as they play.
“We tried not to give Morgan and Huth a two-againstone with Zlatan. We tried to give him more freedom by playing with Marcus. We were fine, quite stable but without the control we normally have. Then we changed and started finding more spaces, the first goal came and everything became easy.”