Leicester extend winning run
LEICESTER: Craig Shakespeare refused to declare Leicester’s survival battle won despite leading his team into the top half of the Premier League table.
Shakespeare’s team moved to 10th place after a 2-0 victory against Sunderland on Tuesday that left beleaguered Black Cats boss David Moyes looking doomed to relegation.
The triumph extended Shakespeare’s winning run at the start of his Premier League management career to five games and took the Foxes to nine points above the bottom three.
But Shakespeare, who replaced the sacked Claudio Ranieri, refused to accept the job of staving off relegation is complete.
“No, I am still not going to say that because I think we are never quite sure if other teams are capable of going on good runs,” he said.
“I have been in football for long enough to know anything can happen. We have to make sure we stay focused and move onto the next one.”
Shakespeare admitted that his start to life at the helm had exceeded his own expectations, with his Midas touch extending to inspirational substitutions against Sunderland.
He made a double change, bringing on Marc Albrighton and Islam Slimani, and seven minutes later the pair combined for the opening goal before Albrighton teed up Jamie Vardy for the second.
Meanwhile, Moyes is enduring a far more torrid time than Shakespeare, with poor results on the pitch combined with controversy off it.
Hours before kick-off at Leicester, his club were forced to back him publicly over his threats to ‘slap’ a female reporter who recently quizzed him about his job security.
Moyes has since apologised f or the comments.
Moyes conceded his rock bottom side face an almost impossible task to save themselves from relegation after back-toback losses at Watford and Leicester.
“It’s tougher. I really felt that to give us a real chance we would have to win one of these two away games and they both were difficult on paper,” he said.
Manchester United’s struggle to achieve a top-four finish continued as Zlatan Ibrahimovic came to their rescue with an addedtime penalty to salvage a 1-1 draw against Everton at Old Trafford.