Smith bid to unlock ‘mental’ obstacles
DEAN SMITH has challenged Leicester City’s players to find their mental edge – and avoid relegation.
The Foxes chief was seething at the individual errors that saw five-star Fulham dish out a Bank Holiday battering.
He blamed the 5-3 defeat on a series of individual mistakes – and playmaker James Maddison also questioned the team’s desire in the immediate aftermath – but has since softened his stance.
Interim boss Smith said: “We need to keep concentration and focus and not let goals affect us as much as they do. I certainly felt that with the second.
“We looked a yard off it, if I’m being honest.
“Whether that was psychological or not, I don’t know – but it appeared to be – because I get the running numbers afterwards and we were slightly higher than Fulham in every metric.
“When players go into the game, their decision-making has to be good.
“They’ve made good decisions because otherwise they wouldn’t have won the FA Cup a couple of years ago.
“There’s players here who have won the Premier League as well.
“What they’ve done in the past shows they can do this – but this is the cut and thrust and now we need to make sure we’re all good at making decisions.”
Since Smith arrived, his team have let in 11 goals in four matches.
With fixtures to come at Newcastle and against West Ham on the final day – following tomorrow’s game against Liverpool – any improvement needs to be immediate.
Smith added: “These players know the position they are in and they’ve recognised it since the moment we came in here.
“That’s what we have reminded them of – that’s the reason why we’re here – to keep the club in the Premier League.”