EVANS HELP US
LEICESTER Jonny fears European fade out for Foxes
JONNY EVANS admits Leicester’s stuttering form has plunged their Champions League return into jeopardy.
Friday night’s shock 1-0 defeat at bottom club Norwich means the faltering Foxes have won just one of their last seven Premier League outings.
The 2016 champs knew they would finish the weekend in third place regardless.
But Evans (right) confessed he fears being caught by a chasing pack who also crave Champions League football next season.
The centre-back, 32, said: “There’s always that risk. We know that football can change quickly but it is up to us to turn that around.
“We will have to go away, regroup, analyse the game and see where we can improve.”
Controversial
For the second game in a row, Leicester were on the rough end of a controversial VAR call (below, right).
Kelechi Iheanacho’s fine strike at 0-0 was ruled out for handball thanks to a rule that didn’t exist 12 months ago.
The previous week, Manchester City’s 1-0 victory at the King Power Stadium featured a penalty awarded to the visitors for handball that seemed identical to one earlier not given for Leicester.
But Evans, a three-time Premier League winner with Manchester United, wasn’t prepared to hide behind that.
He said: “We can’t keep talking about VAR decisions. We have to look at our overall performance and how we are playing ourselves in the game.
“We know we weren’t good enough, simple as that.
“It was going to be a one-goal game – whoever got the goal first was going to win it and Norwich got the goal. We didn’t play well.”
Iheanacho, up front for the injured Jamie Vardy, curled a superb shot past Canaries keeper Tim Krul early in the second half (right).
But replays showed the ball had bounced on to a hand in the build up. It wasn’t deliberate but this season attackers are automatically punished.
Evans said: “It’s the rule. You are told the rules at the start of the season. We knew if it hit his hand it would be disallowed, it’s one of those things.
“We had one at the start of the season with Wolves which was a similar situation. It has been a consistent thing that has been brought in, so we will just deal with it.”
The win, courtesy of a fine swerving Jamal Lewis strike in the 70th minute, was only Norwich’s fifth of a tough Premier League return.
But it was enough to give Daniel Farke’s side belief that they can still defy the odds and stay up.
Max Aarons, who set up fellow fullback Lewis for the goal, said: “We have never once felt that we were down and out - as crazy as that must sound looking at the table. We always felt we had performances like this in us, but we needed to have them more often.
“Now we have got to keep that level. We have 10 games left to shut off more games and score more goals.”
Assists
The winner was Lewis’s first Premier League goal and only the second of the 22-year-old’s career.
Aarons, 20, is still waiting for his first top-flight goal but would be happy with more assists.
He said: “That was one thing we were disappointed with – as attacking full-backs we wanted to set up more goals. We weren’t getting forward enough.”