Dean Smith cancels Leicester day off to sort ‘lingering’ issues at troubled club

By Nick Mashiter, PA

Dean Smith has told his Leicester players exactly where they stand after cancelling their day off this week.

The squad were called in on Tuesday after Monday’s 5-3 defeat at Fulham left them third bottom and two points from Premier League safety.

Smith chaired a meeting at the Foxes’ Seagrave training base and believes the squad took any messages on board – but will only get confirmation when they host Liverpool on Monday.

“It was due to be a day off but I don’t like things lingering. We came in and sorted it. I thought it went well, the proof will be on Monday,” he said.

“I’ve always been brought up in this game that you can’t change what’s happened, what you can do it learn from it and correct it and move on quickly.

“There’s no point us worrying about the Fulham game for two or three more days,

“I wanted to get it put to bed. I knew very quickly when I watched the game back what the errors were for the goals and the chances that we conceded. It was a case of making sure we got that out there very quickly and spoke to the players and then we could move on from there.

“I did the talking and told them what I expected in certain situations of the Fulham game, what we needed to do better and what we will do better going forward.”

Meanwhile, Smith insists Leicester cannot be written off in their fight for survival with just three games left.

He said: “We were written off six games ago and all of a sudden Leeds and Everton were written off and now Everton aren’t. The game can change very quickly.

“Monday was our Boomtown Rats (I Don’t Like Mondays) day, next time it will be someone else.

“My job is to rationalise what happened. We came in the following day so we could put the game to bed and rationalise it. The players understand what happened and the others coaches’ thoughts and we’ve moved on.

“It was a blow, only after this game on Monday will we know how big a blow it was. You can’t change it but what you can do is correct it and move forward.”