Ruud van Nistelrooy does not expect one win to dispel talk of a Leicester City crisis – but he won’t be paying attention to the noise either way.
Amid a seven-match losing streak, a lack of transfers, fan anger towards the board and reports of heated exchanges between the manager and his players, the mood around City has plummeted in recent weeks. But a comeback win over Tottenham on Sunday lifts City out of the bottom three and gives them a result to build on.
Van Nistelrooy does not believe the negativity on the outside will “disappear” with one result, but neither is he bothered. He only cares about how his team trains, and how they perform at the weekend.
“No, it (talk of a crisis) is not going to disappear all of a sudden with a win,” van Nistelrooy said. “We are a football team. We are focused on getting better on the training pitch, doing our jobs, playing at the weekends and doing the best we can to be able to achieve our right to play in this league, which will be very tough as a promoted side, as I emphasised before.
“We’re not putting any energy in all the noise around us. A loss or a draw or a win will not change the environment. On the 25th of May, we want to be somewhere and that’s what we’re working for.”
City claimed their victory thanks to a second-half comeback, Jamie Vardy and Bilal El Khannouss scoring inside five minutes of the restart, overturning the Spurs lead earned by Richarlison’s first-half header. After last weekend’s performance against Fulham prompted angry words in the changing room, van Nistelrooy was pleased with the response.
He said: “I reacted on accountability on last week’s performance where I raised my voice to players. I’m there to hold players accountable. Today, the players reacted in a great way, playing really well on the ball.
“Off the ball they were really improving, our back four was helping to push the sixes in midfield and our wingers higher up. That was important today. I’m very happy with this performance.
“We went 1-0 behind but we were playing well. I have said that before in previous games but today I saw a team that were 1-0 behind but weren’t affected mentally.
“We got the ball, kept playing, created the James Justin chance and at half-time, the players were calm, they knew the gameplan was going accordingly. We had chances and we wanted to push and start the second half well, which they went out and did extremely well.”
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