Football
ESPN staff 8y

Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri: 'It is a crazy Premier League'

Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri says his players were not afraid as they went out to win at Manchester City.

The Foxes went six points clear at the top of the table with an incredible 3-1 win at the Etihad as Robert Huth scored twice and Riyad Mahrez also got on the scoresheet before Sergio Aguero headed a consolation in the closing minutes.

"It is crazy. It is a crazy Premier League," Ranieri told BT Sport. "It is a good result, the players played very well. We were never afraid. We wanted to win here.

"We scored a goal early and it is not easy to maintain the right concentration but we were concentrating because we respect Man City.

"The effort is a lot, now it is important the players recover because we spent a lot of energy. Sometimes we run more than a bull. We play every match as though it is the last match. Now we are very, very confident and it is important to think about Arsenal, we are ready to fight there.

"There are a lot of super teams now, we will try. Why not?"

However, Ranieri said in his news conference that he won't look too far ahead.

"I don't think about if we win the league, I don't want to think about it," he said. "My mind goes over the next seven days -- Arsenal, another tough match, other fantastic players, another fantastic stadium.

"But we're alive and we want to fight. I hope we concentrate as well as in these last matches to continue our dream."

One leading bookmaker immediately made Leicester -- 5,000/1 outsiders at the start of the season -- the new 7/4 favourites for the title with City drifting to 9/4.

But Ranieri, aware he was the one-time favourite in the "sack race," said: "I don't believe the bookmakers. At the beginning of the season the bookmakers said, 'sack Ranieri.' I hope one time they are right!"

Mahrez, who tormented the City defence all afternoon, said that Leicester were not thinking about the title just yet.

"We got a great win," he added. "Leicester still have a lot of games so we can't speak now about the title. We have to keep going.We will fight for the title and see what we can do. We didn't expect to win 3-1 so we will keep dreaming and see what can happen."

Huth added that Leicester had worked hard on the training ground to get a result at City.

"We expected them to come out flying, to be honest, but I thought in the first five or 10 minutes we came out better," he told BT Sport.

"We spoke about their weakness at set-pieces and it worked a treat on the first one. I think there were a few others after that, so we're happy with that."

The German also revealed that distractions like the FA Cup and Europe for other clubs in the title race could lend Leicester an advantage.

"It certainly helps us," he said. "All the teams around us have Champions League, Europa League -- those sort of games and it is inevitable that they think of other games rather than the league, especially the further they go.

"That can only work in our favour. I know the other teams have a bigger and better squad than us but we've only got the league to focus on."

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